for six centuries in raising and adorning these walls; the mailed hands of Time and War have defaced and overthrown them in less than two. Next to the Alhambra of Granada, the Castle of Heidelberg is the most magnificent ruin of the Middle Ages.
In the valley below flows the rushing stream of the Neckar. Close from its margin, on the opposite side, rises the Mountain of All-Saints, crowned with the ruins of a convent; and up the valley stretches the mountain-curtain of the Odenwald. So close and many are the hills which eastward shut the valley in, that the river seems a lake. But westward it opens upon the broad plain of the Rhine, like the mouth of a trumpet; and like the blast of a trumpet is at times the wintry wind through this narrow mountain-pass. The blue Alsatian hills rise beyond; and on a platform or strip of level land, between the Neckar and the mountains, right under the castle, stands the town of Heidelberg; as the old song says, "a pleasant town, when it has done raining."
Something of this did Paul Flemming behold, when he rose the next morning and looked from his window. It was a warm, vapory morning, and a struggle was going
