Instead of the pomp and luxury of the English traveller, the thousand devices to cheat the way, he has but his volume in his hand, his knapsack at his back.

From such scenes he draws and hives all that various store which after years ripen to invention.

Hence the florid mixture of the German muse,--the classic, the romantic, the contemplative, the philosophic, and the superstitious; each the result of actual meditation over different scenes; each the produce of separate but confused recollections.

As the Rhine flows, so flows the national genius, by mountain and valley, the wildest solitude, the sudden spires of ancient cities, the mouldered castle, the stately monastery, the humble cot,--grandeur and homeliness, history and superstition, truth and fable, succeeding one another so as to blend into a whole.
"But," added Trevylyan, a moment afterwards, "the Ideal is passing slowly away from the German mind; a spirit for the more active and the more material literature is springing up amongst them.

The revolution of mind gathers on, preceding stormy events; and the memories that led their grandsires to contemplate will urge the youth of the next generation to dare and to act."* * Is not this prediction already fulfilled ?--1849.
Thus conversing, they continued their voyage, with a fair wave and beneath a lucid sky.
The vessel now glided beside the Seven Mountains and the Drachenfels.
The sun, slowly setting, cast his yellow beams over the smooth waters.
At the foot of the mountains lay a village deeply sequestered in shade; and above, the Ruin of the Drachenfels caught the richest beams of the sun.