Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/195

192  ST. GOAR

landed at St. Gear's, in the midst of the most enchanting scenery of the Rhine, and in showery weather giving us the most favourable possible light. Nature, like "ladles and fine Holland," owes much of its effect to the right disposition of light and shadow. The mountains enclose this little village. The Mouse and the Cat, the beautiful ruins of two castles, are at either extremity of the view. The "Cat" is well stationed to watch its prey, but, contrary to all precedent, the "Mouse" is said always to have been the strongest when they were held by their lords, rivals and enemies. The immense Castle of Rheinfels, half way up the steep behind St. Goar, looks, as L. says, like a great bulldog that might have kept all its subordinates civil. Rheinfels, as early as the fourteenth century, was the strongest hold on the Rhine. It was built by a Count Deither, who, secure in his power, levied tribute (the exclusive privilege of governments at present, and they, as Murray happily says, call it laying duties) with such unsparing cupidity that the free cities of Germany confederated against him, and not only dismantled his castle, but the other "robbers' nests" on the Rhine.

The girls carried my carpet-bag up to the inn, which being rather weighty with my journal, one of them expressed the pious wish it "might not be so heavy in the reading as the carrying." On our way we went into a most grotesque little Catholic church, where an image of the good hermit who