seeing it. Its architecture is one of its characteristic beauties; not only its mined castles—and you have sometimes at one view three or four of these stern monuments on their craggy eminences—but its pretty brown villages, its remains of Roman towers, its walls and bridges, and its military fortifications and
"A thousand battles have assailed its banks," |
and have sown them richly with their history. And every castle has its domestic legend of faithful or unfaithful love, of broken hopes or baffled treachery. Story, ballad, and tradition have breathed a soul into every tumbling tower and crumbling wall.
We passed the night at Coblentz. The Romans called it Conf!uentes, "modernized into Coblentz, from its situation at the confluence of the Mosel and the Rhine. It is the capital of the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, and its population, together with that of Ehrenbreitstein, including the garrison, is about 22,000." Thank our guide Murray for the above well-condensed paragraph, containing more information than half a dozen pages of my weaving.
The younger members of our party, including myself, were enterprising enough to quit our luxurious and most comfortable apartments at the Bellevue at five o'clock, to go to the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein ("Honour's broad stone," is it not a noble name?).
