converted their floats into good Dutch ducats, return to their
own country. When the water is low, those machines are
sometimes months upon the journey.--_Campbell's Guide_.

The succession of grand natural pictures, which I had been gazing upon
since my departure from Mentz and the district of the Rheingau, are
undoubtedly similar, but not the same; there is alternately the long
noble reach, the sudden bend, the lake-like expanse, the shores on both
sides lined with towns whose antique fortifications rise in distant
view, and villages whose tapering spires of blue slate peer above the
embosoming foliage; the mountains clothed with vines and forests, their
sides bristled and their summits crowned with the relics of feudal
residences,[5] or of cloistered fanes: but the varieties in the shape
and character of all these are inexhaustible; it is this circumstance
that enhances the pleasure of contemplating, scenery, in which there is,
as Lord Byron says,

"A blending of all beauties, streams and dells,
Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, corn-field, mountain, vine,
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells,
From gray but leafy walls where ruin greenly dwells."

[5] There are the ruins of fourteen castles on the left bank,
and of fifteen on the right bank of the Rhine, from Mentz to
Bonn, a distance of thirty-six leagues.

The oppositions of light and shade; the rich culture of the hills
contrasted with the rugged rocks that often rise from out of the midst
of fertility; the bright verdure of the islands which the Rhine is
continually forming; the purple hues and misty azure of the distant