consisting of huge heavy quadrangular masses, shewing little or no taste of design; how well soever they may be suited for the display of interior magnificence or for the purposes of noble hospitality. But for the mansion with turretted and embattled ornaments, or for the elegant seat and genteel country box, the voyager may look in vain: such objects, ancient and modern, appear indeed peculiarly and almost exclusively to be the decorations of our English landscapes.

From Breisig the road, leaving the river's side, inclines to the left and coasts along the foot of some low hills, amidst orchards of fine fruit, to the small town of Sinzig (Scutiacum) whose large and noble Gothic church forms a charming finish to a fertile plain watered by a refreshing brook, and covered with open corn-fields, amongst which a good many trees intersperse themselves in clumps. Occasionally one passes by the road side a small chapel or shrine, in which, placed on a pedestal sits a painted statue of the Virgin Mary with the Infant in her arms. These have their peasant-votaries both young and old.

On the right bank the hills continue lofty and romantic. Linz has a pretty appearance at the margin of the stream, with an amphitheatre of vine-clad steeps for a background. The castle of Okkenfels crowning the heights to the north, and the mountain village of Basaltbruch forming an equally interesting object to the eastward, where enrobed in the hues of a beautiful sun-set,

"Each purple peak and flinty spire

"Was bath'd in floods of living fire.

By the time however that Meinherr Postillion, who like the rest of his tribe, had been smoking in my face sans

faire excuse, brought me to Remagen, the fire of his pipe and the light of my day's journey were both pretty nearly extinct. Unwilling therefore to pass through such a district without seeing as much of it as was possible, I decided on stopping for the night at this stage; though the town has nothing but its situation to recommend it, unless to be told that it was the Rigomagum of the Romans may haply reconcile the virtuoso to its defects: but unluckily the numerous monuments that were discovered during the formation of the fine road, commenced by the Elector Charles Theodore in 1768, and finished by the French in 1801, are deposited at Mannheim, where few people think of looking for them.

Adverting to the Romans and their stations, is it not strange that they, who had the country so long in their possession, and who made it teem like a quarry with their sepulchral inscriptions, milliary columns, and legionary altars, should have left us in their writings no memorials allusive to its picturesque beauties! Where in either Cæsar or Tacitus is there a sentence that characterises the sceneryto say nothing about describing it? Who would dream of such a river as the Rhine, when in the Commentaries he reads the brief notice of its rise, course, and islands; or the incidental remark on its breadth, depth, and rapidity, in the account of the famous passage effected over it by the Great Julius and his army?

A civil landlady's plain but palatable cookery, a few glasses of good Moselle by way of libation; moreover very clean sheets and a comfortable chamber, were my own redeeming discoveries at the post-house of Remagen. Before however I had recourse to "tir'd Nature's sweet restorer-balmy sleep," the tranquillity of the place

and the freshness of the evening air allured me towards the neighbouring convent of St. Apollinarisberg. The moon, glimmering her ray through the windows of its Gothic chapel, threw a soft and chaste illumination on their tracery, and on the terraces and summit of that beautiful hill. Thence descending to the water-side, I continued my solitary walk along the mouldering defences of the town, where walls and turrets, and church spires embrowned with age, present themselves in that peculiarity of form and assemblage which a painter "delighteth to honour." The deep stillness of the scene was unbroken, save by the fall of some distant stone, betokening yet the progress of destruction; or by the murmur of the mighty stream which flows past, unchanged amidst the perpetual changes of human affairs, and reflecting in their state of desertedness and desolation those towers of strength, whose images in days of yore it was wont to receive so proudly on its bosom.

27th. When I set out from Remagen the morning mist had not risen even to the mountain-tops, but hung over the river about mid-way up. As the sun gained power the vapour began to ascend, and in half an hour the loftiest summits were hidden in clouds, for clouds the fog had now become. They floated higher and higher till they cleared the hills and remained awhile suspended over them. Ere the sun had been two hours up, all melted away before him. And as I passed under the castle of Rolandseck,* that venerable ruin, seated on a woody

• It is said that Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, built this castle, In order to be near his mistress, who had become a nun at the convent

rock, revealed through its beautiful arch "the summer heavens delicious blue"-whilst the quadrangular cloister in the island below it displayed on its roof the golden ray of morn, and its umbrageous and verdant enclosure brightened in dewy radiance.

Next to Remagen, on our northward road, lies Oberwinter; another truly old-fashioned place. At the sight of these Rhenish towns, I occasionally gave way to I know not what feeling—to a mood partly inclined to merriment, but much more largely partaking of melancholy. Surrounded as they are by mural stateliness, and distinguished by early church-architecture, but with their population shrunk into numerical insignificance, and their houses shrouded in an almost cherished decay, their's may be called an offering of rare and pure Gothicism, respected by the Genius of Dilapidation. They are seats of Antiquity, unpolluted in their character by any profane admixture of modern improvements: they are abodes in which Ruin silently works unchecked in its operations by the slightest human attempt at restoration or repair. In England-busy, indefatigable, commercial England-we have nothing wherewith to compare such epitomes of the Moyen Age, as Bacharach, and Oberwesel, and Welmich, as Boppart, and Oberlahnstein, and Andernach, as Remagen and Oberwinter. Nor is it perhaps desirable that we should. But the spectacle of a simple-mannered people, dwelling at peace in the once strongly fenced and still imposing little cities of their pugnacious forefathers, is one calculated to afford an interesting exercise to the

situated in the island of Nonnenwerder. The poet Schiller has made this the subject of one of his best ballads, entitled the Knight of Toggenbourg, placing however the scene in Switzerland.-Schreiber.

associative faculties; and a no less pleasing stimulus to a lively and romantic imagination.

From Oberwinter to Godesberg the ride is rendered captivating beyond expression, by the proximity of the Seven Mountains, which on the right bank continue gloriously to unfold themselves, in all the varied aspects, that the Rhine's winding course so advantageously affords for viewing this most remarkable group of lofty bills.— Close to the river's margin "the castled crag of Drachenfels" rears its stupendous form inore than a thousand feet in perpendicular height above the watery level. On its south-western face the houses and orchards of a small village form a border to its foot, which is on that side planted on a tract of fertile meadows; behind these some way up rises a covering of vines; above the zone of vegetation, occupying not more than a third of the whole height, is a frightful rampart of red and grey stone, terminating in the form of an irregular cone in which brambles and rocks are combined. Its very point is occupied with the ruins of an ancient castle, whose high tower still majestically frowns on the glade below.

To the east of the Drachenfels is the broken peak of the Wolkenberg; connected by a narrow ridge with the former, it resembles the shattered crater of some extinguished volcano. To the north the Stromberg and Nonnenstromberg appear with features less rugged but

* These mountains (Des Sieben Gebürge) derive their names from the seven highest summits of a chain which crosses Thuringen, the country of Fulde, and passes to the Rhine. Drachenfels (Dragons Rock) is the highest peak. The family of the Counts of Drachenfels, which became extinct in 1580, were the ancient proprietors of its castle. Wolkenburg (Castle of Clouds) is 1482 feet high--Lowenberg is 1896 feet-Nonnerstromberg and Ochlberg 1827 feet high.—Schreiber.