s
and a half going to Strasburg, and by land carriage it is half the
distance, being only forty-five posts.

Neither do you save trouble; for the steam-boats being changed every
evening, you have to take your luggage on shore, shift it from one to
the other, and, at the very time that you are least inclined to do
anything, independent of an enormous expense which you ought not to pay,
but cannot well resist.

Now, as you really gain nothing in the above points, it is at least to
be supposed that you gain in the picturesque; but this is not the case:
and I have no hesitation in asserting that those who go up the Rhine are
generally disappointed, although they do not like to say so. They
expect too much.--The vivid descriptions, the steel engravings, have
raised their anticipations too high; and they find that the reality is
not equal to the efforts of the pen and pencil. Several of the
passengers acknowledged to me that they were disappointed; and I must
confess that I hardly knew the Rhine again. When I travelled up the
Rhine by land I thought it beautiful; but in a steam-boat it was tame.

This was observed by others, besides myself, who had ascended both by
steam and by the road running close to the banks; and the reason was
simple. When you travel by land you have the whole breadth of the Rhine
as a foreground to the scenery of the opposite bank, and this you lose
by water; and the bank you travel on is much more grand from its
towering above you, and also from the sharp angles and turns which so
suddenly change the scenery. Abruptness greatly assists the
picturesque: the Rhine loses half its beauty viewed from a steam-boat.
I have ascended it in both ways, and I should recommend all travellers
to go up by land. The inconveniences in a steam-boat are many. You
arrive late and find the hotel crowded, and you are forced to rise very
early (as Mayence at three o'clock in the morning), which, with a
family, is no trifle. The only part of the Rhine worth seeing is from
Cologne to Mayence; below Cologne and above Mayence it is without
interest; and although between these two places the steam-boats are well
served, above Mayence everything is very uncomfortable, and you are
liable to every species of exaction.

If I were to plan a tour up the Rhine for any friends, I should advise
them not to go by the Rotterdam steamer; it is a long voyage and without
interest, and with many inconveniences; but start in the ste