diocesan, and to transform them evermore into faithful vassals of the Church. There is an advantage in this approach to the Castle of Elz, that it is revealed suddenly like a stage-vision to one passing through the curtain of trees that screen it from the road. There it stands, on a rock, in the midst of a lovely glen, as if it were the completion of the rock itself—a most fairy-like structure, looking aërial and unsubstantial from its marvellous perpendicular elegance and its cluster of pinnacled turrrets. It so happens that most of our ideas connected with castles are associated with battlements and square topped towers, which is partly the result of castles in ruin having lost their pointed roofs, so that some might be inclined to think Ehrenburg more beautiful. But, associations apart, or, rather, it being conceded that ruinousness does not confer an exclusive title to the picturesque, it is impossible to conceive the lines of any building more beautiful than those of Schloss-Elz. It is not a ruin, but an ancient castle, not restored with questionable taste like Stolzenfels on the Rhine, but preserved by some wonderful good luck, or traditional good taste, inside and outside exactly as it was. The blood of its owners is shown by this instinct of beauty to have run marvellously pure from generation to generation.
Schloss-Elz.
By a bridge over the ravine, and a low gateway, an entrance is effected into the court of the castle, which is as grand as the exterior, and in many respects closely resembles that of the far-famed Wartburg in Thuringia. The interior is as intricate as a rabbit-warren may be supposed to be, containing rooms of all shapes and sizes, from the Rittersaals and reception-rooms to little cells in the turrets. The old black straight-backed furniture is still to be seen in its old places; amongst other things a four-post bed, such as one sees in Pre-Raphaelite pictures, grand and commodious rather than comfortable, and ascended by a ladder.
There are pictures of ancestry on the walls, more grim than artistic, from the times of rude chain-armour, through that period when plate-mail was crowned by a huge judge’s wig, to that when pigtails reigned supreme. The ancestresses are more remarkable for bloom and good case than for beauty, but doubtless this was the idea of a flattering likeness which suggested itself to the artists of those early times.
In the court there are heaps of round stone balls, which were either shot from the earliest cannon, or used from catapults in the preceding age. The vestibule is garnished with antlers, and the mouldering remains of birds of prey are gibbeted on a wall in the court. From the castle we drop down on the Brook Elz, one of those clear bubbling and babbling Welsh-like streams, so rare in Germany generally, though common about the Moselle, abounding in pebbly shallows and clear pools, called Diana-baths by painters, because, from their sylvan seclusion, they might tempt the goddess to bathe in them without fear of being overlooked by Actæon.
The gorge here is so very narrow, and the rocky hills so interlace their steep fingers, that the path to Moselkern crosses the brook on treacherous stepping-stones some thirteen or fourteen times before it reaches the bank of the Moselle. This path has awakened the maledictions of the compiler of Murray’s Handbook, who probably performed the distance in rather tight patent-leather boots. But, this inconvenience apart, the walk of three or four miles is one to be remembered for its beauty.
The woods are lovely, and at this season the wild flora most gorgeous. At intervals the shape of the hills affords room for vine-terraces, in one particular basin the vineyards forming a complete amphitheatre: yet they are generally so steep that