But the fashionable life of Liebenstein does not concern itself with such mean sights and bucolic sounds as oxen-carts and crowing of cocks. It takes its pleasure up and down the long avenues of beech trees which lie between the Kur-Haus and the Hotel Bellevue. It rallies round the bandstand, and makes great show of studying the programmes of the daily concert. It chatters glibly over the previous evening's illuminations, and describes them as "_colossal!_" and "_wunderschoen_." Beauty is not in vogue at Liebenstein, judging by the middle-class Kur guests who haunt the shade of the beech trees. Indeed, if anywhere in the world an Englishman might be forgiven for thanking God that he is not as other men are, it would be here among the "_Ober-Lieutenants_" and "Herr Professors" and their mates. Figures, both male and female, seem to be of the switchback order--faces rudimentary in their modelling, and uncompromising in their plainness, dressing of the ugliest. Yet, _Gott sei Dank!_ Hans thinks his Gretchen perfection, and it would never enter into innocent Gretchen's head, as it does mine, to bestow upon Hans the carping criticism of Portia upon Monsieur Le Bon: "God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man." TREVES The dominant glory of the Moselle region is Treves. No town or city near has the smallest affinity with its peculiar character, and all seem modern and prosaic compared with its well-preserved tale of antiquity. "Nowhere north of the Alps," we are told in weary iteration, "exist such magnificent Roman remains." It is generally on the obvious that the unimaginative English parson takes upon himself to comment. We listen submissively to much school-book lore as to "Claudius" and the "fourth century" and the "residence of Roman Emperors," but when it rains Bishops and Archbishops and Electors we fly before them. For, after all, what signifies the paltry learning of a dry-as-dust dominie compared with the vivid tales these grand old ruins tell if suffered to speak for themselves? In Treves people need to absorb silently, and then assimilate undisturbed by weary chatter. One looks at the tender turquoise sky, flecked with luminous clouds; at the fine horizontal distance, with its sense of breadth and breathing-space; at the low hills covered with vines; at the cornfields, and orchards, and river--and we wonder what the old Romans thought of it all, and reflect on the strangeness of life that a people so remote from our times should have lived and loved and died, as we live and love and die to-day. Whether Treves lie on the right or left bank of the Moselle is immaterial except to the tiresomely precise or to those who pin their faith to guide-books and such shallow teachers. There is a more valuable lesson to be learnt of the place than that of its exact situation; and no Baedeker or Murray can help you to appreciate Treves as quiet communings with your own intelligence will.