, &c., a great deal. Indeed I
seem to myself never yet to have quite recovered. The Rhine
which I honestly ascended from Rotterdam to Frankfort was, as I
now find, my chief Conquest the beautifulest river in the Earth,
I do believe; and my first idea of a World-river. It is many
fathoms deep, broader twice over than the Thames here at high
water; and rolls along, mirror-smooth (except that, in looking
close, you will find ten thousand little eddies in it),
voiceless, swift, with trim banks, through the heart of Europe,
and of the Middle Ages wedded to the Present Age: such an image
of calm _power_ (to say nothing of its other properties) I find I
had never seen before. The old Cities too are a little beautiful
to me, in spite of my state of nerves; honest, kindly people
too, but sadly short of our and your _despatch-of-business_
talents,--a really painful defect in the long run. I was on two
of Fritz's Battle-fields, moreover: Lobositz in Bohemia, and
Kunersdorf by Frankfurt on the Oder; but did not, especially in
the latter case, make much of that.
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