Winding along from the ruins last-mentioned, we come to a very striking object, a little short of St. Goar, which attracts the attention of all passengers. It is a dismantled fortification, still black with the powder by which it was blown up in the French revolution. The RHEINFELS was long a robber-fortress of the first water, and its tyrant chiefs carried their depredations and extortions to such a height as to league all the adjacent provinces against them. The chiefs held out and defied the country; but at length the strong-hold fell—and, with it, the whole of the brigand castles on both sides of the Rhine. LURLEY, OR THE ECHO. (_Legend the Sixth._) Almost immediately after passing the ruins of the Rheinfels, we enter a narrow and sombre river gorge, where the stream is impetuous, turbulent, and tortuous; the cliffs of dark basalt rising almost perpendicular, but in rugged strata or layers, inclining in all directions from the horizontal to nearly the vertical. Here the Rhine like its sister the Rhone— ——“Cleaves its way between Rocks that appear like lovers who have parted In haste; whose mining depths so intervene, That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted.” And here is still heard that prattling nymph, Miss ECHO, who, like many a descriptive tourist, repeats her parrot-note for the tenth time—with no other variation than that of diminished force and distinctness. This lady, who, when young, was dismissed from the skies for allowing her tongue to wag too freely, has since endured the severe punishment of keeping silent, except when spoken to! She is not permitted to ask, but only to iterate questions—having the privilege, on some rare occasions, and in some peculiar places, of repeating the said question, or rather the last word or syllable of it twice or even many times. The present spot is one of these favourite localities—and the voices which she loves to hear and to imitate are those of the cannon, the bugle, and the horn. The clanking and plashing of the steamers are unfavourable to the delicate iterations of Echo, and often drown her voice entirely. Though not so witty as her sister of Killarney, who answers, instead of repeating the questions put to her, yet she occasionally cracks a joke on the mayor of the neighbouring town, when some stentorian German bawls out from the opposite rock, “_Who is the mayor of Oberwesel?_” The damsel, with a faint but clear titter, replies, “_esel_”—or ass! so that lord mayors on the banks of the Rhine, as well as of the Thames, are sometimes treated with ridicule.