To return to Godesberg, it is a most beautiful spot and much agreeable society is here to be met with.  The families of distinction of the environing country come here for the purpose of recreation and drinking the mineral waters.  We sit down usually sixty to dinner, and I observe some very fine women among them.  On Sunday there is a ball at the ridotto.  The promenades in the environs are exceedingly romantic, and this place is the favourite resort of many new married couples who come here to pass the honeymoon.  The scenery of the surrounding country is so picturesque and beautiful as to require the pencil of an Ariosto or Wieland to do justice to it: 

  Ne se tutto cercato avessi il mondo
  Vedria di questo un pin gen til paese.[24]

    And, had he ranged the universal world,
    Would not have seen a lovelier in his round.

  —­Trans.  W.S.  ROSE.

To the researches of the naturalist and mineralogist the Seven Mountains offer inexhaustible resources.  The living and accommodation of the three hotels are very reasonable.  For one and a half florins you have an excellent and plentiful dinner at the table d’hote, including a bottle of Moselle wine and Seltzer water at discretion; by paying extra you can have the Rhine wines of different growths and crops and French wines of all sorts.

I am much pleased with the little I have seen of the German women.  They appear to be extremely well educated.  I observe many of them in their morning walks with a book in their hand either of poetry or a novel.  Schiller is the favourite poet among them and Augustus Lafontaine the favourite novel writer.[25] He is a very agreeable author were he not so prolix; yet we English have no right to complain of this fault, since there is no novel in all Germany to compare in point of prolixity with Clarissa, Sit Charles Grandison, or Tom Jones.  The great fault of Augustus Lafontaine is that of including in one novel the history of two or three generations.  A beautiful and very interesting tale of his, however, is entirely free from this defect and is founded on a fact.  It is called Dankbarkeit und Liebe (Gratitude and Love).  There is more real pathos in this novelette than in the Nouvelle Heloise of Rousseau.

EHRENBREITSTEIN, 8 July.

After a sejour of three days at Godesberg, we left that delightful residence and proceeded to Neuwied to deposit the boys.  We stopped, however, for an hour or two at Andernach, which is situated in a beautiful valley on the left bank.  We viewed the remains of the palace of the Kings of Austrasia and the church where the body of the Emperor Valentinian is preserved embalmed.