Passing the town of Braubach and the majestic castle of Marksberg, which we had long observed, above the windings of the stream, on a steep mountain, we came to Rense, a small town, remarkable only for its neighbourhood to a spot, on which the elections of kings of the Romans, or, at least, the meetings preliminary to them, are believed to have antiently taken place. This is distinguished at present by the remains of a low octagonal building, open at top, and accessible beneath by eight arches, in one of which is a flight of steps. Within, is a stone bench, supposed to be formed for the Electors, who might ascend to it by these steps. In the centre of the pavement below is a thick pillar, the use of which, whether as a tribune for the new king, or as a table for receiving the attestations of the electors, is not exactly known. That the building itself, now called Koningstuhl, or King's Throne, was used for some purposes of election, appears from several German historians, who mention meetings there in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and impute them to antient customs. INTERMIXTURE OF GERMAN TERRITORIES. Nearly opposite to _Rense_ is the small town of _Oberlahnstein_, which belongs to the Elector of Mentz, though separated from his other dominions by those of several Princes. To such intersections of one territory with another the individual weakness of the German Princes is partly owing; while their collected body has not only necessarily the infirmities of each of its members, but is enfeebled by the counteraction arising from an arrangement, which brings persons together to decide a question, according to a common interest, who are always likely to have an individual one of more importance to each than his share in the general concern. The banks of the Rhine afford many instances of this disjunction of territory. The Elector of Cologne has a town to the southward of nearly all the dominions of Treves; the Elector Palatine, whose possessions on the east bank of the Rhine are intersected by those of five or six other Princes, crosses the river to occupy some towns between the Electorates of Mentz and Treves; the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel does the same to his fortress of Rhinfels; and the Elector of Mentz, in return, has a strip of land and his chief country residence, between the dominions of the two houses of Hesse.