Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/709

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Dec. 12, 1863.]
ONCE A WEEK.
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say that his hospitality is not quite gratuitous. He owns the right of fishing for some five miles up the Lohr brook. Lohr is otherwise a pleasant place, with a pleasant garden laid out between the old walls and the Main. Its air is exhilarating and “sweet with the breath of kine.” There are pleasant walks about it on the slopes of the wooded hills, where great droves of associated oxen, goats, and half-wild swine are perpetually passing to and fro, and carts loading with wood come creaking and jerking down the steep ways, ploughing deep into the dust with their rude wheel-breaks formed of elastic branches.

Castle of Lohr.

Lohr is not so rich in antiquities as most of the towns on the Main, probably owing to some great fire which caused it to be rebuilt. Its castle is the chief object worthy of notice. We started from it on a blazing day, in the middle of July, to walk down the course of the Main. It is not generally advisable to choose the dog-days for a walk along the banks of a river which runs in a gorge, and it is quite a different thing from gliding down the current in boat or steamer. All the air that is stirring seems on the stream itself. The roads on the banks are windless, and in the noon-hours there is no escape from the direct and reflected heat, though, in the morning and evening, by judiciously crossing and recrossing, the shady side may be taken advantage of. The first place of interest that we come to is Neustadt, on the right bank. Here we find a religious house in course of restoration, built in the Byzantine style. When Germany was in a half-converted state, certain Scottish missionaries had planted a colony of ascetics in the Spessart, called Einsiedel. Charlemagne, pitying their forlorn condition, gave up to them a grange belonging to him on the Main. This was transformed into a Benedictine cloister, and the village that formed itself under its protection was called Neustadt. Its first abbot was Megingaud, who afterwards was consecrated to the Bishopric of Würzburg.

In the Peasant War and the Thirty Years’ War it fared no better than most of the convents and castles in the neighbourhood, and was finally secularised in 1803. Under the auspices, however, of the noble house of Löwenstein-Rosenberg, its restoration was begun in 1855, just in time to save the church from falling. Built into the orchard wall is to be seen a slab of stone with remarkable carvings on it, representing Charle-