The last rays of the setting sun light the lamps of night, and it seems as if each star tries to outshine every other one. The moon, with these brightly-beaming stars as her attendants, comes forth as “Empress of the Night.” Standing on deck and looking out over the scene, I find that moon and stars are pouring a perfect flood of glory over tower, and castle, and crag, and cliff, and wooded hill. By this time we are so completely intoxicated with pleasure that we think it best not to indulge any longer. So, as the clerk of the boat calls out, “Coblentz,” we step ashore, and one hour later we are dreaming about what we had seen during the day. Next morning, as the sun first peeps over the eastern hills, he finds the pedestrians on their way to Ems, a beautiful little city nestling among the wooded hills of Germany. The walk proves a delightful exercise; and before the dew is off the grass, we are seated in Ems on the bank of the river which flows through the city. This was a favorite resort of the late Emperor William during the summer. On the way to Ems, we have the pleasure of witnessing a sham battle between several thousand German soldiers. No one is killed. One officer is badly hurt by his horse falling on him. Before eleven o’clock, we are again gliding up the river. We seem now to have entered an enchanted region. No description we have ever read of the Rhine could equal the sight itself. Here “The noble river foams and flows, The charm of the enchanted ground, And all its thousand turns disclose Some fresh beauty varying round.” The channel now becomes narrow, the stream swift and deep. As we pass castle after castle and behold the wrecks and ruins, we feel that we are “passing back down the stream of time.” Here on the left is the Loreli, a great rock rising up more than four hundred feet. According to the legend, a nymph had her dwelling in a cavern of this rock, and, with the music which issued forth from her golden harp, she enticed sailors and fishermen to their destruction in the terrific whirlpools and rapids at the foot of the precipice. Passing the national monument erected in honor of Germany’s victory over France, in 1870, and Bingen, “fair Bingen on the Rhine,” we come at length to Mayence, a frontier town of fifty thousand inhabitants, strongly fortified with a garrison of thirty thousand soldiers. Mayence was founded B. C. 14, by Drusus, the son-in-law of Julius Caesar. Here the grandsons of Charlemagne met to divide his mighty empire into Germany, France, and Italy. This is the birthplace of Gutenberg who, in 1440, invented the art of printing. Mayence has shown her high appreciation of that gifted son of genius by erecting the handsome “Gutenberg Statue.” CHAPTER XVII. FROM FRANKFORT TO WORMS.