Cassel and Rheidt, the vines lie thick and clustering; and, by the shore, you see from place to place the islands. stretching their green length along, and breaking the exulting tide. Village rises upon village, and viewed from the distance as you sail, the pastoral errors that enamoured us of the village life, crowd thick and fast upon us. So still do these hamlets seem, so sheltered from the passions of the world; as if the passions were not like winds-only felt where they breathe, and invisible save by their effects! Leaping into the broad bosom of the Rhine come many a stream and rivulet upon either side. Spire upon spire rises and sinks as you sail on. Mountain and city-the solitary island-the castled steep-like the dreams of ambition, suddenly appear, proudly swell, and dimly fade away. One begins here to understand the character of the German literature. The Rhine is an emblem of its luxuriance, its fertility, its romance. The best commentary to the German genius is a visit to the German scenery. The mighty gloom of the Hartz, the feudal towers that look over vines and deep valleys on the legendary Rhine; the gigantic remains of antique power, profusely scattered over plain, mount, and forest; the thousand mixed recollections that hallow the ground; the stately Roman, the stalwart Goth, the chivalry of the feudal age, and the dim brotherhood of the ideal world, have here alike their record and their remembrance. And over such scenes wanders the young German student. 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. On the shore opposite the Drachenfels stand the Ruins of Rolandseck,-they are the shattered crown of a lofty and perpendicular mountain, consecrated to the memory of the brave Roland; below, the trees of an island to which the lady of Roland retired, rise thick and verdant from the smooth tide. Nothing can exceed the eloquent and wild grandeur of the whole scene. That spot is the pride and beauty of the Rhine. The legend that consecrates the tower and the island is briefly told; it belongs to a class so common to the Romaunts of Germany. Roland goes to the wars. A false report of his death reaches his betrothed. She retires to the convent in the isle of Nonnewërth, and takes the irrevocable veil. Roland returns home, flushed with glory and hope, to find that the very fidelity of his affianced had placed an eternal barrier between them. He built the castle that bears his name, and which overlooks the monastery, and dwelt there till his death; happy in the power at least to gaze, even to the last, upon those walls which held the treasure he had lost. The willows droop in mournful luxuriance along the island, and harmonise with the memory that, through the desert of a thousand years, love still keeps green and fresh. Nor hath it permitted even those additions of fiction. which, like mosses, gather by time over the truth that they adorn, yet adorning conceal, to mar the simple tenderness of the legend. From the Drachenfels commences the true glory of the Rhine; and, once more, Gertrude's eyes conquered the languor that crept gradually over them as she gazed on the banks around. Fair blew the breeze, and freshly curled the waters; and Gertrude did not feel the vulture that had fixed its talons within her breast, The Rhine widens, like a broad lake, between the Drachenfels and Unkel; villages are scattered over the extended plain on the left; on the right is the Isle of Werth and the houses of Oberwinter; the hills are covered with vines; and still Gertrude turned back with a lingering gaze to the lofty crest of the Seven Hills. On, on—and the spires of Unkel rose above a curve in the banks, and on the opposite shore stretched those wondrous basaltic columns which extend to the middle of the river, and when the Rhine runs low, you may see them like an You engulfed city beneath the waves. then view the ruins of Okkenfels, and hear the voice of the pastoral Gasbach pouring its waters into the Rhine. From amidst the clefts of the rocks the vine peeps luxuriantly forth, and gives a richness and colouring to what Nature, left to herself, intended for the stern. "But turn your eye backward to the right,' said Trevelyan; those banks were formerly the special haunt of the bold robbers of the Rhine, and from amidst the entangled brakes that then covered the ragged cliffs, they rushed upon their prey. In the gloomy canvas of those feudal days what vigorous and mighty images were crowded! A robber's life amidst these mountains, and beside this mountain stream, must have been the very poetry of the spot carried into action.' They rested at Brohl, a small town between two mountains. On the summit of one you see the grey remains of Rheinech. There is something weird and preternatural about the aspect of this place; its soil betrays signs that, in the former ages (from which even tradition is fast fading away), some volcano here exhausted its fires. The stratum of the earth is black and pitchy, and the springs beneath it are of a dark and graveolent water. Here the stream of the Brohlbach falls into the Rhine, and in a valley rich with oak and pine, and full of caverns, which are not without their traditionary