WE are gliding down the Moselle to its junction with the Rhine. The spot where a tributary flows into the main river is always noteworthy. Here the hills are of various formations, and the waters intensely green and of a crystal clearness. renbrietstein rises from the river in steep terraces opposite, and is cut out from the other heights by a narrow valley on either side. It is imposing and apparently impenetrable. Casemates yawn from each terrace, and the whole surface is intersected by massive walls and occasional stone stairways. Glancing up the Rhine!

"Within whose broad, mellifluous tide

Inveterate souvenirs abide,

VOL. XVII.-25

Of saintly trust, of knightly pride,
Going forth as dread invaders.
Perpetual visions crowd its banks
Of stalwart steeds with blazoned flanks,
That Eastward bore, in tireless ranks,
The old hardy-thewed Crusaders!"

On the left shore are steep hills planted with grapevines and crowded with forests, and there remains only space enough for a railroad and highway between their base and the stream. Here and there, where a brook forces its way through a narrow cleft in the hills, a village nestles, with one row of houses to the Rhine, while the others crowd up the tiny valley. On

the right shore, where the Salm flows into the Rhine, the hills are lower and the vallys broader, but they soon push forward to the river, and where the eye glides up the steep and sterile rock, to which Marxburg clings dizzily, they have left but a few narrow fields at their base. Above Marxburg the hills crowd past each other, and cut off the Rhine from our view; but it is still long traceable through the day by the conical hills which guard its shores, and in the evening by the silvery veil which floats above its surface. The Moselle is visible but a short distance above its junction, where it sweeps in a large curve around the city of Coblentz. Upon the low, sloping hills of the further shore are several pretty villages and well-tilled farms. With the exception of Rolandseck, this is regarded by many as the most beautiful spot on the Rhine.

"What Christly influence wraps this stream,
With delicate sanctity supreme,
Like slumberous mists that brood and gleam
When summer dawns are breathless!
What songs its haunted bosom sings
Of reverend legendary things,
In soft, mediæval murmurings,
Melodiously deathless!"

Who that has once heard the soft ripple of the green Rhine can ever forget it? And how beau

RUIN OF VELDENZ.

tiful is the scene when the pear-trees are whitening, the valleys and the apple-blossoms are gleaming in the sun; when the golden sheaves are scattered over the table-lands, and the heights are wreathed in the crimson shades of autumn, and when it all

sleeps dreamlessly under the winter snows! These scenes haunt the traveler for years. The day before, I had crossed the market-place of Coblentz, threaded my way into a side street, and soon came out to the Moselle. Pausing on the middle. arch, I watched the clear green flood, eddying and foaming round the stone piles, and listened to the murmurs of the waves which had washed the base of the low hills and the edges of fertile fields, all the long way from sunny France. The eager little wavelets trembled impatiently against the shining stones, over and over each other, and past whirling bits of wood, nor were they quiet till they sank with a faint murmur beneath a white line of foam into the arms of the Rhine flowing gently past. At the right lay the city. Old patrician houses looked over the low stone wall bordering the river; here a balcony crowded between outjutting buildings, there a bay-window hung airily upon a commanding corner, and upon. slanting roofs arched and pointed dormer windows crouched as if weary from a long flight. Many a window was open to the sweet spring air, and as muslin curtains swung back and forth, revealing blooming hyacinths and budding camelias, my thoughts went back nearly a hundred years. I almost wondered that I did not see some of the beautiful women of the French emigration, who were one day fleeing from the guillotine, and another day on their knees, begging German rulers to lead them back to the pleasures and-alas !— vices, to all the emptiness of a crumbling Past. How many a slender form may have leaned hungering and shivering in these high-perched dormer windows! How many a darkly-glowing eye may have faded while gazing up the blue Moselle for news from a quiet France, driven back into the traces of despotism.

Coblentz was the headquarters of the Emigrant army, and the small city was filled with arrogance and weakness. A friendlier vision also appeard to me while gazing into the swift, green waters. In one of these side streets stands the house where Henriette Sontag was born, the great songstress, the pure but unfortunate woman. There were two sisters, but one immured herself in a convent, and she had the greater talent of the two. Which may have been the happier? The woman whose voice rolled up the dim aisles of convent chapel and broke in silence the fretted root, heard only by a few bent nuns and sallow priests, and perhaps

by the angels, or the one whose public life was a march of triumph over two continents, her voice still ringing down the aisles of time, but whose private life, shared with the dissolute Count Rossi, led to poverty and renewed effort, and a grave in a foreign land? The whispers of the tumbling waves were unintelligible to me, and I cannot say whether a secret consciousness of great power is not sweeter to a proud spirit than all the applause which men can give. So musing, I returned to my hotel.

And now the waning glories of the sunset warn me that my river excursion must speeedily end if I would join my companions at tea, and I turn back into the city by the nearest way, feeling that I had looked upon this lavish beauty for the last time. And with a sigh I bid the familiar heights, the lovely valleys, my favorite mountain, all good-bye.

Augusta, the Queen of Prussia, passes much of her time in Coblentz, and rules over the hearts of its inhabitants. She has contributed large sums toward beautifying the "Anlage," a promenade, stretching from the city a long distance up the Rhine and thickly strewed with natural and artistic beauty. She is known to be a woman of superior intellect. The first years of her life were spent at the Court of Weimar, and her first impressions were formed and trained by the "Meistersaenger" Goethe.

Just above Coblentz is the quaint town of Rhens, famed as the spot where the German emperors were elected in the olden time.

