The Ritter Saal, or Knight’s Hall, though not large, is a curious room; indeed it is the only one in the entire edifice that can be called a good room, at all.  The fire-place is huge,—­so much so, that I walked into it with ease, and altogether in the ancient style.  There is a good deal of curious armour hung up in this room, and it has many other quaint and rare objects.  The chandelier was a circle formed by uniting buck’s horns, which were fitted with lamps.  There was almost too much good taste about this for feudal times, and I suspect it of being one of our modern embellishments; a material picture of the past, like a poem by Scott.  There may have been some anachronisms in the furniture, but we all use furniture of different ages, when we are not reduced to the fidgety condition of mere gentility.

In one corner of the Bitter Saal there stood an ancient vessel to hold water, and beneath it was a porcelain trough to catch the drippings.  The water was obtained by turning a cock.  The chairs, tables, settees, &c. were all of oak.  The coverings of the chairs, i. e. backs and bottoms, were richly embroidered in golden thread, the work of different royal personages.  The designs were armorial bearings.

All the stairs were quaint and remarkable, and, in one instance, we encircled the exterior of a tower, by one of them, at a giddy elevation of near three hundred feet above the river, the tower itself being placed on the uttermost verge of the precipice.  From this tower the grate of the beacon thrust itself forward, and as it still smoked, I inquired the reason.  We were told that the wad of a small piece of artillery, that had been fired as a signal to the steam-boat, had lodged in the grate, where it was still burning.  The signal had been given to enable the Prince and his family to embark, for they had not left the place an hour when we arrived. Tempora mutantur since the inhabitants of such a hold can go from Bingen to Coblentz to dine in a steamer.

We saw the bed-rooms.  The Prince slept on an inner camp bedstead, but the ladies occupied bunks let into the walls, as in the olden time.  The rooms were small, the Bitter Saal excepted, and low, though there were a good many of them.  One or two were a little too much modernized, perhaps, though, on the whole, the keeping was surprisingly good.  A severe critic might possibly have objected to a few anachronisms in this romaunt, but this in a fault that Prince Frederic shares in common with Shakspeare and Sir Walter Scott.

I cannot recall a more delightful hour than that we passed in examining this curiosity, which was like handling and feeding, and playing with a living cameleopard, after having seen a dozen that were stuffed.

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In reference to the controversy touching the expenses of the American Government alluded to in page 37, of this volume, the following particulars may not be uninteresting.