Close beneath the window lay the Botanic Gardens, with their numerous parterres of flowers, their lines and divisions of shrubs and herbs. Within a range of a few miles round, we looked out upon the peaceful little villages of Popplesdorf and Kessenich, and the fertile plain extending from Bonn to Godesberg--with gentle hills, vales, and ridges, all covered with vineyards, whose young leaves gave a tender greenness and fresh look of bright and joyous childhood to the scenery. Beyond them we saw the Kessenicher Höhe, the blue slate roofs and steeples of many a little church and chapel, and the broad, clear, serpent windings of the Rhine, with the gray and purple range, in the distance, of the Seven Mountains, terminating with the Drachenfels. Over the whole of this, with the exception only of such soft, delicate shades and shadows as were needful to display the rest, there lay a clear expanse of level sunshine, so tender, bright, and moveless, as to convey an impression of bright enchantment, which grew upon your gaze, and out of which rapture you awoke as from a dream of fairy land, or from the contemplation of a scene in some ideal sphere. Fortunate Dr. Kinkel, to have such a window as this! It was no wonder that, besides his studies in Theology, in ancient and mediæval art, and in ancient and modern languages--besides writing his History of the Arts, and contributing learned papers to various periodicals--besides preaching, lecturing, and public and private teaching, his soul was obliged to compose a volume of poems--and again displease the severely orthodox, by the absence of all prayers in verse, and the presence of a devout love of nature. For, here, in their placidity, Learning and Poesy abide; Not slumbering on the unfathomed sea, Yet all unconscious of the tide That urges on mortality In eddies, and in circles wide. Ah, here, the soul can look abroad Beyond each cold and narrow stream, Enrich'd with gold from mines and ford, Brought sparkling to the solar beam; Yet be no miser with its hoard-- No dreamer of the common dream. Thus sang Dr. Kinkel, in our imperfect translation thus inadequately echoed; and here he wrought hard in his vocation, amid the smiles of some of the loveliest of Nature's scenes.