wing, the Rhone precipitated itself into the gulf while the frail
bridge upon which I was standing was shaking beneath my feet. Ah well!
since that time, the Rhone brings to my mind the idea of a tiger--the
Rhine, that of a lion.

The evening on which I saw the Rhine for the first time, I was imprest
with the same idea. For several minutes I stood contemplating this proud
and noble river--violent, but not furious; wild, but still majestic. It
was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was washing with its
yellow mane, or, as Boileau says, its "slimy beard," the bridge of
boats. Its two banks were lost in the twilight, and tho its roaring was
loud, still there was tranquillity.

The Rhine is unique: it combines the qualities of every river. Like the
Rhone, it is rapid; broad like the Loire; encased, like the Meuse;
serpentine, like the Seine; limpid and green, like the Somme;
historical, like the Tiber; royal like the Danube; mysterious, like the
Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and like a river of
Asia, abounding with fantoms and fables.

From historical records we find that the first people who took
possession of the banks of the Rhine were the half-savage Celts, who
were afterward named Gauls by the Romans. When Rome was in its glory,
Caesar crossed the Rhine, and shortly afterward the whole of the river
was under the jurisdiction of his empire. When the Twenty-second Legion
returned from the siege of Jerusalem, Titus sent it to the banks of the
Rhine, where it continued the work of Martius Agrippa. After Trajan and
Hadrian came Julian, who erected a fortress upon the confluence of the
Rhine and the Moselle; then Valentinian, who built a number of castles.
Thus, in a few centuries, Roman colonies, like an immense chain, linked
the whole of the Rhine.

At length the time arrived when Rome was to assume another aspect. The
incursions of the northern hordes were eventually too frequent and too
powerful for Rome; so, about the sixth century, the banks of the Rhine
were strewed with Roman ruins, as at present with feudal ones.

Charlemagne cleared away the rubbish, built fortresses, and opposed the
German hordes; but, notwithstanding all that he did, notwithstanding his
desire to do more, Rome died, and the physiognomy of the Rhine was
changed.

The sixteenth century approached; in the fourteenth the Rhine witnessed
the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at Strassburg, a
printing-offi