In looking over the last volume (16) of your interesting miscellany, I was much amused with a humorous legend at page 108, called the Rat’s Tower, and according to your reference, having turned to page 68, of vol. xii. was equally entertained with the same laughable and well told story versified.  This humorous production is extracted from a work entitled, if I mistake not, “The Rhinish Keepsake,” containing many of the most wonderful and spirit-stirring legends connected with old chateaux, &c. on the banks of that majestic river, the Rhine.  Amongst other pretty and choice morceaux, is a poem under the name of “L’Envoy,” which may probably interest yourself and the readers of the Mirror.  In perusing the enclosed, you will observe the infancy, manhood, and old age of “Father Rhine,” as he is called, are all brought in succession before our eyes, which happy and ingenious idea is taken from a highly descriptive French publication, and perhaps having named the work, you will pardon my having extracted that portion which refers more particularly to the subject before us.  The author says, “Dans son enfance le Rhin joue entre les fleurs des Alpes de la Suisse, il se berce dans le lac de Constance, il en sort avec des forces nouvelles, il devient un adolescent bouillant, fait une chute a Schaffhouse, s’avance vers l’age mur, se plait a remplir sa coupe de vin, court chercher les dangers et les affronte contre les ecueils et les rochers:  puis parvenu a un age plus avancee il abandonne les illusions, les sites romanesques, et cherche l’utile.  Dans sa caducite il desserit et disparait enfin on ne sait trop comment!”

L’ENVOY.

  Cologne!  Cologne!  Thy walls are won,
    Farewell my bark—­be hush’d my song;
  My voyage is o’er—­my task is done—­
    Too pleasant both to last me long.

  Adieu, thou noble Rhine, adieu,
  Thy scenes for ever rich and new,
  Thy cheerful towns, thy Gothic piles,
  Thy rude ravines, thy verdant isles;
  Thy golden hills with garlands bound,
  Thy giant crags with castles crown’d!

  I have seen thee by morning’s early light,
    I have seen thee by evening gray;
  With the crimson blush of sun-set bright,
    And lit by the moon’s pale ray;

  Shrouded in mist and darken’d by storm,
  With the countless tints of autumn warm: 
  In ev’ry hue that can o’er thee fall;
  And lovely, lovely thou art in all. 
  The Rhine!—­That little word will be
  For aye a spell of power to me,
  And conjure up, in care’s despite,
  A thousand visions of delight.

  The Rhine!  O where beneath the sun
  Doth that fair river’s rival run? 
  Where dawns the day upon a stream,
    Can in such changeful beauty shine,
  Outstripping Fancy’s wildest dream,
    Like yon green, glancing, glorious Rhine.