m it was subject....

There is the old "German house" by the bank of the Mosel, a building
little altered outwardly since the fourteenth century, now used as a
food-magazine for the troops. The church of St. Castor commemorates a
holy hermit who lived and preached to the heathen in the eighth century,
and also covers the grave and monument of the founder of the "Mouse" at
Wellmich, the warlike Kuno of Falkenstein, Archbishop of Treves. The
Exchange, once a court of justice, has changed less startlingly, and its
proportions are much the same as of old; and besides these there are
other buildings worth noticing, tho not so old, and rather distinguished
by the men who lived and died there, or were born there, such as
Metternich, than by architectural beauties. Such houses there are in
every old city. They do not invite you to go in and admire them; every
tourist you meet does not ask you how you liked them or whether you saw
them. They are homes, and sealed to you as such, but they are the shell
of the real life of the country; and they have somehow a charm and a
fascination that no public building or show-place can have. Goethe, who
turned his life-experiences into poetry, has told us something of one
such house not far from Coblenz, in the village of Ehrenbreitstein,
beneath the fortress, and which in familiar Coblenz parlance goes by the
name of "The Valley"--the house of Sophie de Laroche. The village is
also Clement Brentano's birthplace.

The oldest of German cities, Treves (or in German Trier), is not too far
to visit on our way up the Mosel Valley, whose Celtic inhabitants of old
gave the Roman legions so much trouble. But Rome ended by conquering,
by means of her civilization as well as by her arms, and Augusta
Trevirorum, tho claiming a far higher antiquity than Rome herself,
and still bearing an inscription to that effect on the old
council-house--now called the Red House and used as a hotel--became, as
Ausonius condescendingly remarked, a second Rome, adorned with baths,
gardens, temples, theaters and all that went to make up an imperial
capital. As in Venice everything precious seems to have come from
Constantinople, so in Trier most things worthy of note date from the
days of the Romans; tho, to tell the truth, few of the actual buildings
do, no matter how classic is their look. The style of the Empire
outlived its sway, and doubtless symbolized to the inhabitants their
traditions of a higher standard of civ