affinity for water. Hogg, the friend of Shelley, was wont to tell how
the bright eyes of his comrade would dilate at the sight of even a
puddle by the roadside. Has water a hypnotic attraction for certain
minds? Be that as it may, there has crystallized round the great
waterways of the world a traditionary lore which preserves the thought
and feeling of the past, and retains many a circumstance of wonder and
marvel from olden epochs which the modern world could ill have spared.

Varied and valuable as are the traditional tales of other streams, none
possess that colour of intensity and mystery, that spell of ancient
profundity which belong to the legends of the Rhine. In perusing these
we feel our very souls plunged in darkness as that of the carven gloom
of some Gothic cathedral or the Cimmerian depths of some ancient forest
unpierced by sun-shafts. It is the Teutonic mystery which has us in
its grip, a thing as readily recognizable as the Celtic glamour or the
Egyptian gloom--a thing of the shadows of eld, stern, ancient, of a
ponderous fantasy, instinct with the spirit of nature, of dwarfs,
elves, kobolds, erlkings, the wraiths and shades of forest and flood, of
mountain and mere, of castled height and swift whirlpool, the denizens
of the deep valleys and mines, the bergs and heaths of this great
province of romance, this rich satrapy of Faëry.

A Land of Legend

Nowhere is legend so thickly strewn as on the banks of the Rhine. Each
step is eloquent of tradition, each town, village, and valley. No hill,
no castle but has its story, true or legendary. The Teuton is easily the
world’s master in the art of conserving local lore. As one speeds down
the broad breast of this wondrous river, gay with summer and flushed
with the laughter of early vineyards, so close is the network of legend