inmates, stands the Castle of Schweppenbourg, which our party failed not to visit. They then crossed to the opposite banks, to visit the Castle of Hammerstein. The evening was transparently serene and clear; and the warmth of the sun yet lingered upon the air, even though. the twilight had passed and the moon risen, as their boat returned by a lengthened passage to the village. Broad and straight flows the Rhine in this part of its career. On one side lay the wooded village of Namedy, the hamlet of Fornech, backed by the blue rock of Kruezborner Ley, the mountains that shield the mysterious Brohl; and, on the opposite shore, they saw the mighty rock of Hammerstein, with the green and livid ruins sleeping in the melancholy moonlight. Two towers rose haughtily above the more dismantled wrecks. How changed since the alternate banners of the Spaniard and the Swede waved from their ramparts, in that great war in which the gorgeous Wallenstein won his laurels! And in its mighty calm, flowed on the ancestral Rhine; the vessel reflected on its smooth expanse, and above, girded by thin and shadowy clouds, the moon cast her shadows upon rocks covered with verdure, and brought into a dim. light the twin spires of Andernach tranquil in the distance. Another time our travellers proceeded from Coblentz to Treves, following the course of the Moselle. They stopped on the opposite bank below the bridge. that unites Coblentz with the Petersberg, to linger over the superb view of Ehrenbreitstein which you may there behold. It was one of those calm noonday scenes which impress upon us their own bright and voluptuous tranquillity. There, stood the old herdsman leaning on his staff, and the quiet cattle kneedeep in the gliding waters. Never did stream more smooth and sheen, than was at that hour the surface of the Moselle, mirror the images of the pastoral life. Beyond, the darker shadows of the bridge and of the walls of Coblentz fell deep over the waves, chequered by the tall sails of the craft. that were moored around the harbour. But clear against the sun rose the spires and roofs of Coblentz, backed by many a hill sloping away to the horizon. High, dark, and massive, on the opposite bank, swelled the towers and rock of Ehrenbreitstein; a type of that great chivalric spirit the honour that the rock arrogates for its name, -which demands so many sacrifices of blood and tears, but which ever creates in the restless heart of man a far deeper interest than the more peaceful scenes of life by which it is contrasted. There, still-from the calm waters, and the abodes of common toil and ordinary pleasure--turns the aspiring mind! Still, as we gaze on that lofty and immemorial rock we recall the famine and the siege; and own that the more daring crimes of men have a strange privilege in hallowing the very spot which they devastate. Below, in green curves and mimic bays covered with herbage, the gradual banks mingled with the water; and just where the bridge closed, a solitary group of trees, standing dark in the thickest shadow, gave that melancholy feature to the scene which resembles the one dark thought that often forces itself into our sunniest hours. Their boughs stirred not; no voice of birds broke the stillness of their gloomy verdure. They arrived at Trarbach late at noon. This now small and humble town is said to have been the Thronus Bacchi of the ancients. From the spot where the travellers halted to take, as it were, their impression of the town, they saw before them the little hostelry, a poor pretender to the Thronus Bacchi, with the rude sign of the Holy Mother over the door. The peaked roof, the sunk window, the grey walls, chequered with the rude beams of wood so common to the meaner houses on the Continent, bore something of a melancholy. and unprepossessing aspect Right above, with its Gothic windows and venerable spire, rose the church of the town; and, crowning the summit of a green and almost perpendicular mountain, scowled the remains of one of those mighty castles which make the neverfailing frown on a German landscape." The scene was one of quiet and of gloom: the exceeding serenity of the day contrasted, with an almost unpleasing brightness, the poverty of the town, the thinness of the population, and the dreary grandeur of the ruins that overhung the capital of the perished. race of the bold Counts of Spanheim. We are sure that it is not necessary to explain to the reader that the proper names mentioned are those of some of the pilgrims whose journey Lytton has commemorated. Let us venture to draw but one other picture-that of a storm on the Rhine. "At this time the clouds gathered rapidly along the heavens, and they were startled by the first peal of thunder. Sudden and swift came on the storm; the small vessel began to rock wildly to and fro upon the waters. High above them rose the vast dismantled Ruins of Rheinfels, the lightning darting through its shattered casements and broken arches, and brightening the gloomy trees that here and there clothed the rocks, and tossed to the angry wind. Swift wheeled the water birds over the river, dipping their plumage in the white foam, and uttering their discor dant