Going to Vienna to collect books and documents, with the intention of studying the results of Bosnia’s occupation by Austro-Hungary, I take the Rhine route, and stop two days at Würzburg to see Ludwig Noiré and have a talk on Schopenhauer. The _Vater Rhein_ is now changed beyond recognition: _quantum mutatus ab illo_. How different all is to when I visited it for the first time, years ago on foot, stopping at the stages mentioned in Victor Hugo’s “Rhin,” which had just appeared. All those grand peeps of Nature to be got on the old river, as it forced its majestic way through barriers of riven rocks and volcanic upheavals, have now almost wholly disappeared. The wine-grower has planted his vineyards even in the most secluded nooks, and built stone terraces where the rocks were too steep for cultivation. All along the banks, these giant staircases climb to the summits of peaks and ravines. The vines have stormed the position, and their aspect is uniform. The Burgs, built on heaps of lava, “the Maus” and “the Katze,” those sombre retreats of the Burgraves of old, now covered with the green leaves of the vine, have lost their former wild aspect. The Lorelei manufactures white wine, and the syren no longer intoxicates sailors with the songs of her harp, but with the juice of the grape. There is nothing here now to inspire Victor Hugo’s “Burgraves,” or Heine’s “Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten, Dass ich so traurig bin; Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.”