Who has not heard of the noble Rhine, which winds many hundred miles through Central Europe? Castles, vineyards, farms, and forests, with now and then a village or a city, diversify its banks. Prominent among its cities is Strasbourg; a strongly fortified border town, founded ages ago by the Romans, but held recently by France. It was an imperial city of the German empire in 1681, when Louis XIV. got possession of it, by an unwarrantable attack in a time of peace. It is in shape a triangle, with walls six miles in circuit, entered by seven gates. The fortifications extend to the Rhine, although the main city, of 85,000 inhabitants, is situated a mile and a half back on the Ill, a branch of the Rhine. The tourist, while still far distant, sees the spire of the famous Cathedral, Nôtre Dame. It is the highest spire in the world, a masterpiece of airy open-work, of elaborate tracery and delicate workmanship, towering aloft four hundred and sixty-six feet, twenty-four feet higher than the great Pyramid of Egypt, and more than twice as high as Bunker Hill Monument. The great Minster of which it is a part, was nine hundred years in building, and was finished shortly before our story begins. When the late war came, the Rhine, Strasbourg, and its Cathedral, were not wholly unlike what they were at that time,--four hundred and thirty-five years ago. It is true, railroad trains would shriek on either side of the river, and gaudy steamers bustle up and down, and occasionally a “water-cure” or a “juvenile reformatory” meet the eye, signs of modern progress; but in strange contrast with these the Roman and mediæval remains. Rhineland is at once ancient and modern. Here are “ruins of the Middle Ages, and marks of the French Revolution; the bones of great feudal giants, and scars of modern disturbance.” The old homes of the warlike barons still stand, and the incense-flavored churches, whose corner-stones were laid in the dim past. It is in the year 1436; and the visitor, if he approaches the city from the French side, before entering the west gate will be sure to seek out John Gutenberg, a noted man who lives in the suburbs in yonder pretty cottage, half hidden in ivy and honeysuckle, and the ancient turrets of St. Arbogast Monastery, not a stone’s throw distant, frowning upon it. There is a woman of taste within; the well-trained vines speak of her, as do the tulips and wall-flowers. And the eye glances admiringly from these to the apple-trees, with their wealth of blossoms, and the lilacs, jubilant with plumes.