The streets of Cologne, formerly dirty and narrow, and the houses, old and tumbling down, have given way to wide spaces, handsome edifices, and attractive shops. The railway, which we have lent to the Continent, will shortly unite Brussels, Liege, and Cologne, and the three cities will be thereby rapidly augmented in wealth, numbers, and civilization.
The steam-boats on the Rhine are in general of a good description. The arrangements are convenient, considering that at times there are two hundred passengers, and that among foreigners the filthy habit of smoking, with all its filthy consequences, is universal; but, below decks, the party, especially if they take the _pavillion_ to themselves, may escape this abomination. The Rhine has been too often described to require a record here; but the rapturous nonsense which the Germans pour forth whenever they write about the national river, offends truth as much as it does taste. The larger extent of this famous stream is absolutely as dull as a Dutch pond. The whole run from the sea to Cologne is flat and fenny. As it approaches the hill country it becomes picturesque, and its wanderings among the fine declivities of the Rheingate exhibit beautiful scenery. The hills, occasionally topped with ruins, all of which have some original (or invented) legend of love or murder attached to them, indulge the romance of which there is a fragment or a fibre in every bosom; and the general aspect of the country, as the steam-boat breasts the upward stream, is various and luxuriant. But the German architecture is fatal to beauty. Nothing can be more _barbarian_ (with one or two exceptions) than the whole range of buildings, public and private, along the Rhine; gloomy, huge, and heavy--whether palace, convent, or chateau, they have all a prison-look; and if some English philanthropist, in pity to the Teutonic taste, would erect one or two "English villas" on the banks of the Rhine, to give the Germans some idea of what architecture ought to be, he would render them a national service, scarcely inferior to the introduction of carpets and coal-fires.
Johannisberg naturally attracts the eye of the English traveller, whose cellar has contributed so largely to its cultivation. This mountain-vineyard had been given by Napoleon to Kellerman; but Napoleon's gifts were as precarious as himself, and the Johannisberg fell into hands that better deserved it. At the peace of 1814 it was presented by the Emperor Francis to the great statesman who had taught his sovereign to set his foot on the neck of the conqueror of Vienna. The mountain is terraced, clothed with vineyards, and forms a very gay object to those who look up to it from the river. The view from the summit of the hill is commanding and beautiful, but its grape is _unique_. The chief portion of the produce goes amongst the principalities and powers of the Continent; yet as the Englishman must have his share of all the good things of the earth, the Johannisberg wine finds its way across the Channel, and John Bull satisfies himself that he shares the luxury of Emperors.