five dollars a bottle. I observed that the soil was mixed with stone
much decomposed, of a shelly appearance, and whitish colour. The land
would be pronounced unsuited to ordinary agriculture, I suspect, by a
majority of farmers.

I bought a bottle of wine from a servant who professed to have
permission to sell it. The price was two florins and a half, or a
dollar, and the quality greatly inferior to the bottle that, for the
same money, issued from the cellar of the host at Rudesheim. It is
probable the whole thing was a deception, though the inferior wines of
Johannisberg are no better than a vast deal of the other common wine of
the neighbourhood.

From Johannisberg we descended to the plain and took the road to
Biberich. This is a small town on the banks of the Rhine, and is the
residence of the Duke. Nassau figures in the tables of the Germanic
confederation as the fourteenth state, having three hundred and
thirty-eight thousand inhabitants, and furnishing three thousand troops
as its contingent. The population is probably a little greater. The
reigning family is of the ancient line of Nassau, from a junior branch
of which I believe the King of Holland is derived; the Duchess is a
princess of Wurtemberg, and a sister of the Grand-duchess Helena, of
whom I have already spoken so often. This little state is one of the
fabricated sovereignties of 1814, being composed of divers fragments,
besides the ancient possessions of the family. In short, it would seem
to be intended for the government and better management of a few capital
vineyards.

Nassau has been much agitated of late with liberal opinions, though the
government is already what it is the fashion to term representative, on
this side of the Atlantic. It is the old theory, that small states can
better support a popular form of government than a large state. This is
a theory in which I have no faith, and one, in my opinion, that has been
fabricated to suit the accidental situation of Europe. The danger of
popular governments are popular excesses, such as those truculent errors
that men fall into by a misconception of truth, misstatements, ignorance
of their interests, and the sort of village-like gossip which causes
every man to think he is a judge of character, when he is not even a
judge of facts. The abuses of absolutism are straightforward, dogged
tyranny, in which the rights of the mass are sacrificed to the interests
and policy of a prince and his favou