screams. A storm upon the Rhine has a grandeur it is in vain to paint. Its rocks, its foliage, the feudal ruins that everywhere rise from the lofty heights-speaking in characters of stern decay of many a former battle against time and tempest; the broad and rapid course of the legendary river, all harmonise with the elementary strife; and you feel that to see the Rhine only in the sunshine is to be unconscious of its most majestic aspects. What baronial war had those ruins witnessed! From the rapine of the lordly tyrant of those battlements rose the first Confederation of the Rhine-the great strife between the new time and the old-the town and the castle-the citizen and the chief. Grey and stern those ruins breasted the storm-a type of the antique opinion which once manned them with armed serfs; and, yet in ruins and decay, appeals from the victorious freedom it may no longer resist!" EARLY ENGLAND. COMBATS AND COURAGE OF THE BRITONS. LL ancient writers agree in representing the first inhabitants of Britain as a tribe of the Gauls or Celta, who peopled that island from the neighbouring continent. Their language was the same, their manners, their government, their superstition; varied only by those small difference, which time or a communication with the bordering nations must necessarily introduce. The inhabitants of Gaul, especially in those parts which lie contiguous to Italy, had acquired, from a commerce with their southern neighbours, some refinement in the arts, which gradually diffused themselves northwards, and spread but a very faint light over this island. The Greek and Roman navigators or merchants (for there were scarcely any other travellers in those ages) brought back the most shocking accounts of the ferocity of the people, which they magnified, as usual, in order to excite the admiration of their countrymen. The south-east parts, however, of Britain, had already, before the age of Cæsar, made the first and most requisite step towards a civil settlement; and the Britons, by tillage and agriculture, had there increased to a great multitude. The other inhabitants of the island still maintained themselves by pasture; they were clothed with skins of beasts; they dwelt in huts, which they reared in the forests and marshes with which the country was covered; they shifted easily their habitation, when actuated either by the hopes of plunder or the fear of an enemy; the convenience of feeding their cattle was even a sufficient motive for removing their seats; and as they were ignorant of all the refinements of life, their wants and their possessions were equally scanty and limited. The Britons were divided into many small nations or tribes; and being military people, whose sole property was their arms and their cattle, it was impossible, after they had acquired a relish of liberty, for their princes or chieftains to establish any despotic authority over them. Their governments, though monarchical, were free, as well as those of all the Celtic nations; and the common people seem even to have enjoyed more liberty among them than among the nations of Gauls from whom they were descended. Each state was divided into factions within itself: it was agitated with jealousy or animosity against the neighbouring states: and while the arts of peace were yet unknown, wars were the chief occupation and object of ambition among the people. The religion of the Britons was one of the most considerable parts of their government; and the Druids, who were their priests, possessed great authority among them. Besides ministering at the altar and directing all religious duties, they presided over the education. of youth; they enjoyed an immunity. from wars and taxes; they possessed both the civil and criminal jurisdiction; they decided all controversies among states as well as among private persons, and whoever refused to submit to their decree was exposed to the most severe penalties. The sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him; he was forbidden access to the sacrifices or public worship; he was debarred all in LANDING OF THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN. tercourse with his fellow-citizens, even in the common affairs of life; his company was universally shunned as profane and dangerous; he was refused the protection of law; and death itself became an acceptable relief from the misery and infamy to which he was exposed. Thus the loose bands of government among that rude people were happily strengthened by the terrors of their superstition. The first conqueror that disturbed the Britons was Julius Cæsar. He took advantage of a short interval in his Gallic wars, and made an invasion into Britain. After some resistance he landed (55 B.C.) near Deal. He had a short, and, according to his own account, successful, but really indecisive, campaign. At the approach of winter he retired to Gaul. He returned the next summer, and defeated the Britons under Cassivelaunus. He advanced into the country, crossed the Thames, and took and burnt the British capital. Then, having obliged the inhabitants to make him new submissions, he again returned with his army into | Gaul, and left the authority of the |