gentlemen whose society I had joined in the church below, we came down,
and I took a rustic seat on an eminence and surveyed the beauties of the
landscape more at leisure. The most beautiful part of the Rhine is from
Bonn to Mayence, and this view from the Kreuzberg constituted for me a
fine initiation into the charming scenery that fell to my portion to enjoy
the coming three days. Large sections of the country here are entirely
without fences, there being no hedge-fences even, and the landscape
checkered by the different fresh colors of the various crops, spreads out
like a beautiful carpet of green, red, yellow, gray, and a dozen other
tints and shakes, all mixed up, or like a pavement rich in mosaics. We had
also gone into the cellar of the church to see the skeletons and bodies of
26 _Servitten_ lying about in boxes or coffins set in rows upon the
ground. These, it is said, built the church in 1627. The bodies of several
of them seem to have petrified more or less perfectly, but the rest of
them are mere skeletons, and present an anatomical display that reminded
me of what I had seen in St. Ursula, in Cologne, as above described. This
cellar is perfectly dark and is entered by a trap-door in the form of a
heavy stone, which an attendant removes by means of a crow-bar. The steps
leading down are narrow and the passage very low, so that several of the
ladies at first declined to enter, but we persuaded them, however, to
accompany us. A tallow candle afforded us some little light, and after
brushing away the cobwebs which the spiders had spun since the last party
had made their entry, we came upon the sickening sight of the dozen or
more skeletons still preserved. The ladies in the party were intelligent
and dressed tastefully, and I shall never forget how the gaudy colors of
their dresses contrasted with the gloom of that nasty cellar.

The frequent odd adventures into such places as many would not like to
enter in their own homes in the presence of their friends and companions,
constitutes a prolific source of amusement. After we had crept out of that