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. Ehrenbrietstein 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 oue row of houses to the Rhine, while the others crowd up the tiny valley. Ou

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

Old

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. 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 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 roof, 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

In

guardianship of the gray castle Lahneck. 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.

The "Brothers' are two ruins near together, with a high blank wall between them. The story is simple and natural. 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