travellers upon the Rhine in winter. Peasant women were at work in
the vineyards; climbing up the slippery hill-sides, like beasts of
burden, with large baskets of manureupon their backs. And once
during the morning, a band of apprentices, with knapsacks, passed
by, singing, "The Rhine! The Rhine! a blessing on the Rhine!"

O, the pride of the German heart in this noble river! And right
it is; for, of all the rivers of this beautiful earth, there is none
so beautiful as this. There is hardly a league of its whole course,
from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in the sands of
Holland, which boasts not its peculiar charms. By heavens! If I were
a German I would be proud of it too; and of the clustering grapes,
that hang about its temples, as it reels onward through vineyards,
in a triumphal march, like Bacchus, crowned and drunken.

But I will not attempt to describe the Rhine; it would make this
chapter much too long. And to do it well, one should write like a
god; and his style flow onward royally with breaks and dashes, like
the waters of that royal river, and antique, quaint, and Gothic
times, be reflected in it. Alas! this evening my style flows not at
all. Flow, then, into this smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of the
Rhine! out of thy prison-house,--out of thy long-necked, tapering
flask, in shape not unlike a church-spire among thy native hills;
and, from the crystal belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling bells,
while I drink a health to my hero, in whose heart is sadness, and in
whose ears the bells of Andernach are ringing noon.

He is threading his way alone through a narrow alley, and now up
a flight of stone steps, and along the city wall, towards that old
round tower, built by the Archbishop Frederick of Cologne in the