By WILHELM HEINRICH RIEHL

TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING

In topographical books of the pigtail age one may read that cities like
Berlin, Leipzig, Augsburg, Darmstadt, Mannheim are situated in "an
exceedingly pretty and agreeable region," whereas the most picturesque
parts of the Black Forest, the Harz Mountains, and the Thuringian Forest
are described as being "exceedingly melancholy," desolate and
monotonous, or, at least, "not especially pleasing." That was by no
means merely the private opinion of the individual topographer but the
opinion of the age; for each century has not only its own peculiar
theory of life--it has also its own peculiar theory oL natural scenery.

Numberless country-seats were built a hundred years ago in barren
tedious plains, and the builders thought that by so doing they had
chosen the most beautiful situation imaginable; whereas the old baronial
castles, in the most charming mountainous regions, were allowed to decay
and go to ruin because they were not situated "delectably enough." The
Bavarian Electors at that time not only laid out splendid summer
residences and state gardens in the dreary woody and marshy plains of
Nymphenburg and Schleissheim, but Max Emanuel even went so far as to
have another artificial desert expressly constructed in the middle of
one of these gardens--whose walls are already surrounded by the natural
desert. Karl Theodor of the Palatinate built his Schwetzinger garden two
hours away from the magnificent dales of Heidelberg, in the midst of the
most monotonous kind of plain. Only let a region be fairly level and
treeless, and immediately men were bold enough to imagine that it would
be possible to conjure up there, the most delightful of landscapes.

Even fifty years ago the upper Rhine valley--which is by no means
without charm but is nevertheless monotonous in its flatness--was
considered a real paradise of natural scenic beauty, while the middle
course of the river from Ruedesheim to Coblenz, with its rich splendor
of gorges, rocks, castles and forests, was appreciated rather by way of
contrast. In the upper Rheingau at that time they strung out one villa
after another; these are now for the most part deserted, while on the
formerly neglected tracts of country confined between the mountains a
new summer castle is being stuck again on the summit of every rock, or
at least the ruins already, hanging there are being made habitable once
more. Our fathers, who th