There is something here that brings part of
Wales to the remembrance of the few who have seen those dreary
slate-villages--dark, damp, but naked, for moss and weeds do not thrive
on this dampness as they do on the decay of other stones--which dot the
moorland of Wales. The fences are slate; the gateposts are slate; the
stiles are of slate; the very "sticks" up which the climbing roses are
trained are of slate; churches, schools, houses, stables are all of one
dark iron-blue shade; floors and roofs are alike; hearth-stones and
threshold-stones, and grave-stones all of the same material. It is
curious and depressing. This volcanic region of the Rhine, however, has
so many unexpected beauties strewn pell-mell in the midst of stony
barrenness that it also bears some likeness to Naples and Ischia, where
beauty of color, and even of vegetation, alternate surprisingly with
tracts of parched and rocky wilderness pierced with holes whence gas and
steam are always rising.
[Footnote A: From "Down the Rhine."]
BINGEN AND MAYENCE[A]
BY VICTOR HUGO
Bingen is an exceedingly pretty place, having at once the somber look of
an ancient town, and the cheering aspect of a new one. From the days of
Consul Drusus to those of the Emperor Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to
Archbishop Willigis, from Willigis to the merchant Montemagno, and from
Montemagno to the visionary Holzhausen, the town gradually increased in
the number of its houses, as the dew gathers drop by drop in the cup of
a lily.
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