We sit down usually sixty to dinner, and I observe some
very fine women among them. On Sunday there is a ball at the ridotto. The
promenades in the environs are exceedingly romantic, and this place is the
favourite resort of many new married couples who come here to pass the
honeymoon. The scenery of the surrounding country is so picturesque and
beautiful as to require the pencil of an Ariosto or Wieland to do justice
to it:
Ne se tutto cercato avessi il mondo
Vedria di questo un pin gen til paese.[24]
And, had he ranged the universal world,
Would not have seen a lovelier in his round.
- Trans. W.S. ROSE.
To the researches of the naturalist and mineralogist the Seven Mountains
offer inexhaustible resources. The living and accommodation of the three
hotels are very reasonable. For one and a half florins you have an
excellent and plentiful dinner at the table d'hote, including a bottle of
Moselle wine and Seltzer water at discretion; by paying extra you can have
the Rhine wines of different growths and crops and French wines of all
sorts.
I am much pleased with the little I have seen of the German women. They
appear to be extremely well educated. I observe many of them in their
morning walks with a book in their hand either of poetry or a novel.
Schiller is the favourite poet among them and Augustus Lafontaine the
favourite novel writer.[25] He is a very agreeable author were he not so
prolix; yet we English have no right to complain of this fault, since there
is no novel in all Germany to compare in point of prolixity with Clarissa,
Sit Charles Grandison, or Tom Jones. The great fault of Augustus Lafontaine
is that of including in one novel the history of two or three generations.
A beautiful and very interesting tale of his, however, is entirely free
from this defect and is founded on a fact. It is called Dankbarkeit und
Liebe (Gratitude and Love). There is more real pathos in this novelette
than in the Nouvelle Heloise of Rousseau.
EHRENBREITSTEIN, 8 July.
After a sejour of three days at Godesberg, we left that delightful
residence and proceeded to Neuwied to deposit the boys. We stopped,
however, for an hour or two at Andernach, which is situated in a beautiful
valley on the left bank. We viewed the remains of the palace of the Kings
of Austrasia and the church where the body of the Emperor Valentinian is
preserved embalmed.
Andernach is remarkable for being the exact spot where Julius Caesar first
crossed the Rhine to make war on the German nations. Directly opposite
Neuwied, which is on the right bank, stands close to the village of
Weissenthurm the monument erected to the French General Hoche. We crossed
over to Neuwied in a boat. Neuwied is a regular, well-built town, but
rather of a sombre melancholy appearance and is only remarkable for its
university. Science could not chuse a more tranquil abode. This University
has been ameliorated lately by its present sovereign the King of Prussia.
It was not the interest of Napoleon to favour any establishment on the
right bank at the expence of those on the left, the former being out of his
territory. At Neuwied I took leave of my agreeable fellow travellers, as
they intended to remain there and I to go on to Ehrenbreitstein. An
opportunity presented itself the same afternoon of which I profited. I met
with an Austrian Captain of Infantry and his lady at the inn where I
stopped who were going to Ehrenbreitstein in their caleche, and they were
so kind as to offer me a place in it. I found them both extremely
agreeable; both were from Austria proper. He had left the Austrian service
some time ago and had since entered into the Russian service; from that he
was lately transferred, together with the battalion to which he belonged,
into the service of Prussia and placed on the retired list of the latter
with a very small pension. He did not seem at all satisfied with this
arrangement. He had served in several campaigns against the French in
Germany, Italy and France, and was well conversant in French and Italian
litterature.
We stopped en passant at a maison de plaisance and superb English
garden belonging to the Duke of Nassau-Weilburg. The house is in the style
of a cottage orne, but very roomy and tastefully fitted up; but nothing
can be more diversified and picturesque than the manner in which the garden
is laid out. The ground being much broken favours this; and in one part of
it is a ravine or valley so romantic and savage, that you would fancy
yourself in Tinian or Juan Fernandez. We arrived late in the evening in the
Thal Ehrenbreitstein, which lies at the foot of the gigantic hill fortress
of that name, which frowns over it and seems as if it threatened to fall
and crush it. My friends landed me at the inn Zum weissen Pferd (the
White Horse), where there is most excellent accommodation. Just opposite
Ehrenbreitstein, on the left bank, is Coblentz; a superb flying bridge,
which passes in three minutes, keeps up the communication between the two
towns.
Early the next morning, I ascended the stupendous rock of Ehrenbreitstein,
which has a great resemblance to the hill forts in India, such as Gooty,
Nundydroog, etc. It is a place of immense natural strength, but the
fortifications were destroyed by the French, who did not chuse to have so
formidable a neighbour so close to their frontier, as the Rhine then was.
The Prussian Government, however, to whom it now belongs, seem too fully
aware of its importance not to reconstruct the fortifications with as
little delay as possible.
