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most wonderful perhaps in the world. It is a great satisfaction to have seen these things and one is enabled to speak of them with more assurance than if one had simply read about them. With me I seemed to be forced to see what I have in order to answer many questions I have continually put to me about matters of Art &c.  Now I know how the objects look and I am not obliged to take anyone elses word for it.

My last posted I believe was from Switzerland and I now enclose the Alpine flowers I promised from the regions of perpetual snow. I find that I have left all the fine weather the other side of the Alps for since I crossed to this side I have seen more or less rain and damp weather while on the other side in Italy the 

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weather was delightful and dry. Italy is the most charming country I have seen although Switzerland is very fine and France also. From Lucerne where I wrote you I went to Munich the Capital of Bavaria and from there to Frankfort on the Rhine and sailed down the Rhine to Cologne and from there to Antwerp and to Brusells [[Brussels]] the Belgian capital and from there to Paris and from there home. Germany is the most uninteresting country I have seen flat and commonplace. The Rhine however was very beautiful and is all there is of Germany for me. The castles upon the wine-clad hills are all they are pictured to be in the books that have been written about them. The river itself is a swift stream of a yellowish muddy color. The water of our rivers in America is much finer. Cologn [[Cologne]] was interesting on