regions, into the sea, so it comes down from remote antiquity, associated in every age with momentous events in the history of neighboring nations." Along its banks repose the bones of emperors, and on its crags are the crumbling remains of their castles. Each of its mountain peaks has an unwritten history, dating back to remote elemental wars in nature. Its ruins have descended from the days of Rivalry and Chivalry; its fortresses show the power and weakness of Love and Hate. The ruins and picturesque scenery of the Rhine are principally between Bonn and Mayence. I passed along here in the month of June, when the mountains were covered with spring verdure and busy vine-dressers. To appreciate the scenery it must be seen. It would be interesting to know how the Rhine could ever work a channel through such barriers. Sometime the mountains recede from the river and form a large fertile basin, then they close up again and form a long vista at the end of which they seem to meet, but when you get there you find that the river worms and winds its course in zigzag style around the most threatening precipices. In some places the mountains form a succession of defiles into large valleys that recede into the country, and finally terminate on the top of another mountain. And then almost every crag is crowned with a ruin, whose mossy, moldering walls form a striking contrast to the sprightly verdure of the surrounding scenery, while far below, just where the feudal lords lived and fought on its banks, "The river nobly foams and flows Some fresher beauty varying round." The hills on the east bank of the Rhine are mostly covered with vineyards. These consist of a succession of walls forming terraces. The hills in many places are so steep that the breadth of terraces is little more than the height of the walls. Many of them are bare rocks covered with soil which the vintagers carried up on their shoulders, and every particle of manure must be borne up in this way. Passing along here you can see men and women clambering up fearful precipices with heavy burdens on their backs, sometimes hanging seemingly from projecting rocks one thousand feet above you. A single shower will often sweep their precarious possessions into the Rhine, which years of patient toil had acquired. These pendant little terraces are their little allwhen these are gone they are poor indeed. A few miles above Bonn the hills of the Rhine commence with a group called the Siebengebirge. The most interesting of these is the Drachenfels. The Cave of the Dragon is still shown, which the horned hero of the Niebelungen Lied is said to have slain. The ruins on the summit were once the abode of a warlike race now extinct. It commands a view down the Rhine beyond Cologne, twenty miles distant. Higher up is Hammerstein Castle, the refuge of Henry IV. of Germany, and further on the Castle of Marksburg, where he was imprisoned. A singular fatality attended this unfortunate monarch, which throws a veil of uncertainty over his subsequent history and his death. I saw a large iron coffin in the Cathedral of Chester, in England, which tradition says Ehren contains his remains, and where it is said he died as a hermit. breistein is no longer a ruin. It has been repaired by Prussia and made the strongest fortification on the Rhine. Opposite this is Coblentz, where the grandsons of Charlemagne met in 743 to divide the Roman empire. Above Coblentz two castles crown the brow of a hill, called the twin castles of Sternberg and Liebenstein. The legend says their owners were two brothers who happened to fall in love with the same fair maiden, and settled their rivalry with the sword, which terminated in their death. Every ruin has its legend, a species of literature in which the Middle Ages were prolific. The castles still show their confused clashing energies, and the insecurity of property and life in these massive, moldering walls. Every village must have its wall of protection, and a fortress on a neighboring hill from which to repel invading foes. All these are monuments of the turbulence, perfidy and social chaos of feudal times, in which too we gratefully discern the germs of principles to which Freedom and Civilization are immeasurably indebted. The Germans regard the Rhine with a sort of religious reverence. It is to them almost what the Nile is to the Egyptians. It was the boundary of the old Roman Empire, and is now the burden of a hundred songs, which have floated down on the stream of an eventful Past, gradually incorporating in themselves the sympathies and hopes of a great people. These form their stirring Volkslieder, which, like the Marseillaise Hymn with the French, inspires them with an intrepidity and patriotism which fear neither foe nor defeat. At Caub, a village between Coblentz and Bingen, the place is still pointed out where Blucher's army crossed the Rhine in the beginning of January, 1814, on their return from the battle field where they had delivered the Netherlands from the dominion of its foes. As they reached the top of the hill, the Rhine suddenly burst upon their view, when they fell on their knees and shouted with a torrent of grateful enthusiasm, in the stirring poetry of Claudius "Am Rhine! am Rhine! do wachsen unsere Reben." As one regiment after another reached this lofty summit they knelt alike and shouted still "Am Rhine!" and so from morn till night the rocks and ruins on its banks were vocal with exulting joy, and reverberated with the rolling shouts "Am Rhine! am Rhine!" Near Bingen is an old tower called the Mouse Thurm. When I was a boy this legend was a great favorite among the little members of our household. And many a time did our father gather around him an evening group to tell the legend and moral of the Mouse Thurm de Bingen. It runs as follows: During the middle ages, when it was still customary for bishops to provide for the temporal wants of their flock, it happened that the grain through this country was destroyed by rain. Bishop Hatto had his granaries well filled, and was appealed to by the multitude for bread. He invited them into his barn to get provisions, but when they were in he barred the doors and burnt it to the ground in order to get rid of their entreaties. Soon a horde of rats consumed his remaining grain, and then assailed his person. He fled to his tower in the Rhine, barred the doors and windows. But when his head press 1856.] The Origin of Paper Money. 