To make this visit we were obliged to travel by night to get back to the Rhine. We left Stuttgart at midnight. Night riding on European railways, where there are no sleeping-cars, is not very agreeable. However, in the first class carriages one can make a sort of half couch by pulling out the cushioned seats, and thus bestowed we managed to pass the night, which was not very long, as daybreak comes early in this latitude, and at this season of the year.
But fatigues vanish when at Mayence we go on board the steamer, and are at last afloat on the Rhine—"the exulting and abounding river." We forget the discomforts of the way as we drop down this enchanted stream, past all the ruined castles, "famed in story," which hang on the crests of the hills. Every picturesque ruin has its legend, which clings to it like vines to the mouldering wall. All day long we are floating in the past, and in a romantic past. Tourists sit on deck, with their guide-books in hand, marking every old wall covered with ivy, and every crumbling tower, connected with some tradition of the Middle Ages. Even prosaic individuals go about repeating poetry. The best of guide-books is Childe Harold. Byron has seized the spirit of the scene in a few picturesque and animated stanzas, which bring the whole panorama before us. How musical are the lines beginning,
The castled crag of Drachenfels,
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,
And hills all rich with blossomed trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scattered cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine.