gthened it
by towers at convenient distances. From the neighborhood of Newstadt and
Ratisbon on the Danube, it stretched across hills, valleys, rivers, and
morasses, as far as Wimpfen on the Necker, and at length terminated
on the banks of the Rhine, after a winding course of near two hundred
miles. [43] This important barrier, uniting the two mighty streams that
protected the provinces of Europe, seemed to fill up the vacant space
through which the barbarians, and particularly the Alemanni, could
penetrate with the greatest facility into the heart of the empire. But
the experience of the world, from China to Britain, has exposed the
vain attempt of fortifying any extensive tract of country. [44] An active
enemy, who can select and vary his points of attack, must, in the end,
discover some feeble spot, on some unguarded moment. The strength, as
well as the attention, of the defenders is divided; and such are the
blind effects of terror on the firmest troops, that a line broken in a
single place is almost instantly deserted. The fate of the wall which
Probus erected may confirm the general observation. Within a few years
after his death, it was overthrown by the Alemanni. Its scattered ruins,
universally ascribed to the power of the Daemon, now serve only to
excite the wonder of the Swabian peasant.

[Footnote 41: Strabo, l. vii. According to Valleius Paterculus, (ii.
108,) Maroboduus led his Marcomanni into Bohemia; Cluverius (German.
Antiq. iii. 8) proves that it was from Swabia.]

[Footnote 42: These settlers, from the payment of tithes, were
denominated Decunates. Tacit. Germania, c. 29]

[Footnote 43: See notes de l'Abbe de la Bleterie a la Germanie de
Tacite, p. 183. His account of the wall is chiefly borrowed (as he says
himself) from the Alsatia Illustrata of Schoepflin.]

[Footnote 44: See Recherches sur les Chinois et les Egyptiens, tom. ii.
p. 81--102. The anonymous author is well acquainted with the globe in
general, and with Germany in particular: with regard to the latter,
he quotes a work of M. Hanselman; but he seems to confound the wall of
Probus, designed against the Alemanni, with the fortification of the
Mattiaci, constructed in the neighborhood of Frankfort against the
Catti. * Note: De Pauw is well known to have been the author of this
work, as of the Recherches sur les Americains before quoted. The
judgment of M. Remusat on this writer is in a very different, I fear a
juster tone. Quand au lieu