The Rhine once more! and now indeed we shall hardly leave it again, but this is the last part in which we can enjoy the peculiar beauties that make it different from any other river in the world. The Swiss Rhine is a mountain-torrent, the Dutch Rhine a sluggish mud puddle, but the German Rhine is an historic river. Quite as legendary as historic, however; and perhaps that has made its charm in the eyes of foreigners even more than its national associations, dear to the native mind; and here, between Rolandseck, Nonnenwerth and Drachenfels, poetry takes precedence of history, and we do not want the antiquary to come and shatter the legend of Roland of Roncesval's fidelity to the Lady of Drachenfels, even after her vows in Nonnenwerth convent, with his pitiless array of dates and parade of obvious impossibilities. But I pass over the legendary details that make this region so interesting. What will better bear repetition is some description of the scenery lying inland from the shores, the natural Quadrilateral, containing minor mountains, such as the Siebengebirge (or the Seven Hills) and the Bonner Alps, and encircling also the volcanic region between Honnef and Dollendorf. These hills with their step-and-terrace formation were once fortified by Valentinian against the formidable Frankish hordes, and German poetry early began to find scenery in them worthy of its national epic, and so laid the scene of the Saga of Wilkina among these mountains and valleys. Here, above the legends of Roland and Siegfried and the Christian captive, who, exposed to the dragon of the rock, vanquished him by the cross, so that he fell backward and broke his neck, is the solid remembrance of castles built on many of these Rhine-hills, defences and bulwarks of the archbishops of Cologne against the emperors of Germany. But Drachenfels keeps another token of its legend in its dark-red wine, called "dragon's blood." (Could any teetotaller have invented a more significant name?) One has often heard of the unbelieving monk who stumbled at the passage in Scripture which declares that a thousand years are but as one day to the Lord, and the consequent taste of eternity which he was miraculously allowed to enjoy while he wandered off for a quarter of an hour, as he thought, but in reality for three hundred years, following the song of a nightingale. The abbey of Heisterbach claims this as an event recorded in its books, and its beautiful ruins and wide naves with old trees for columns are, so says popular rumor, haunted by another wanderer, an abbot with snow-white beard, who walks the cloisters at night counting the graves of his brethren, and vainly seeking his own, which if he once find his penance will be over. This part of the Rhine was the favorite home of many of the poets who have best sung of the national river: a cluster of townlets recalls no less than five of them to our mind--Unkel, where Freiligrath chose his home; Menzerberg, where