Excuse this comparison; for, tho flowery, it has truth to back
it, and faithfully illustrates the mode in which a town near the conflux
of two rivers is constructed. The irregularity of the houses--in fact
everything, tends to make Bingen a kind of antithesis, both with respect
to buildings and the scenery which surrounds them. The town, bounded on
the left by Nahe, and by the Rhine on the right, develops itself in a
triangular form near a Gothic church, which is backed by a Roman
citadel. In this citadel, which bears the date of the first century, and
has long been the haunt of bandits, there is a garden; and in the
church, which is of the fifteenth century, is the tomb of Barthelemy de
Holzhausen. In the direction of Mayence, the famed Paradise Plain opens
upon the Ringau; and in that of Coblentz, the dark mountains of Leyen
seem to frown on the surrounding scenery. Here Nature smiles like a
lovely woman extended unadorned on the greensward; there, like a
slumbering giant, she excites a feeling of awe.
The more we examine this beautiful place, the more the antithesis is
multiplied under our looks and thoughts. It assumes a thousand different
forms; and as the Nahe flows through the arches of the stone bridge,
upon the parapet of which the lion of Hesse turns its back to the eagle
of Prussia, the green arm of the Rhine seizes suddenly the fair and
indolent stream, and plunges it into the Bingerloch.
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