ers in the Rhine valley; therefore it cannot be considered as typical
of any Rhenish manner of building.

St. John's is an ogival edifice also without any great merit, unless it
be that of a grandeur which is contrastingly out of place in its cramped
surroundings.

Below Schaffhausen is Sackingen, the third forest city of the Rhine. It
owes its origin to a convent of St. Hilaire, founded in the sixth
century by St. Fridolin.

The "Lives of the Saints" recounts how St. Columba and his disciples
left Ireland and came to Constance, where they separated and went their
various ways to evangelize the Rhine valley. To St. Fridolin fell that
part lying between Basel and Laufenburg. His bones are yet venerated in
the church of St. Hilaire.

[Illustration]

VII

BASEL AND COLMAR

_Basel_

After traversing several of the Swiss cantons, the Rhine leaves
Switzerland at Basel. After the breaking up of the vast empire of
Charlemagne, Basel came first under the authority of the Emperors of
Germany, and then under that of the kings of the second house of
Burgundy, until 1032, at which time the city became definitely
incorporated into the German Empire.

Rudolph of Hapsburg besieged the city in 1274, and through the
fourteenth and well into the fifteenth century it was the theatre of
many struggles between the bishops and the emperors.

In 1061 and 1431 important councils of the Church were held here.

In 1489, at the village of Dornach, scarce half a dozen miles from
Basel, took place that battle between six thousand Swiss and fifteen
thousand Austrians which made possible the future independence of
Switzerland.

During the sixteenth century Basel enjoyed a glorious era with respect
to science and art.

Its university, the oldest in Switzerland, founded by Pius II., shone
brilliantly with the reflected light of the philosopher Erasmus, the
alchemist Paracelsus, and many theologians and geographers. Hans Holbein
was born here in the seventeenth century.

The Rhine divides the city into two unequal parts, which are connected
by a bridge which was originally constructed in 1220.

Although Basel bears even yet, in its architecture, the stamp of an
imperial city of the middle ages, it must be counted as somewhat modern.
Nevertheless, of all the cities of the first rank in Switzerland it
resisted the march of innovation the longest. For instance, there was a
time when all the clocks of the city were an hour behind