it lingers there still, and dispenses her benevolent bounties to those afflicted with all diseases-except a broken heart. These assuredly die for nothing can cure them.

The castle of the faitour knight, if ever it had being, now exists no longer.

BOPPART.

Boppart is unquestionably one of the oldest towns on the Rhine. It was originally a post station of the Romans—one of the fifty castles built by Drusus Germanicus, being situated there; and shortly after it became the head-quarters of the militum balistarorium, or "ordnance" of that people, on this river. The chief in command of the Roman artillery dwelt in the town, and held there a kind of minor military court, to which all the neighbouring native princes in alliance with the conquerors occasionally resorted. It was then known as Baudobrica, Bodobriga, or Bontobriga. On the decline of the Roman empire, the military station at Boppart disappeared; and the name of the town was not heard of for centuries. The next mention made of it is in the era of the Frank kings of Austrasia. That it was the abode of some one or other of these sovereigns is certain: for tradition has handed down the fact of its being a royal residence; and authentic local history speaks of the remains of a royal palace of the well-known architecture of their period having had very recent existence within its walls.* This edifice was entirely demolished by the French army, A. D. 1764.

In the reign of Conrad the Third, emperor of Germany, Boppart became an imperial city (A.D. 1137-52); and about the same period (A.D. 1146), St. Bernard of Clairvaux preached the second crusade to its inhabitants, on one of whom he is stated to have performed a miraculous cure. Boppart must at this time have been a place of considerable size, for the biographer of the saint, in reference to this cure, terms the town

VOL. II.

*

Freyherus' "Orig. Palat." cap. ii.

K

"vicum magnum." For three centuries subsequently, however, no allusion to it occurs in local or general history.

About the middle of the fifteenth century (A.D. 1417-89), Boppart became the centre of the Rhenish Toll district, and the chief town of the confederacy formed by the princes on that part of the Rhine to protect traffic and commerce on the river. At this time a wild custom existed in these quarters. Whenever a barque sunk in the Rhine, or was wrecked on its shores, the dwellers in the vicinity claimed all they could save from the unfortunate vessel as their own. It was the same, also, if a wagon laden with corn fell to pieces on the high road; they held that they, and not the owners, had a right to the lading. One of the first objects of the Confederation was to put an end to this assumed claim; and to place the property of merchants and farmers in that respect on a right footing. This claim was termed Gruntrure; and it required all the power of these potentates to destroy it. Boppart being the centre of the union, and the chief commercial city of the confederacy, was greatly interested in the abolition of this injustice, and exerted itself strenuously to that effect. English wool and Geneva wares formed the principal staple of traffic on the Rhine at this period and it was absolutely necessary to insure protection to the traders in these valuable wares, otherwise they would not adopt that route again for the transit of their merchandise.

An imperial diet was held in Boppart by the Emperor Rudolph von Hapsburg A. D. 1288, soon after his defeat of the pretender Tile-Kolup, at Colmar, in Alsace; who assumed the name, and professed to be, the Emperor Frederick the Second, dead full a quarter of a century antecedent to that period. It is said that the following amusing episode in the life of that great prince, occurred in this town; though there are, unquestionably, many causes which concur to make Mainz the scene of its enactment.

Rudolph, like most men of his stamp, was altogether unacquainted with sloth, and cared very little for those indulgences which were ever within the command of his high station. In summer and winter he awoke with the dawn of the morning ; and, generally, if the weather was fair, went forth from his tent or his palace, as the case might be, alone, mostly in disguise.