LAACH AND STOLZENFELS
Laach
Back of Coblenz is the charming little lake of Laach, at the other end of which is the picturesque but deserted abbey of Laach, one of the most celebrated, architecturally and historically, of all the religious edifices along the Rhine.
Once a Benedictine convent, it was pillaged and its inmates dispersed during the overflow of the French Revolution, and is now naught but a ruin, though in many respects a grandly preserved one.
The abbey was founded in 1093 by Henry II. of Laach, Count Palatine of Lower Lorraine, and the first Count Palatine of the Rhine.
Its magnificent church, built in the most acceptable Gothic, contains the remains of its founder and many nobles.
The monks of the abbey were, in the middle[{195}] ages, greatly celebrated for their knowledge of the sciences and their hospitality. Their library was richly stored with bibliographical treasures, and they possessed a fine collection of paintings. To-day the abbey and its dependencies is but a shadow of its former self; its library and its picture-gallery have disappeared, and, early in the nineteenth century, the establishment was sold for a price so small that it would be a sacrilege to mention it.
Stolzenfels
The mention of the castle of Stolzenfels hardly suggests anything churchly or devout,[{196}] though those who know the history of this most picturesque of all Rhine castles (restored though it be) know also that it was an early foundation of Archbishop Arnold of Trèves in the thirteenth century, and was, during the century following, the residence of his successors.