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-office was first established. In 1400 the famous cannon,
fourteen feet in length, was cast at Cologne; and in 1472 Vindelin de
Spire printed his Bible. A new world was making its appearance; and,
strange to say, it was upon the banks of the Rhine that those two
mysterious tools with which God unceasingly works out the civilization
of man--the catapult and the book--war and thought--took a new form.

The Rhine, in the destinies of Europe, has a sort of providential
signification. It is the great moat which divides the north from the
south. The Rhine for thirty ages, has seen the forms and reflected the
shadows of almost all the warriors who tilled the old continent with
that share which they call sword. Caesar crossed the Rhine in going from
the south; Attila crossed it when descending from the north. It was here
that Clovis gained the battle of Tolbiac; and that Charlemagne and
Napoleon figured. Frederick Barbarossa, Rudolph of Hapsburg, and
Frederick the First, were great, victorious, and formidable when here.
For the thinker, who is conversant with history, two great eagles are
perpetually hovering ever the Rhine--that of the Roman legions, and the
eagle of the French regiments.