The scenery on the Meuse pleases me more, upon the whole, than that of the Rhine, though the river itself is much inferior in grandeur.  The rocks, both in form and colour, especially between Namur and Liege, surpass any upon the Rhine, though they are in several places disfigured by quarries, whence stones were taken for the new fortifications.  This is much to be regretted, for they are useless, and the scars will remain, perhaps, for thousands of years.  A like injury to a still greater degree has been inflicted, in my memory, upon the beautiful rocks at Clifton, on the banks of the Avon.  There is probably in existence a very long letter of mine to Sir Uvedale Price, in which was given a description of the landscapes on the Meuse as compared with those on the Rhine.

Details in the spirit of these sonnets are given both in Mary’s Journal and my sister’s; and the reperusal of them has strengthened a wish long entertained, that somebody would put together, as in one work, the notes contained in them, omitting particulars that were written down merely to aid our memory, and bringing the whole into as small a compass as is consistent with the general interests belonging to the scenes, circumstances, and objects touched on by each writer.

275. ‘Miserere Domine.’ [X.]

See the beautiful song on Mr. Coleridge’s Tragedy, ‘The Remorse.’  Why is the harp of Quantock silent?

276. The Danube. [XI.]

    ’Not, like his great Compeers, indignantly
    Doth Danube spring to life!’

Before this quarter of the Black Forest was inhabited, the source of the Danube might have suggested some of those sublime images which Armstrong has so finely described; at present, the contrast is most striking.  The Spring appears in a capacious stone Basin in front of a Ducal palace, with a pleasure-ground opposite; then, passing under the pavement, takes the form of a little, clear, bright, black, vigorous rill, barely wide enough to tempt the agility of a child five years old to leap over it,—­and entering the garden, it joins, after a course of a few hundred yards, a stream much more considerable than itself.  The copiousness of the spring at Doneschingen must have procured for it the honour of being named the Source of the Danube.

277. The Staub-bach. [XII.]

‘The Staub-bach’ is a narrow Stream, which, after a long course on the heights, comes to the sharp edge of a somewhat overhanging precipice, overleaps it with a bound, and, after a fall of 930 feet, forms again a rivulet.  The vocal powers of these musical Beggars may seem to be exaggerated; but this wild and savage air was utterly unlike any sounds I had ever heard; the notes reached me from a distance, and on what occasion they were sung I could not guess, only they seemed to belong, in some way or other, to the Waterfall—­and reminded me of religious services chanted to Streams and Fountains in Pagan