Down once more, into a glen; but such a glen as neither England nor America has ever seen; or, please God, ever will see, glorious as it is.  Stangrave, who knew all Europe well, had walked the path before; but he stopped then, as he had done the first time, in awe.  On the right, slope up the bare slate downs, up to the foot of cliffs; but only half of those cliffs God has made.  Above the grey slate ledges rise cliffs of man’s handiwork, pierced with a hundred square black embrasures; and above them the long barrack-ranges of a soldier’s town; which a foeman stormed once, when it was young:  but what foeman will ever storm it again [Transcriber’s note:  punctuation missing from the end of this sentence in original.  Possibly question mark.] What conqueror’s foot will ever tread again upon the “broad stone of honour,” and call Ehrenbreitstein his?  On the left the clover and the corn range on, beneath the orchard boughs, up to yon knoll of chestnut and acacia, tall poplar, feathered larch:—­but what is that stonework which gleams grey beneath their stems’?  A summer-house for some great duke, looking out over the glorious Rhine vale, and up the long vineyards of the bright Moselle, from whence he may bid his people eat, drink, and take their ease, for they have much goods laid up for many years?—­

Bank over bank of earth and stone, cleft by deep embrasures, from which the great guns grin across the rich gardens, studded with standard fruit-trees, which close the glacis to its topmost edge.  And there, below him, lie the vineyards:  every rock-ledge and narrow path of soil tossing its golden tendrils to the sun, grey with ripening clusters, rich with noble wine; but what is that wall which winds among them, up and down, creeping and sneaking over every ledge and knoll of vantage ground, pierced with eyelet-holes, backed by strange stairs and galleries of stone; till it rises close before him, to meet the low round tower full in his path, from whose deep casemates, as from dark scowling eye-holes, the ugly cannon-eyes stare up the glen?

Stangrave knows them all—­as far as any man can know.  The wards of the key which locks apart the nations; the yet maiden Troy of Europe; the greatest fortress of the world.

He walks down, turns into the vineyards, and lies down beneath the mellow shade of vines.  He has no sketch-book—­articles forbidden; his passport is in his pocket; and he speaks all tongues of German men.  So, fearless of gendarmes and soldiers, he lies down, in the blazing German afternoon, upon the shaly soil; and watches the bright-eyed lizards hunt flies along the roasting-walls, and the great locusts buzz and pitch and leap; green locusts with red wings, and grey locusts with blue wings; he notes the species, for he is tired and lazy, and has so many thoughts within his head, that he is glad to toss them all away, and give up his soul, if possible, to locusts and lizards, vines and shade.

And far below him fleets the mighty Rhine, rich with the memories of two thousand stormy years; and on its further bank the grey-walled Coblentz town, and the long arches of the Moselle-bridge, and the rich flats of Kaiser Franz, and the long poplar-crested uplands, which look so gay, and are so stern; for everywhere between the poplar-stems the saw-toothed outline of the western forts cuts the blue sky.