Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/155

152 interpreted into a judgment on these two apostate servants of the Church. It has been one of the purest of summer afternoons, and we had a delicious stroll up to the ruins; a world of beauty there is "within the small compass of that mount. Fancy a hill rising from the bosom of meadows as our Laurel Hill does, but twice as high and twice as steep, with a path winding round it, every foot of cultivable earth covered with grape-vines,-having shrines chiselled in the rocks, and crucifixes and madonnas for the devout. Half way up is a little Gothic church and a cemetery, where the monuments and graves—yes, old graves—were decked with fresh garlands, the lilies and roses that have blown out in this day's sun. Is not this a touching expression of faith and love—faith in God, and enduring love for the departed?

What a picture was the country beneath us, and what a pretty framework for the picture, the stone arches of the old castle! The earth was washed clean by the morning showers. Beneath us was an inimitable reach of level land covered with crops. The harvesting and hay-making just begun, but not a blade yet taken off the piled lap of mother earth. At our feet were the peasants' dwellings, little brown cottages, almost hidden in fruit-trees; beyond, the gay villas of the noblesse; and still farther, the lively-looking town of Bonn, with its five-towered Cathedral. Still farther, on one side Cologne, on the other the seven mountains, with the ruins of Drachenfels; fine wide roads—those unquestionable