In the upper Rheingau at that time they strung out one villa
after another; these are now for the most part deserted, while on the
formerly neglected tracts of country confined between the mountains a
new summer castle is being stuck again on the summit of every rock, or
at least the ruins already, hanging there are being made habitable once
more. Our fathers, who thought the upper Rheingau the most beautiful
corner of Germany, decorated their rooms with engravings so much in
vogue at that time, similar to Claude Lorraine's broad, open landscapes
of far reaching perspective filled with peace and charm. From this
classical ideal of landscape we have come back again to the romantic,
and the cupolas of the high mountains have supplanted the leafy temples
of Claude's sacred groves with their background of the infinite sea
sparkling in the sunshine.
In the seventeenth century the watering-places situated in the narrow,
steep mountain valleys--many of which have now fallen into decay--were
considered, for the greater part, the most frequented and most
beautiful; in the eighteenth century the preference was given to those
lying more toward the plain; while in our day the watering-places in the
steepest mountains, as in the Black Forest, the Bohemian Mountains, and
the Alps, are being sought out on account of their situation. The court
physician of Hesse-Cassel, Weleker, in his description of Schlangenbad,
which appeared in 1721, describes the place as situated in a dreary,
desolate, forbidding region, in which nothing grows but "leaves and
grass," but he adds that by ingeniously planting straight rows and
circles of trees carefully pruned with the shears they had at least
imparted to the spot some sort of artistic _raison d'etre_.
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