ecay of other
stones--which dot the moorlands of Wales. The fences are slate; the
gateposts are slate; the stiles are of slate; the very "sticks" up which
the climbing roses are trained are of slate; churches, schools, houses,
stables, are all of one dark iron-blue shade; floors and roofs are alike;
hearth-stones and threshold-stones and grave-stones, all of the same
material. It is curious and depressing. This volcanic region of the Rhine,
however, has so many unexpected beauties strewn pell-mell in the midst of
stony barrenness that it also bears some likeness to Naples and Ischia,
where beauty of color, and even of vegetation, alternate surprisingly with
tracts of parched and rocky wilderness pierced with holes whence gas and
steam are always rising.

Sinzig, on the left bank of the last gorge of the Rhine, besides its
legend of Constantine has a convent said to have been built by the empress
Helena; and in this convent a mummied body of a long-dead monk, canonized
by popular tradition, and remarkable for the journey to Paris which his
body took and returned from unharmed in the days of Napoleon I. On the
opposite shore, not much lower down, is another of the numberless
pilgrimage-chapels with which the Rhine abounds, and the old city of
Linz, with an authentic history dating from the ninth century, telling of
an independence of any but nominal authority for some time, and at last of
a transfer of the lordship of the old town from the Sayns to the
archbishops of Cologne. This supremacy had to be kept up by the "strong
hand," of which the ruined fortress is now the only reminder; but there is
a more beautiful monument of old days and usages in the thirteenth-century
church of St. Martin, not badly restored, where the stained-glass windows
are genuinely mediaeval, as well as the fresco on gold ground representing
the "Seven Joys of Mary," painted in 1463. Just above Remagen lies the
Victoria-berg, named after the crown-princess of Prussia, the
princess-royal of England, and this is the evening resort of weary
Remageners--a lovely public garden, with skilfully-managed vistas, and a
"Victoria temple," placed so as to command the five prettiest views up and
down the stream, as well as over the woodland behind the town. Let not the
classic name of "temple" deceive us, however, for this is a genuine German
arbor, picturesque and comfortable, with a conical roof of stately and
rustic pillars, seats and balustrade rising from