"Some months ago I
went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like a dream of the
Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in something more
than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and repaired
by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were
magic to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend.
There were Ehren-breitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I
knew only in history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly.
There seemed to come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and
valleys a hushed music as of Crusaders departing for the Holy Land.
I floated along under the spell of enchantment, as if I had been
transported to an heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere of
chivalry.
Soon after, I went
to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked my way up the
river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding up,
counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo,
beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I
had looked up the Moselle now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri,
and heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona's Cliff,-still
thinking more of the future than of the past or present,-I saw that
this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the foundations
of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to
be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age
itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the
simplest and obscurest of men".