231 ed his pillow a scream came from beneath it, and lo! rats were above, beneath and around him. "Down on his knees the bishop fell And faster and faster his beads did he tell, The saw of their teeth without he could hear. "And in at the windows and in at the door, And through the walls by thousands they pour; And down through the ceiling, and up through the floor, From within and without, from above and below, And all at once to the bishop they go. "They have whetted their teeth against the stoues, They gnawed the flesh from every limb, For they were sent to do judgme... on him." THE ORIGIN OF PAPER MONEY. THE invention of Paper Money is much more ancient than the establishment of the earliest Banks. The Bank of St. George, of Genoa, the most ancient we know, was founded in 1407; but before the thirteenth century, Koblat, grandson of Genghis, Khan, the Tarter conquerer, introduced paper money into China, and his example was at once followed by his cousin, Kaigation, the sultan of Persia; both were obliged to abolish it on account of the great disorders it produced in their extensive dominions. Since this epoch, the Chinese government has again established paper money, and in Russia they can now show a "Chinese assignat." In Turkey, also, the collectors of certain taxes delivered receipts to those who pay them, and those papers have the currency of money. It is not pretended that paper money was first invented by the Mongols; on the contrary, its invention was everywhere as easy as its use was obvious, and particularly attractive for all governments, for its temporary advantage in crisis of difficulty. The idea of substituting a token or promissory obligation, for a present intrinsic value, could occur even to simple or barbarous people, of which there are many examples. Aristotle, in his Economics, tells us that Denis, the tyrant of Syracuse, coined money of tin, which he declared to be legal, and equivalent to silver. Timotheus, the general of the Athenians, in a moment of difficulty, coined brass money, assuring his murmuring soldiers that he would We have heard receive it in the purchase of spoils he was to make. much of the leathern money used by the Carthagenians. It is true none of these are paper money, but they resemble it, as merely "tokens of value"-the money of confidence-the I. O. U. We read also of the iron money of Byzantium, and some of the ancient cities of Greece. In England copper money is only a token or sign, current for nearly double its value in metal. In Russia, skins and furs have been used for money, but their inconvenient bulk gave rise, in early time, to an ingenious representation of these natural coins, which was small pieces of leather stamped, which were used as money, to be liquidated by furs and skins, as expressed. This leathern coin was used in some parts as the fractions of the silver copeck, down to the year 1700. Among the simple Hindoos, whose wants are few, and the produce of the earth acquired with little labor, gold and silver and even copper and iron are of no great value in comparison; and their small money is cowry shells, collected on the shores of Ceplon, and of the Maldrive Islands; these shells have been the current money of the Mongols, of Bengal, and Botan, as well as of Guinea. On the discovery of America grains of Cacao served for money. In Abyssinia their merchandises are valued by salt and pepper; on the island of Newfoundland by codfish; in Iceland by a sort of wool; pieces of nankeen serve for the money of comparison in the exchanges between the Chinese and the Russians at Kiaktu; among the Greeks of the lower Empire pieces of silk performed this function; in ancient chronicles gold, silver and silk are mentioned equally as money. The basis of the currency of the Chinese and of the Russians seem to be more curious and substantial than any other. The small coins of the Chinese appear to cost more in the labor of fabrication than any are worth in their currency; they cannot, therefore, be forged, and the material is a mixed metal worth less in the crucible, or for exportation than in its use as coin. In Russia the abundant base of their curency is copper, whose value in coin is less than in commerce as a metal; this is an unusual condition, but a happy one as far as it extends. As riches and circulations increased with civilization and confidence, and after the discovery of America and the working in its mines, gold and silver took with advantage the place of all those expedients; one step further has been taken on the basis of credit in paper money. Metallic money in its value, its quantity, its facility and rapidity of circulation-in its transport and presence, can no longer be suitable or equal to the exigencies of our trade and exchanges; paper has become indispensable everywhere in foreign commerce, and as useful as necessary in the great internal trade of an improved, active and productive country. IN a grave-yard in England may be seen the following on a tombstone over four infants: "Bold Infidelity, turn pale and die; Beneath this stone four sleeping infants lie; Say, are they lost or saved? If death's by sin, they sinn'd, for they are here; Revere the sacred page, the knot's untied They died for Adam sinned; they live for Jesus died.” |