This is the German town, that's fam'd so long By throned Kings, and gentle Muses' song; Where learned folks live well on princely pay, And commerce makes so many Burghers gay. Of the commerce there were still some signs in half a dozen vessels, collected on the beach. Whether the University also subsists, or is any thing more than a free school, which is frequently called an University in Germany, we did not learn. WESEL. After five or six small towns, or villages, more, the Rhine reaches the well known fortified town and state prison of Wesel; a place, not always unfavourable to freedom, for here RAPIN, driven from the district now called La Vendée in France, by Louis the Fourteenth's persecution of Protestants, retired to write his History; recollecting, perhaps, that it had before sheltered refugees from the tyranny of the Duke of Alva, and our sanguinary Mary. The towers and citadel of Wesel give it the appearance of a military place, and it is frequently so mentioned; but the truth is, that the late King of Prussia, with the same fear of his subjects, which was felt by Joseph the Second in Flanders, demolished all the effectual works, except those of the citadel; a policy not very injurious to the Monarch in this instance, but which, in Flanders, has submitted the country to be twice over-run in three years, and has in fact been the most decisive of passed events in their influence upon present circumstances. The reformed worship is exercised in the two principal churches, but the Catholics have two or three monasteries, and there is a Chapter of Noble Ladies, of whom two thirds are Protestants, and one third Catholic; an arrangement which probably accounts for their having no settled and common residence. Opposite to Wesel is Burick, the fortifications of which remain, and are probably intended to serve instead of the demolished works of the former place, being connected with it by a flying-bridge over the Rhine. A little lower are the remains of the old chateau of Furstemberg, on a hill where the ladies of the noble Cistercian nunnery of Furstemberg had once a delightful seat, now deserted for the society of Xanten. Xanten, the first place at which we had stopped in Germany, and the last, for a long tract, which we had seen with pleasure, Xanten, now distinguishable, at a small distance from the river, by its spires, reminded us of the gay hopes we had formed on leaving it; with a new world spread out before us, for curiosity, and, as we thought, for admiration; yet did not render the remembrance of disappointment, as to the last respect, painful, for even the little information we had gained seemed to be worth the labour of acquiring it.