The succession of grand natural pictures, which I had been gazing upon since my departure from Mentz and the district of the Rheingau, are undoubtedly similar, but not the same; there is alternately the long noble reach, the sudden bend, the lake-like expanse, the shores on both sides lined with towns whose antique fortifications rise in distant view, and villages whose tapering spires of blue slate peer above the embosoming foliage; the mountains clothed with vines and forests, their sides bristled and their summits crowned with the relics of feudal residences,[5] or of cloistered fanes: but the varieties in the shape and character of all these are inexhaustible; it is this circumstance that enhances the pleasure of contemplating, scenery, in which there is, as Lord Byron says, "A blending of all beauties, streams and dells, Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, corn-field, mountain, vine, And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells, From gray but leafy walls where ruin greenly dwells." [5] There are the ruins of fourteen castles on the left bank, and of fifteen on the right bank of the Rhine, from Mentz to Bonn, a distance of thirty-six leagues. The oppositions of light and shade; the rich culture of the hills contrasted with the rugged rocks that often rise from out of the midst of fertility; the bright verdure of the islands which the Rhine is continually forming; the purple hues and misty azure of the distant mountains--these and a thousand other indescribable charms constitute sources of visual delight which can be imparted only by a view of the objects themselves. And is excitement awakened in contemplating the borders of this graceful and magnificent river? Yes. When we revert to the awful convulsions of the physical world, and the important revolutions of human society, of which the regions it flows through have been successively the theatre--when we meditate on the vast changes, the fearful struggles, the tragic incidents and mournful catastrophes, which they have witnessed from the earliest ages to the very times in which we have ourselves lived and marked the issue of events--"the battles, sieges, fortunes" that have passed before its green tumultuous current, or within ken of its mountain watch-towers--the shouts of nations that have resounded, and the fates of empires that have been decided, on its shores--when we think of the slaughtered myriads whose bones have bleached on the neighbouring plains, filled up the trenches of its rock-built strong-holds, or found their place of sepulture beneath its wave--when, at each survey we take of the wide and diversified scene, the forms of centuries seem to be embodied with the objects around us, and the record of the past becomes vividly associated with the impression of present realities--it is then that we are irresistibly led to compare the greatness of nature with the littleness of man; it is then that we are forcibly struck with the power and goodness of the