Thus the mountains of the Rhine, though none of them are much higher than the rock of Gibraltar—are represented as “stupendous”—every dingle and dell that opens between the hills, is painted as more beautiful than the valley of Rasselas, Chamounix, or Grindenwalde—the river itself is made to flow like liquid emeralds or sapphires, though it receives so many muddy streams, after its partial filter in Constance, that it is nearly as yellow as the Tiber, and as turbid as the Thames, before it gets half-way between Schaffhausen and Dusseldorf.[6] The vines too, which are strung on stunted sticks, like onions,—enclosed between rude stone terraces—and which more frequently disfigure than embellish the banks of the Rhine, are extolled beyond those of Italy, which are gracefully festooned from tree to tree, bending down the branches with the weight of delicious grapes. Notwithstanding these and many other deficiencies on the one hand, and exaggerations on the other (which all will acknowledge in their hearts, though none will declare by their tongues), the Rhine is the most picturesque, beautiful, romantic, and interesting river on the face of our globe. I have twice ascended, and thrice descended the stream, from its source in the Alps to its sepulture in the ocean—with various lateral excursions—and still with undiminished pleasure. But then I came to the survey with a conviction that, like all other places of the kind, it was flattered by the painter, falsified by the poet, and dressed in meretricious ornaments by the tourist and novellist. I was therefore not disappointed, but highly gratified. DRACHENFELS. Knowing, from experience, that the first twenty miles of the Rhine from Cologne, are totally devoid of interest, I left my companions at their wine in the RHENISCHER, and started in the diligence for Bonn—and thence to Godesberg, where I slept. Long before sunrise I had crossed the Rhine, and threaded my way up the steeps of the Drachenfels. This is probably the finest view on the Rhine—far superior to that which Sir F. Head has described as taken from the top of a tree on the hill behind the Bad-haus at Schlangenbad.