urned
out to be the forsaken bride herself; but of these legends, one so like
the other, this part of the Rhine is full. The next winding of the
stream shows us Oberspay, with a romantic tavern, carved pillars
supporting a windowed porch, and a sprawling kind of roof; the "King's
Stool," a modern restoration of the mediaeval pulpit or platform of stone
supported by pillars, with eighteen steps and a circumference of forty
ells, where the Rhenish prince-archbishops met to choose the temporal
sovereigns who were in part their vassals; Oberlahnstein, a town famous
for its possession in perfect repair of the ancient fortifications;
Lahneck, now a private residence, once the property of the Templars;
Stolzenfels, of which we have anticipated a glimpse; the island of
Oberwoerth, with an old convent of St. Magdalen, and in the distance
frowning Ehrenbreitstein, the fortress of Coblenz.

Turning up the course of the Lahn, we get to the neighborhood of a small
but famous bathing-place, Ems, the cradle of the Franco-Prussian war,
where the house in which Emperor William lodged is now shown as an
historic memento, and effaces the interest due to the old gambling
Kursaal. The English chapel, a beautiful small stone building already
ivied; the old synagogue, a plain whitewashed building, where the
service is conducted in an orthodox but not very attractive manner; the
pretty fern- and heather-covered woods, through which you ride on
donkeyback; the gardens, where a Parisian-dressed crowd airs itself late
in the afternoon; all the well-known adjuncts of a spa, and the most
delightful baths I ever saw, where in clean little chambers you step
down three steps into an ample marble basin sunk in the floor, and may
almost fancy yourself a luxurious Roman of the days of Diocletian,--such
is Ems. But its environs are full of wider interest. There is Castle
Schaumburg, where for twenty years the archduke Stephen of Austria,
palatine of Hungary, led a useful and retired life, making his house as
orderly and seemly as an English manor-house, and more interesting to
the strangers, whose visits he encouraged, by the collections of
minerals, plants, shells and stuffed animals and the miniature
zoological and botanical gardens which he kept up and often added to. I
spent a day there thirteen years ago, ten years before he died, lamented
by his poor neighbors, to whom he was a visible providence. Another
house of great interest is the old Stein man