THE HOCKHEIM HILLS. 449 any fortified, were occupied by French soldiers. With two German gentlemen and a Dutch officer, I sat off for Frankfort, distant eight stunder or hours, or four German miles, under a scorching sun, which did not seem to have effect upon a large party of monks and priests, and followers bearing the host, who were walking bare headed in procession to a monastery which we had just passed, near which I left the carriage to make a sketch of Mayence, upon a projecting bank of the river Maine, where I bade adieu to the Rhine. Our road lay through an avenue of walnut, apple, and pear trees, loaded with fruit, to which passengers helped themselves whenever inclination disposed them to do so; and part of the Hockheim hills, covered with the renowned vineyards, which produce what in England is called old hock. As many a saint, high in superstitious veneration, must have had at least ten sculls and one hundred toe nails, if no illusion has been practised by those who have exhibited them to the credulous in different eras and various regions, so nothing short of the power of transmuting water into wine, could produce from these vineyards the immense quantity of wine which passes under the title of hock. Certain it is, that the greater quantity of wine honored with that name, is from the grapes of both sides of the lower part of the Rhine, which, in the district where it is produced, very old genuine 3 M 450 A SPLENDID TOBACCO MANUFACTORY. Hockheim wine is sold at the rate of three, and sometimes five, shillings a bottle. At the first stage we stopped at a village where there is a noble building upon an eminence, commanding a beautiful prospect, which I at first took for a palace, but it proved to be a tobacco manufactory, warehouses, and the residence of the proprietor and his family; the front is five hundred feet long, and the whole exterior infinitely more princely than Buckingham-house. After passing this place the road became level, and the country presented corn-fields, pasture, and orchards in great abundance. For many miles round, this country had been often the theatre of hostilities; and though Nature had long since effaced their melancholy impressions from her fields by reviving verdure, yet prostrate cottages and battered convents displayed the march and ravages of the demon War! Happy, thrice happy my own country, where the sound of cannon is never heard but to announce a victory, or to augment the gaiety of some festive occasion! The suburbs of Frankfort are very delightful, and after passing over a draw-bridge, and through a deep gate-way, we entered the city, the streets of which were crowded and full of gaiety and bustle, in consequence of the great autumnal fair which was holding there. All the best inns were brimful, and with great difficulty the Dutch officer and myself procured a miserable double-bedded room, at an inferior inn, filled with petty merchants and their families, whom the spirit of traffic had led to this celebrated mart, and was half choaked up with cases and boxes containing their merchandize. This town swarms with French soldiers, about thirty of whom slept in rooms adjoining to ours, where they deported themselves with great order. My companion had just returned from the Cape, in consequence of its surrender to the British arms. He spoke with liberal rapture of the gallantry of the English troops. In Germany, as in Holland, time is taken by the forelock, and at six o'clock the stiefelputzer, or bootcleaner, knocked at the door, followed by the chambermaid with a composition of frankincense and other gums of a pyramidal shape, and about an inch high, much used in Germany, called a Räucher-kerz for perfuming rooms, which she placed upon our candlestick and left smoking. My Dutch companion annoyed me at this hour, first by begging that I would hear him read one book of Milton's Paradise Lost, a little English edition of which he had in his pocket, which he achieved in an incongruous mêlange of various languages; and secondly, by begging me to lend him my tooth-brush for a few minutes, observing, that he preferred an English tooth-brush to any other, and at the same moment applying it to his teeth with equal alacrity |