threshold-stones, and grave-stones all of the same material. It is
curious and depressing. This volcanic region of the Rhine, however, has
so many unexpected beauties strewn pell-mell in the midst of stony
barrenness that it also bears some likeness to Naples and Ischia, where
beauty of color, and even of vegetation, alternate surprisingly with
tracts of parched and rocky wilderness pierced with holes whence gas and
steam are always rising.

[Footnote A: From "Down the Rhine."]




BINGEN AND MAYENCE[A]

BY VICTOR HUGO


Bingen is an exceedingly pretty place, having at once the somber look of
an ancient town, and the cheering aspect of a new one. From the days of
Consul Drusus to those of the Emperor Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to
Archbishop Willigis, from Willigis to the merchant Montemagno, and from
Montemagno to the visionary Holzhausen, the town gradually increased in
the number of its houses, as the dew gathers drop by drop in the cup of
a lily. Excuse this comparison; for, tho flowery, it has truth to back
it, and faithfully illustrates the mode in which a town near the conflux
of two rivers is constructed. The irregularity of the houses--in fact
everything, tends to make Bingen a kind of antithesis, both with respect
to buildings and the scenery which surrounds them. The town, bounded on
the left by Nahe, and by the Rhine on the right, develops itself in a