“Rolls the Rhine his sullen course, / . . . / Andernachtʼs grey ruins rise” (MS IA; MS IX; Poems [1891]; Works [1903]); and “Rolls the Rhine his glorious course, / . . . / Andernachtʼs grim ruins rise” (Friendshipʼs Offering . . . for MDCCCXXXV [1834–35]; Poems [1886]; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—In his 1836 guidebook to the Continent, John Murray III begins his account of the Rhine journey by quoting at length Byronʼs apostrophe to the river in Childe Haroldʼs Pilgrimage, canto 3 (stanzas 46–51, 59–60); and he goes on, like Ruskin pairing poem with prose, to quote an effusion of nationalistic pride about the river by the German‐American writer, Francis Lieber (1798–1872), written originally for the 1829–33 Encyclopædia Americana (11:15–17) (Hand‐book for Travellers on the Continent, 213–14). See The Ruskinsʼ Attitudes toward Germany.

“Memorials of the Roman power” (MS IA; MS IX; Poems [1891]; Works [1903]) and “Buttress, battlement, and tower, / Remnants hoar of Roman power” (Friendshipʼs Offering . . . for MDCCCXXXV [1834–35]; Poems [1886]; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—John Murray III explains: “This is one of the oldest cities on the Rhine. . . . It was called by the Romans Antoniacum, and originated in one of Drususʼ camps pitched on the spot. Its massive ramparts, watch‐towers, and vaulted portals, still give it an air of sombre antiquity” (Hand‐book for Travellers on the Continent, 223). Medieval Andernach was, like Cologne, a free imperial city, answerable only to the Holy Roman Emperor, until the empire succumbed to Napoleon following the defeat of the Third Coalition in the Battle of Austerlitz.

“There was the huge cathedral, . . . with . . . the remains of its unfinished, but magnificent tower” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—Construction of Cologne Cathedralʼs south towers had been suspended since the fourteenth century, and was resumed in 1842–80.

“We went on, we past Bonn, and Godesberg, and Drachenfels” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—Successive points south on the Rhine journey below Cologne. Drachenfels is one of the Siebengebirge or Seven Hills, which Ruskinʼs narrator sights from Cologne. Here he singles out Drachenfels, because that peak rises closest to the river, and the Ruskinsʼ path took them over it. According to Mary Richardson, the family viewed the ruined fortresses of Godesburg and Burg Drachenfels on 28 May 1833 (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 21–22). See also “St. Goar” (prose).

“These are now as they were then, looking up to the broad blue heaven, these are in ruins” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—In this trope, which evokes Byron, the intended antecedent of the first these appears to be the permanent “crags”, and that of the second to be “towers”. (The MS VIII draft of this passage shows Ruskinʼs indecision about pronoun and verb case, but his intended pronoun antecedents do not appear to be in question.) The Romans did not found Andernachʼs landmark round tower, which dates from the fifteenth century, although the great antiquity of the settlementʼs monuments appears to have been a common belief. In his guidebook, John Murray III, for example, both comments on and perpetuates the confusion: the “Gate leading out of the town to Koblenz is of great antiquity: though not a Roman work, as is commonly reported. Outside of it, on the left of the road, are the ruins of the Palace of the Frankish kings [a castle belonging to the Electorate of Cologne, begun circa 1200], and a round tower [not the fifteenth‐century tower], which has some right to be considered of Roman origin” (Hand‐book for Travellers on the Continent, 224). John and his cousin Mary sketched the round tower on 29 May 1833, after sleeping the previous night at Andernach (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 22).