_8th August._--Passed through a noble forest of enormous extent. Coblentz is charmingly situated upon the Rhine. We crossed the river on a _pont volant_. The _émigrés_ are no longer allowed to remain in the town; this _foyer_ of counter-revolution is at present very dull and democratic. Just out of the town we crossed the Moselle, which there falls into the Rhine. We followed the course of the Rhine to Bonn, the country rich and populous. Just before we entered Bonn, I was delighted at the sight of a very magnificent ruin of a baronial castle, with a high tower, upon a solitary rock. We slept at Bonn, which is now the residence of the Elector of Cologne, who is the uncle of the Emperor. _9th August._--Stopped at Cologne, an ugly, dirty town; everything looked black, houses, water, faces, trees. Road to Donningen[88] deep sand and bad. Three miles from Dusseldorf crossed the Rhine, which is very wide and begins to lose its transparency, on a _pont volant_. The gates of Dusseldorf were shut, and we were compelled to take refuge under a very comfortless roof; I lay upon the floor a prey to every sort of vermin, bugs, spiders, earwigs--filthy. I never was really annoyed at any _gîte_ before this. _10th August._--The gallery contains some excellent pictures.[89] _Rubens_, _Vanderwerfs_, and some Italian masters. Twenty-five _Vanderwerfs_. Small cabinet pictures his finished, detailed style suits, but he fails when he attempts history pictures. His pendant to _Raphael’s_ ‘St. John’ shows that he did not understand _effect_; the figure of Magdalen looks like a carving in ivory, and the hair like a flaxen wig. A game piece by _Sneiders_, a single figure in it done by _Rubens_, a _chef d’œuvre_. In general a picture painted by different hands either fails in harmony or in composition, but not this one, as each are perfect. Sneiders’ high finishing forced Rubens to give more force and less glare. This picture makes one regret that Rubens had not always some reason to paint in this energetic style. Two fine _Boths_. Fine _Berghem_. The ‘Charlatan,’ by _Gerard Dow_, a charmingly executed Dutch picture, as fine as the celebrated ‘Femme Hydropique,’ by the same hand, at Turin. The evening was rainy, and the weather very unpromising, but the whim was to go on, and on we went to Furth. When we arrived there were no beds; I and my maid sat up in a small room, and Sir G. and the servants slept as they could in the carriages. [Sidenote: DUSSELDORF]