MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



477 



able; and a princess too well 

 known to be named, has been 

 known to join in them with as 

 much gaiety as a plebeian belle. 



From Auerbach we proceeded 

 early in the morning on horse- 

 back, accompanied by a peasant 

 guide to the Meliboeus — the king 

 oftheBerg-strasse mountains, and 

 one of the loftiest in this part of 

 Germany. 



Leaving the Berg-strasse at 

 Zwingenberg, a village under the 

 mountains, with a dismal old resi- 

 dence of the counts of Erbach, 

 we passed by a bye-road to Als- 

 bach — a little village situated 

 beautifully at the foot of the Me- 

 liboeus. Having here procured 

 a guide, with a key of the tower 

 on the top, we entered the thick 

 forest of beeches, ascending by 

 a steep and difficult path, which 

 did not, however, oblige us to 

 dismount. Our nags, being true 

 German animals, passed, with all 

 the sang Jroid of their master 

 trudging by their side, the start- 

 ling openings in the forest, which 

 occasionally let in a view of the 

 vast plain low beneath us. The 

 mountain is nearly conical, and 

 its fine vesture of rich beech 

 foliage, here and there relieved 

 by a few dark firs, gives to it an 

 air of apparelled majesty ; which 

 the white tower, on the top, glist- 

 ening in the sun, renders more 

 conspicuous at a distance. The 

 view from this tower, is one of 

 the noblest and most extensive in 

 Europe, owing to the flatness of 

 the valley of the Rhine below. It 

 was about seven in the morning 

 when we arrived on the summit — 

 the vapours from the Rhine, and 

 the streams in the valleys, were 

 hanging about the woody moun- 



tains, and obscuring the scenes in 

 the distance. As the sun gra- 

 dually dispersed the mist, the 

 spires and villages in the plain 

 lay, one after another, clear and 

 glittering beneath us. The distant 

 objects came one by one into 

 view — Spires and Manheira to 

 the left— Worms and its Gothic 

 cathedral opposite — and Mayence 

 lower down. The tower is built 

 on the edge of the declivity. The 

 plains below, with their pine 

 forests and cultivated sands, and 

 the villages of the Berg-strasse, 

 which we had just left, appeared 

 immediately beneath us. We 

 traced the course of the Rhine 

 which now glittered in the sun, 

 and appeared little removed from 

 the base of the mountain — though 

 at four leagues distance — from 

 above Manheim, almost to Bin- 

 gen — a distance of nearly 60 

 miles, where it loses itself in the 

 Rhingan mountains which bound 

 the view on that side. The course 

 of the Neckar and its junction 

 with the Rhine is very visible, as 

 also that of the Maine. A good 

 telescope is kept in the tower, by 

 the help of which, in a clear day, 

 we were told, you might distin- 

 guish the tower of Strasburg Ca- 

 thedral, at a distance of above 

 100 English miles. On the oppo- 

 site side, towards the north, the 

 view reaches the mountains in the 

 neighbourhood of Giessen, in 

 northern Hesse, sixty miles dist- 

 ant. To the east lies the Oden- 

 wald, over the chaotic hills, of 

 which the prospect stretches as 

 far as the vicinity of Wurtzburg 

 — a distance of sixty or seventy 

 miles ; while on the west, across 

 the Rhine, it is bounded by the 

 Mont Tonnerre and the Vosges 

 mountains. 



