84 MORE POT-POURRI 



of the Mediterranean, is now not easy to eradicate. The 

 modern cure is stern, rough, and unattractive, and it is 

 difficult at first to believe it to be the best for the hard, 

 hacking cough and hectic flush of the patients. 



The homeward journey from Germany was much 

 less pleasant than my journey out had been, in conse- 

 quence of the fatal date having come which decides 

 that German railway carriages shall be heated — or, as 

 we English think, over -heated. This causes considerable 

 suffering to those who stupidly, like myself, forget that 

 an almost summer dress is required, with plenty of 

 wraps to prevent any chill on leaving the carriage. We 

 passed Coblentz at early winter sunset -time, and I never 

 saw anything more beautiful than all the tones of blues 

 and pearly grays under a sky spread with wave upon 

 wave of bright pink clouds. Not Turner himself could 

 have come near to the delicate yet brilliant effect. Skies 

 are fleeting enough, and the waves of rosy clouds quickly 

 disappear, but the despairing swiftness of an express 

 train is the quickest of all ; and in a moment Coblentz, 

 with its towers, its fortress, and its beautiful sunlit 

 sky, was out of sight. 



I do think that if we would enjoy the Rhine in its 

 beauty we must visit it in winter, when we see it as 

 Turner saw it. What a pleasure it is now to go to those 

 rooms on the ground floor of the National Gallery where 

 Turner's sketches are ! I went there again the other 

 day to see the Rhine of one's youth. What a king and 

 creator of Impressionist sketching was Turner in his 

 later manner ! He lifted the hilltops till they grew pink 

 in the setting sun, and he trailed the long reflections to 

 fathomless depths in the broad river. And was not the 

 fortress defiantly impregnable in those days, and so 

 rendered by him in those two wonderful pink and yellow 

 and blue Ehrenbreitstein sketches ? How quickly and 



