g trade and 90,000 inhabitants.
(Coblentz has 26,000, Mayence 36,000, Mannheim 23,000 and Strasburg
60,000.)

There are some bold hights dignified as mountains below Coblentz, but
the finest of the scenery is above. The hills disappear some miles above
this city, and henceforward to the sea all is flat and tame as a marsh.
On the whole, the Rhine has hardly fulfilled my expectations. Had I
visited it on my way _to_ the Alps, instead of just _from_ them, it
would doubtless have impressed me more profoundly; but I am sure the St.
Mary's of Lake Superior is better worth seeing; so I think, is the
Delaware section of the Erie Railroad. It is possible the weather may
have unfitted me for appreciating this famous river, for a more cloudy,
misty, chilly, rainy, execrable, English day I have seldom encountered.
To travelers blessed with golden sunshine, the Rhine may wear a grander,
nobler aspect, and to such I leave it.

THE GERMANS.

I have been but two days wholly among the Germans, but I had previously
met many of them in England, Italy and Switzerland. They are seen to
the best advantage at home. Their uniform courtesy (save in the
detestable habit of smoking where others cannot help being annoyed by
their fumes), indicates not merely good nature but genuine kindness of
heart. I have not seen a German quarreling or scolding anywhere in
Europe. The deference of members of the same family to each other's
happiness in cars, hotels and steamboats has that quiet, unconscious
manner which distinguishes a habit from a holiday ornament. The entire
absence of pretense, of stateliness, of a desire to be thought a
personage and not a mere person, is scarcely more universal in
Switzerland than here. But in fact I have found Aristocracy a chronic
disease nowhere but in Great Britain. In France, there is absolutely
nothing of it; there are monarchists in that country--monarchists from
tradition, from conviction, from policy, or from class interest--but of
Aristocracy scarcely a trace is left. Your Paris boot-black will make
you a low bow in acknowledgment of a franc, but he has not a trace of
the abjectness of a London waiter, and would evidently decline the honor
of being kicked by a Duke. In Italy, there is little manhood but no
class-worship; her millions of beggars will not abase themselves one
whit lower before a Prince than before anyone else from whom they hope
to worm a copper. The Swiss are freemen, and wear the fact uncon