and feet naked, beat their linen upon floating rafts, and laugh at some
poor artist as he sketches Ehrenfels.

The sun sets, night comes on, the slated roofs of the houses appear as
one, the mountains congregate and take the aspect of an immense dark
body; and the washerwomen, with bundles on their heads, return
cheerfully to their cabins; the noise subsides, the voices are hushed; a
faint light, resembling the reflections of the other world upon the
countenance of a dying man, is for a short time observable on the
Ehrenfels; then all is dark, except the tower of Hatto, which, tho
scarcely seen in the day, makes its appearance at night, amid a light
smoke and the reverberation of the forge....

Mayence and Frankfort, like Versailles and Paris, may, at the present
time, be called one town. In the middle ages there was a distance of
eight leagues between them, which was then considered a long journey;
now, an hour and a quarter will suffice to transport you from one to the
other. The buildings of Frankfort and Mayence, like those of Liège, have
been devastated by modern good taste, and old and venerable edifices are
rapidly disappearing, giving place to frightful groups of white houses.

I expected to be able to see, at Mayence, Martinsburg, which, up to the
seventeenth century, was the feudal residence of the ecclesiastical
electors; but the French made a hospital of it, which was afterward
razed to the ground to make room for the Porte Franc; the merchant's
hotel, built in 1317 by the famed League, and which was splendidly
decorated with the statues of seven electors, and surmounted by two
colossal figures, bearing the crown of the empire, also shared the same
fate. Mayence possesses that which marks its antiquity--a venerable
cathedral, which was commenced in 978, and finished in 1009. Part of