IN Heidelberg. Think of it! What an energetic idler I am grown! The Neckar lies a pistol-shot from my windows; high hills rise on the thither side, looking so home-like—Maysville home, like Mr. W.’s, where you came once upon a time. When my glance darts out the windows and rests upon them, suddenly I catch my breath, and I am not sure whether it is pain or pleasure I feel. Half way up they are cultivated, but the tops are wooded. Just over my head the old castle looms up among the trees. “The Gardens” of this pension where I am lead right up to it. I shall climb to it to-morrow for the first time. Reached here day before yesterday, late; got settled yesterday for a good rest; shall stay here till the latest season for Switzerland; then it and on to Munich for another rest.

Here’s “a mere mention” of where I have been since I wrote from “Edina, Scotia’s darling.” From there to the English lakes we saw ten each lovelier than the last. I wish you

were within sound; how I would rave to you! Then ruins. Furness Abbey and Fountain’s Abbey, both beyond Melrose, and Dryburg in some respects. London for a week (where we parted). Then to Rochester for its cathedral, castle (a ruin) and Gad’s Hill, Canterbury. Oh! Oh! Oh!

Dover, Ostend, “The Belfry of Bruges,” Ghent, Brussels, seeing the king and queen gratis, Antwerp, The Hague, Rotterdam (the loveliest and liveliest of them all), Amsterdam, Cologne, Bonn, and a pilgrimage to the graves of Niebuhr and Bunsen, Coblenz, Mayence—from Bonn to Mayence being the grand Rhine trip. “The castled crag of Drachenfels,” and innumerable other castled crags, sometimes as many as three in sight; the Lurlieberg; the sweet, song-famous Bingen; the world-wide known wine district, Rheingau, whence come the costliest wines in the world—Johannisberger, Reiderheimer, Steinberger, etc. I saw the Schloss Johannisbergers crowning a lovely vine-clad knoll, the entire vineyard or vineyards comprised in forty acres. The Schloss is a very extensive chateau, but ugly; belongs to Prince Richard Metternich, and yields a neat little income of £8,000 ($40,000). Some of our tobacco acres do almost as well! We climbed the precipitous rock on which “the majestic fortress of Ehrenbrietstein” is situated. It is opposite Coblenz, and we crossed the Rhine to reach it on a bridge of boats. I saw three bridges of this kind. I guess they have been handed down since Caesar’s time. I could not find out their special merit. They are not particularly striking—just a number of boats, sharp at both ends, side by side, with the solid flooring and railing of any bridge.

The view from the fortress is one of the finest on this glorious stretch of seventy miles, and I was glad to see it.

I wish I could lend you my eyes for a few minutes, so you could see what I saw. You’d come over and see it all, if it cost you that farm you spoke of in one of your letters, or another book!

L. G. C.

Heidelberg, August 15, 1882.