are a few among us who pretend to work themselves up into enthusiasm as respects the first, more especially if they can get a foreign name to idolize; but it is apparent, at a glance, that it is not enthusiasm of the pure water.  For this, Germany is the land of sensations, whether music, poetry, arms, or the more material arts be their object.  As for myself, I can boast of little in this way, beyond the homage of my two postmasters, which perhaps was more than properly fell to my share; but I shall never forget the feeling displayed by a young German, at Dresden, whom chance threw in my way.  We had lodgings in a house directly opposite the one inhabited by Tieck, the celebrated novelist and dramatist.  Having no proper means of introduction to this gentleman, and unwilling to obtrude myself anywhere, I never made his acquaintance, but it was impossible not to know, in so small a town, where so great a celebrity lived.  Next door to us was a Swiss confectioner, with whom I occasionally took an ice.  One day a young man entered for a similar purpose, and left the room with myself.  At the door he inquired if I could tell him in which of the neighbouring hotels M. Tieck resided, I showed him the house and paused a moment to watch his manner, which was entirely free from pretension, but which preserved an indescribable expression of reverence.  “Was it possible to get a glimpse of the person of M. Tieck?” “I feared not; some one had told me that he was gone to a watering-place.”  “Could I tell him which was the window of his room?” This I was able to do, as he had been pointed out to me at it a few days before.  I left him gazing at the window, and it was near an hour before this quiet exhibition of heartfelt homage ceased by the departure of the young man.  In my own case, I half suspect that my two postmasters expected to see a man of less European countenance than the one I happen to travel with.

[Footnote 24:  Aachen, in German.  In French it is pronounced Ais-la-Chapelle.]

It was near sunset when we reached the margin of the upper terrace, where we began to descend to the level of the borders of the Rhine.  Here we had a view of the towers of Cologne, and of the broad plain that environs its walls.  It was getting to be dark as we drove through the winding entrance, among bastions and half-moons, and across bridges, up to the gates of the place, which we reached just in season to be admitted without the extra formalities.

LETTER XII.

The Cathedral of Cologne.—­The eleven thousand Virgins.—­The Skulls Of the Magi—­House in which Rubens was born.—­Want of Cleanliness in Cologne.—­Journey resumed.—­The Drachenfels.—­Romantic Legend.—­A Convent converted into an Inn.—­Its Solitude.—­A Night in it.—­A Storm.—­A Nocturnal Adventure.—­Grim Figures.—­An Apparition.—­The Mystery dissolved.—­Palace of the Kings of Australia.—­Banks of the Rhine.—­Coblentz.—­Floating Bridges.—­Departure from Coblentz.—­Castle of the Ritterstein.—­Visit to it.—­Its Furniture,—­The Ritter Saal—­Tower of the Castle.—­Anachronisms.