BY VICTOR HUGO

Of all rivers, I prefer the Rhine.  It is now a year, when passing the bridge of boats at Kehl, since I first saw it.  I remember that I felt a certain respect, a sort of adoration, for this old, this classic stream.  I never think of rivers—­those great works of Nature, which are also great in History—­without emotion.

I remember the Rhone at Valserine; I saw it in 1825, in a pleasant excursion to Switzerland, which is one of the sweet, happy recollections of my early life.  I remember with what noise, with what ferocious bellowing, the Rhone precipitated itself into the gulf while the frail bridge upon which I was standing was shaking beneath my feet.  Ah well! since that time, the Rhone brings to my mind the idea of a tiger—­the Rhine, that of a lion.

The evening on which I saw the Rhine for the first time, I was imprest with the same idea.  For several minutes I stood contemplating this proud and noble river—­violent, but not furious; wild, but still majestic.  It was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was washing with its yellow mane, or, as Boileau says, its “slimy beard,” the bridge of boats.  Its two banks were lost in the twilight, and tho its roaring was loud, still there was tranquillity.

The Rhine is unique:  it combines the qualities of every river.  Like the Rhone, it is rapid; broad like the Loire; encased, like the Meuse; serpentine, like the Seine; limpid and green, like the Somme; historical, like the Tiber; royal like the Danube; mysterious, like the Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and like a river of Asia, abounding with fantoms and fables.

From historical records we find that the first people who took possession of the banks of the Rhine were the half-savage Celts, who were afterward named Gauls by the Romans.  When Rome was in its glory, Caesar crossed the Rhine, and shortly afterward the whole of the river was under the jurisdiction of his empire.  When the Twenty-second Legion returned from the siege of Jerusalem, Titus sent it to the banks of the Rhine, where it continued the work of Martius Agrippa.  After Trajan and Hadrian came Julian, who erected a fortress upon the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle; then Valentinian, who built a number of castles.  Thus, in a few centuries, Roman colonies, like an immense chain, linked the whole of the Rhine.

At length the time arrived when Rome was to assume another aspect.  The 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.