better of my
gallantry; the discourse flagged, and then dropped, for I found myself
in the midst of the noblest river scenery I had ever beheld, certainly
far surpassing that of the Rhine, and Upper Danube. To the gloom and
grandeur of natural portals, formed of lofty precipitous rocks,
succeeds the open smiling valley, the verdant meadows, and the distant
wooded hills, with all the soft and varied hues of autumn. Here we
appear to be driving up the avenues of an English park; yonder, where
the mountain sinks sheer into the river, the road must find its way
along an open gallery, with a roof weighing millions of tons,
projecting from the mountain above.

After sunset we arrived at Dreucova, and next morning went on board
the steamer, which conveyed me up the Danube to Semlin. The lower town
of Semlin is, from the exhalations on the banks of the river,
frightfully insalubrious, but the cemetery enjoys a high and airy
situation. The people in the town die off with great rapidity; but, to
compensate for this, the dead are said to be in a highly satisfactory
state of preservation. The inns here, once so bad, have greatly
improved; but mine host, zum Golden Lowen, on my recent visits, always
managed to give a very good dinner, including two sorts of savoury
game. I recollect on a former visit, going to another inn, and found
in the dining-room an individual, whose ruddy nose, and good-humoured
nerveless smile, denoted a fondness for the juice of the grape, and
seitel after seitel disappeared with rapidity. By-the-bye, old father
Danube is as well entitled to be represented with a perriwig of grapes
as his brother the Rhine. Hungary in general, has a right merry
bacchanalian climate. Schiller or Symian wine is in the same parallel
of latitude as Claret, Oedenburger as Burgundy, and a line run
westwards from Tokay would almost touch the vineyards of Champagne.
Csaplovich remarks in his quaint way, that the four principal wines of
Hungary are cultivated by the four principal nations in it. That is to
say, the Slavonians cultivate the Schiller, Germans the Oedenburger
and Ruster, Magyars and Wallachians the Menesher. Good Schiller is the
best Syrmian wine. But I must return from this digression to the guest
of the Adler. On hearing that I was an Englishman, he expressed a wish
to hear as much of England as possible, and appeared thunderstruck,
when I told him that London had nearly two millions of inhabitants,
being four hundr