We passed the Rhine on a bridge of boats, and followed a veteran Austrian soldier, who was our valet de place, to the fortified summit. It has been from the time of the Romans a celebrated military post. Byron saw and described it after it had been battered and dismantled by the French, and not as it now is, capable of resisting, on the word of Wellington, "all but golden bullets." It only yielded to famine when the French besieged it. The Prussians have made it stronger than ever, at an expense of five millions of dollars! So the men of toil pay for the engines that keep them mere men of toil.
The works struck me as appallingly strong, but, as I could not comprehend their details, after our guide had told me there were magazines capable of containing a ten years' supply of food for 8000 men, that there were cisterns that would hold a three years' supply of water, and, when that was exhausted, the Rhine itself could be drawn on by a well which is pierced through the solid rock; when I had got all available information, I turned to what much better suited me, the lovely view. Oh, for my magic mirror to show you how lovely looked, in this morning light, the scene below us; the blue Moselle coming down through its vine-covered bills, towns, ruins, villas, cottages, and the Rhine itself, "the charm of this enchanted ground!" I think I like it the better that it is frozen three months in the year. This seems to make it a blood-relation of our rivers. You cannot imagine how much the peasant girls in their