The next morning dawned clear and beautiful, and we were up betimes to take the train. Friends gave a last greeting, and almost like one in a dream I found myself at the depot, and we were soon fairly off again, wife and I, rushing along between frowning fortifications; our destination, Heidelberg. It seemed scarcely a week since the rainbow that greeted us as we rolled over the Rhine bridge had faded into blue air, yet more than a fortnight's light and shadow had been flung upon the mighty stream, winding among its storied hills, since we had entered Coblentz.

A bend to the right, and bridge and moat flew behind, and then the Rhine lay beside us, dancing in sunlight and dreaming where graceful branches bent above. For an hour and a half we skirted the shore, except where this was not possible, when we swept suddenly into a tunnel and out

again, and the train passed under the shadow of Stolvenfels, caught a glimpse of the delicatelytraced chapel hanging upon the steep rock, then turned from the dark and dripping walls to the gleaming river, the friendly Lahn Valley, and the

old town of Lahnstein, lying quietly under the guardianship of the gray castle Lahneck. In another quarter of an hour the train had swept round the bend in the river, one wave of light broke upon the tinned roof of Lahneck's tower, another upon Stolvenfels, then familiar balcony and cornice and chapel-spire slipped behind the wooded hills. The vineyards crept in serried ranks up the steep hill-side, and from their crests old castles frowned down upon the attack. Rough promontories pushed out defiantly into the stream, but we slipped under them, and the locomotive came out with a shrill laugh of triumph upon the other side. We cannot keep the details of the countless ruins which crown the Rhine hills, but will try to here and there catch a voice full of melody from the Past and give it words.

66

The Brothers' are two ruins near together, with a high blank wall between them. The story is simple and natural. There were two brothers who quarreled, swore deadly enmity, and built a high wall and broad between their two strongholds. Years passed, during which neither saw the other's face. They had grown old, and were weary of tournament, song, chase, and war; the flow of their emotion turning back upon itself, rested again in their childhood. One morning the elder brother climbed up to the top of the

intervening wall, if possible, to catch a glimpse of him whom he only remembered as a young, stalwart knight, whose blonde hair fell in long curls upon his gleaming armor. At the top he stood suddenly face to face with an old man who had climbed up on the other side. Two old men whose hair streamed long and thin upon the wind. "Art thou Rupert?" "Art thou Wolfram ?" They crept down again, a door was cut in the dismal wall, the old offense was forgiven and forgotten, and the former harmony was restored. We ought to regard it as true, for we were shown the two ruins, the blank wall, and the doorway in it!

Making a sharp curve, the train enters a tunnel and comes out into a beautiful basin, walled on either side by high, perpendicular rocks, and closed above and below by a bend of the river. This is the far-famed Lore-Lei basin, and the opposite rock, which protrudes semicircularly into the stream, is the Lore-Lei rock. The poetic legend attached to it is the most curious of all that the river offers to travelers throughout its course. At this place the river becomes narrow and dark, its current is more rapid; for, in a distance of five hundred paces, its waters have a descent of five feet. The Lore-Lei rises like a gloomy promontory, and above the surface of the water appear the points of rocks which have rolled down its sides, and have strewn the place with dangers. On the summit of this mountain dwelt the fairy Lore.

She was a beautiful young girl of seventeen or eighteen years, so fair that the boatmen descending the Rhine forgot, at the sight of her, the care of their boats, so that they were dashed against the rocks; and not a day passed that there was not some new accident to deplore. The bishop, who dwelt in the city of Lorch, heard of these accidents, and, regarding them as the effect of some fatal influence, when the relatives of those whose death she had caused came, in garments of mourning, to accuse the fair Lore of magic, he commanded her to appear before him. He was prepared to question her severely, but hardly had he seen her, than, yielding to the universal charm, he fixed his eyes upon hers, and his accents betrayed the pity he felt for the young girl. She denied being an enchantress, for she had no charm to retain her lover, and only sat day and night on the summit of the rock waiting for him,

and singing the song he used to love. She then began to sing the ballad, and the bishop perceived that she was mad. For her spiritual welfare he ordered her to be conducted to the convent of Marienburg. Mounted on the gentlest horse that could be procured, with her conductors she set forth, and all went well until they came in sight of the rocks where she was accustomed to sit, waiting for her lover. Then she asked permission to ascend them, that she might look out once more upon the Rhine, and see if he, whom she had so long awaited, would not appear. Her guards assented, and two of them followed her a few steps to detain her if she attempted to escape. But scarcely had she touched the ground than she began to run so lightly that she seemed like a swallow skimming over the earth. She reached the summit of the mountain where it overhung the river, in a moment, gliding like a spirit rather than a being of earth, and, advancing to the extreme verge, she took up the harp she had left there the day before, and with that plaintive voice which cast a spell over those who heard it, she began to sing her accustomed ballad. The song ended, she pressed her harp to her bosom, and raising her eyes to heaven, with her hair floating in the wind, she slowly descended, not like a body falling, but like a dove flying away; at the same instant those who accompanied her uttered a loud cry; the beautiful Lore had disappeared beneath the flood.

On hearing of this the bishop sent for a learned man versed in affairs of magic, who, on consulting the stars, told him that Lore was indeed dead, but that, as her death had been a crime, she was condemned to revisit the place where she had dwelt when living, and that she would re-appear thus till she met a young knight who should make her forget her first love. This continued for more than a century. The bishop died. The generation who had known the poor Lore in life disappeared, leaving her story to the generation which followed.

Still the years rolled by. The Emperor Maximilian reigned in Germany, and Roderic Borgia, of terrible memory, was pope at Rome. One evening a young hunter, having lost his way in the valley of Ligrenhof, came suddenly to the opening of the valley in view of the Rhine. It was a warm summer twilight, and the cool, limpid water tempted him to bathe. Wishing to apprise