There is not, there cannot be a spot on this earth where such an extensive, magnificent, varied, and beautiful view (one hundred miles in radius) can be obtained, as from the summit of Gibraltar—a spot unique, between two mighty oceans, and two great continents—having Africa and Europe, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as it were, at your feet!
Is it nothing to stand on one of the “PILLARS OF HERCULES” and contemplate the other within a few miles of you? Descending into St. Michael’s cave, near the apex of the rock, we find ourselves surrounded by thousands and tens of thousands of stalactitic figures, assuming the grotesque forms of everything which the most fertile imagination could conceive—dispersed through caverns where human step has never been able to trace the depth or extent—and supposed to form subterranean, or rather submarine, communications with the opposite fortress of Ceuta in Africa! Wander through the town, and you will observe the costume, the language, the manners, the habits, the productions, the features—almost the passions and thoughts of every people on earth—from the Calmuc Tartar of the East, to the Red Indian of the West—from the Laplander of the North, to the Hottentot of the South. To compare Gibraltar with Ehrenbreitstein, then, is to compare “Hyperion with a Satyr”—or Vesuvius with the funnel of a steam-boat. I leave the prodigies of valour performed by Englishmen, in taking and retaining the key of the Mediterranean, out of the question, believing that Prussian arms would, under similar circumstances, have achieved equal exploits. Of all nations, _we_ have the least reason to doubt the prowess of Prussia. She fought at our side, when the destinies of Europe vibrated in the balance!
Between Cologne and Coblentz it is mere child’s play for the tourist. The stream is wide, and the attractive objects are so reasonably distant from one another, that the traveller has time to consult his map, peruse Schreiber, and even con over some of the shorter legends, between castle and castle. But it is another affair above Coblentz. The stream becomes more confined and tortuous—the banks more abrupt and contiguous—the ruins, towns, and villages more numerous—the embarkations and debarkations more frequent, with all their consequences of hurly-burly among the passengers, topsyturvy of luggage, scrambling after books, charts, and sacs-de-nuits, bowings, kissings, and embracings, or, as Hood would say, “omni-bussings,” among goers and comers, together with the clattering of plates and dishes, and the chattering of all known and unknown tongues—these, and many other interruptions, sadly discompose the contemplations of the philosopher, and the musing meditations of the tourists in pursuit of the picturesque, or the Syntaxes in search of the sublime.