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BUNBURY'S BALLAD.

they have sent forth to the world, strong to encounter, and gentle to mitigate, and wise to control the contingencies of fortune, have given to society few so noble, so gentle, and so wise, as our own Albert.

Aix la Chapelle.

AN expanse of country flat enough to shew us the prevailing enchantment of sunshine, conducted us amidst the temperature of a mimic May to Aix la Chapelle, that place of bad hotels and shabby gambling houses, where, like the modern creditor of insolvent nobility, the sordid degradation of the present is contented to trust the Memories of the Imperial past.

"Marianne was the darling of Aix la Chapelle,"

says Bunbury's ballad of the "Little Gray Man:" "She bore through its province unenvied the bell:" unenvied indeed. Poor Mary Ann! I am sorry for her in truth: her patrons, if resembling what they are now, in this city of gaming-houses and sulphur Baths, were anything but darlings, and her fellows' could have been no great things.

It is a gloomy, dirty, disreputable looking

THE THRONE IN THE GRAVE.

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place, the very fag end of broken constitutions and dilapidated characters. And yet what high thoughts, what romantic memories, hover, like august and eloquent ghosts above this Place of Charlemagne. How must the Emperor Otho have recoiled from that vainly supercilious Corpse of the Great Charles, that miserable exemplar of pride, surviving death itself, that Enthroned Skeleton, mocking the Imperial Crown and Mantle with its mouldering carrion. Surely the sceptre in his hand was a bitter commentary on that copy of the Gospels upon his knees!"Tell me where thou hast laid Him"-saith Magdala's Mary of her buried Lord. But here, not laid down like a tired infant on its great nurse's breast, embalmed in that sleep which to all men is the pause between Transgression and Judgment, but prohibiting to one world its dismal paraphernalia only to mock the magnificent formalities of the other, that mighty and high minded Sovereign, who found the weight of empire so overwhelming, that even in his Lifetime he divided the burden, was made the posthumous Scarecrow of Regality.

They have a tradition here, of that Imperial Chair, which alone has been left to this Cathedral of all this perfunctory folly, that Napoleon refused to profane the melancholy monument of Imperial nothingness when he came a conqueror to Aix la Chapelle.

Y

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A TRADITION OF JOSEPHINE.

It was precisely what might have been expected from the adventurous soldier, who mingled his superstitious idolatry of the past with his ambitious defiance of the future. Josephine, however, less scrupulous or more inquisitive, is said to have repaired to the solemn old Dom Kirch in the gloom of twilight, entered its gigantic darkness alone, ascended the stately Hoch-Münster, and sat down upon that throne which had been the Chariot of Victory and Empire to the venerable Carlovingian Family.

No long time elapsed, however, before those who waited without (for she had adventured this daring deed alone) heard a piercing shriek ring round the cloistered arcades of the Cathedral: and rushing in, they found the Imperial Creole extended in a deep swoon upon the steps of the Marble Chair. On her recovery, Josephine declared that she had scarcely usurped the royal seat when a Gigantic Figure in gorgeous panoply, whom the Imperial Diadem and Mantle, no less than its preternatural stature, proclaimed to be the Mightiest of his Mighty House, appeared amidst a misty spectral light, and divulged such fearful circumstances of the Futurity which awaited her ominous elevation, that, after vain attempts to listen with fortitude, she fainted. What the triumphant Horror shewed, which even her strong mind and tender heart found insupportable, she never revealed.

GERMAN DEMEANOUR.

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Doubtless it was-not the Abdication of Fontainbleau, not the Defeat of Waterloo, not the Exile of Saint Helena,-but that deadly conference with Fouché, followed as it was with that bitter mockery of magnificence,-the Widowhood of Malmaison, which overpowered even Josephine's princely courage, by piercing it through her woman's heart.

I love the Germans, they are a Race worthy of their own chivalrous, sublime, romantic, Fatherland. What though people do say that a German consists of three things, the Pipe, the Cloak, and the Man? so much the better. The Pipe is a genial comforter, the Cloak a faithful guardian, and the Man a hearty, kindly, goodly creature, deserving the best offices of both. Yes I do love the German, he is so genuine.. Courteous without fawning, homely but highminded, frank yet perfectly wellbred; the politeness of the German is less the politeness of the lip than of the heart. Equally remote from the punctilious accolade of the Italian, the complimentary paroxysms of the Parisian, and that savage shyness which distinguishes a portion of my beloved Compatriots, the address of a German to a stranger makes you feel

at once that he would do something for you if he could, instead of implying, what he could do for you if he would. Indeed, to meet a trueborn Briton abroad and remark his moody Reserve, his barbaric recoil from casual intercourse, you might either imagine him a newly caught Aboriginal from the Druid forests of Mona, or some spellbound individual, who, although like The Ancient Mariner, he may

certainly

"Pass like Night from land to land ;”—

· has not strange Power of Speech!"

For my own part, I deem it no breach of charity to affirm, of shy and silent men in general, that they are the vainest creatures under the sun. In nine cases out of ten, your Shy Man has set up a Graven Image in his own heart, and trembles to open the shrine, lest it should not receive the same homage from others which he so obsequiously offers himself. He resembles the Schoolboy with his single piece of money, of whose value he is so sensitive, that he hesitates to lay it out, lest its return should not be commensurate with its imaginary worth. He occupies his place in society much in the same way as the Dark veiled Skeleton of the Egyptian Banquet, with this difference, however, that he appropriates his full share of those viands and wines, which of course