But I will not attempt to describe the Rhine; it would make this chapter much too long.  And to do it well, one should write like a god; and his style flow onward royally with breaks and dashes, like the waters of that royal river, and antique, quaint, and Gothic times, be reflected in it.  Alas! this evening my style flows not at all.  Flow, then, into this smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of the Rhine! out of thy prison-house,—­out of thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not unlike a church-spire among thy native hills; and, from the crystal belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling bells, while I drink a health to my hero, in whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells of Andernach are ringing noon.

He is threading his way alone through a narrow alley, and now up a flight of stone steps, and along the city wall, towards that old round tower, built by the Archbishop Frederick of Cologne in the twelfth century.  It has a romantic interest in his eyes; for he has still in his mind and heart that beautiful sketch of Carove, in which is described a day on the tower of Andernach.  He finds the old keeper and his wife still there; and the old keeper closes the door behind him slowly, as of old, lest he should jam too hard the poor souls in Purgatory, whose fate it is to suffer in the cracks of doors and hinges.  But alas! alas! the daughter, the maiden with long, dark eyelashes! she is asleep in her little grave, under the linden trees of Feldkirche, with rosemary in her folded hands!

Flemming returned to the hotel disappointed.  As he passed along the narrow streets, he was dreaming of many things; but mostly of the keeper’s daughter, asleep in the churchyard of Feldkirche.  Suddenly, on turning the corner of an ancient, gloomy church, his attention was arrested by a little chapel in an angle of the wall.  It was only a small thatched roof, like a bird’s nest; under which stood a rude wooden image of the Saviour on the Cross.  A real crown of thorns was upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if in the death agony; and drops of blood were falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and feet and side.  The face was haggard and ghastly beyond all expression; and wore a look of unutterable bodily anguish.  The rude sculptor had given it this, but his art could go no farther.  The sublimity of death in a dying Saviour, the expiring God-likeness of Jesus of Nazareth was not there.  The artist had caught no heavenly inspiration from his theme.  All was coarse, harsh, and revolting to a sensitive mind; and Flemming turned away with a shudder, as he saw this fearful image gazing at him, with its fixed and half-shut eyes.

He soon reached the hotel, but that face of agony still haunted him.  He could not refrain from speaking of it to a very old woman, who sat knitting by the window of the dining-room, in a high-backed, old-fashioned arm-chair.  I believe she was the innkeeper’s grandmother.  At all events she was old enough to be so.  She took off her owl-eyed spectacles, and, as she wiped the glasses with her handkerchief, said;