COBLENTZ TO MAYENCE.
Between Cologne and Coblentz it is mere child’s play for the tourist. The stream is wide, and the attractive objects are so reasonably distant from one another, that the traveller has time to consult his map, peruse Schreiber, and even con over some of the shorter legends, between castle and castle. But it is another affair above Coblentz. The stream becomes more confined and tortuous—the banks more abrupt and contiguous—the ruins, towns, and villages more numerous—the embarkations and debarkations more frequent, with all their consequences of hurly-burly among the passengers, topsyturvy of luggage, scrambling after books, charts, and sacs-de-nuits, bowings, kissings, and embracings, or, as Hood would say, “omni-bussings,” among goers and comers, together with the clattering of plates and dishes, and the chattering of all known and unknown tongues—these, and many other interruptions, sadly discompose the contemplations of the philosopher, and the musing meditations of the tourists in pursuit of the picturesque, or the Syntaxes in search of the sublime.
The “Rhenish Confederacy” must have had a most salutary influence in fraternising the people of these provinces. Not only does every German in the steamer salute his “cousin Germans” on both cheeks; but, if his neck were long enough, he would kiss every man, woman, and child, on both banks of the river, from Cologne to Constance! These palpable inosculations, however, being impracticable, the caps and hats are converted into social telegraphs, which
“Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,”
and establish a chain of sympathies and reciprocities between land and water along the whole course of the Rhine.