Now tall chimneys cut up the lovely views, belching out sulphurous vapours upon the castles and fastnesses of the old Robber Knights. Factories and huge industries darken the blue of the sky. The siren song of the Lorelei is no longer heard from the rock where she used to sit “combing her golden locks with a golden comb,” and luring the benighted fisherman to his doom; she has fled, Heaven knows whither, scared by the prose of a cruel century; the clang of the Nibelungen’s hammer and anvil has ceased to beat in the dark caverns of the earth. Giants and dwarfs have disappeared, and the Rheingold is now won by methods in which there is neither beauty nor romance, nor fairy lore. What was the _Wacht am Rhein_ about, that it did not strike a blow to hinder the defiling of the sacred river? It has been fierce enough against the Frenchman; could it do nothing to stay the hand of the sacrilegious German money-spinner? Last year (May, 1914) I took a novice to view the scenes which had cast a spell over my young enthusiasm. He was disappointed, and I could not wonder at it. No crucible of the imagination can weld together Manchester and the Sieben Gebirge. In 1851 life on the Rhine sped like a happy dream. My father made Coblenz our headquarters, and we made many delightful expeditions; among others, a trip by steamer up to Bingen and thence across the river into the lovely Schweitzer Thal, which, lying as it does just out of the beaten track, is so seldom seen. It was no mere chance that made my father choose Coblenz for our temporary abode. Mrs. Bradshaw was living there with her son-in-law and daughter, and she had been a great friend of my father and mother. When I knew her, she was an old lady and quite blind, bearing her affliction with that gentle patience which is so usual with those who are thus punished. She still had the delicately cut features and charm of manner which had made her famous in her youth; for she was no less a person than Miss Maria Tree, the singer and actress who took all London by storm when on the 8th of May, 1823, she “created,” as the phrase now goes, “Home, Sweet Home,” in the opera of _Clari_ by Sir Henry Bishop. The words were by John Howard Payne, an American author, paraphrased from lines by T. Haynes Bayly, the author of “I’d be a Butterfly,” a song now probably forgotten, but in my childhood almost as popular as “Home, Sweet Home,” itself—especially in seminaries such as that of the Misses Pinkerton on Chiswick Mall. It is said that the motive of the air was taken from a Sicilian melody: be that as it may, it has been so long naturalized that it lives as something purely English. It will always be associated with Patti, but Maria Tree, who first made it live, should not be forgotten.