RG, 4th July.

The distance from Cologne to Bonn is 18 miles and Godesberg is three miles
further. We stopped to breakfast at Bonn and after breakfast made a
promenade thro' the city. Bonn is a handsome, clean, well-built and
cheerful looking city and the houses are good and solid.

The Electoral Palace is a superb building, but is not occupied and is
falling rapidly to decay. From the terrace in the garden belonging to this
Palace, which impends over the Rhine, you have a fine view of this noble
river. This Palace was at one time made use of as a barrack by the French,
and since the secularization of the Ecclesiastical Electorates it has not
been thought worth while to embellish or even repair it. There is a Roman
antiquity in this town called the _Altar of Victory_, erected on the Place
St Remi, but remarkable for nothing but its antiquity; it seems to be a
common Roman altar.[23] The road from Bonn to Godesberg is three miles in
length and thro' a superb avenue of horse-chesnut trees; but before you
arrive at Godesberg, there is on the left side of the road a curious
specimen of Gothic architecture called _Hochkreutz_, very like Waltham
cross in appearance, but much higher and in better preservation; it was
erected by some feudal Baron to expiate a homicide. The castle of Godesberg
is situated on an eminence and commands a fine prospect; it is now a mass
of rums and the walls only remain. It derives its name of Godesberg or
Goetzenberg from the circumstance of its having been formerly the site of a
temple of Minerva built in the time of the Romans, and thence called
Goetzenberg by the Christians, _Goetze_ in German signifying an idol.

On the plain at the foot of the hill of Godesberg and at the distance of an
eighth of a mile from the river, a shelving cornfield intervening, stand
three large hotels and a ridotto, all striking edifices. To the south of
these is situated a large wood. These hotels are always full of company in
the summer and autumn: they come here to drink the mineral waters, a
species of Seltzer, the spring of which is about a quarter of a mile
distant from the hotels. The hotel at which we put up bears the name of
_Die schoene Aussicht_ (la Belle Vue) and well does it deserve the name; for
it commands a fine view of the reaches of the river, north and south.
Directly on the opposite bank, abruptly rising, is the superb and
magnificent chain of mountains called the _Sieben Gebirge_ or Seven
Mountai