and went again into the darkness.  At Verviers, our baggage was weighed, examined and transferred, with ourselves, to a Prussian train.  There was a great deal of disputing on the occasion.  A lady, who had a dog in a large willow basket, was not allowed to retain it, nor would they take it as baggage.  The matter was finally compromised by their sending the basket, obliging her to carry the dog, which was none of the smallest, in her arms!  The next station bore the sign of the black eagle, and here our passports were obliged to be given up.  Advancing through long ranges of wooded hills, we saw at length, in the dull twilight of a rainy day, the old kingly city of Aix la Chapelle on a plain below us.  After a scene at the custom-house, where our baggage was reclaimed with tickets given at Verviers, we drove to the Hotel du Rhin, and while warming our shivering limbs and drying our damp garments, felt tempted to exclaim with the old Italian author:  “O! holy and miraculous tavern!”

The Cathedral with its lofty Gothic tower, was built by the emperor Otho in the tenth century.  It seems at present to be undergoing repairs, for a large scaffold shut out the dome.  The long hall was dim with incense smoke as we entered, and the organ sounded through the high arches with an effect that startled me.  The windows glowed with the forms of kings and saints, and the dusty and mouldering shrines which rose around were colored with the light that came through.  The music pealed out like a triumphal march, sinking at times into a mournful strain, as if it celebrated and lamented the heroes who slept below.  In the stone pavement nearly under my feet was a large square marble slab, with words “CAROLO MAGNO.”  It was like a dream, to stand there on the tomb of the mighty warrior, with the lofty arches of the Cathedral above, filled with the sound of the divine anthem.  I mused above his ashes till the music ceased and then left the Cathedral, that nothing might break the romantic spell associated with that crumbling pile and the dead it covered.  I have always revered the memory of Charlemagne.  He lived in a stern age, but he was in mind and heart a man, and like Napoleon, who placed the iron crown which had lain with him centuries in the tomb, upon his own brow, he had an Alpine grandeur of mind, which the world was forced to acknowledge.

At noon we took the chars-a-banc, or second-class carriages, for fear of rain, and continued our journey over a plain dotted with villages and old chateaux.  Two or three miles from Cologne we saw the spires of the different churches, conspicuous among which were the unfinished towers of the Cathedral, with the enormous crane standing as it did when they left off building, two hundred years ago or more.  On arriving, we drove to the Bonn railway, where finding the last train did not leave for four hours, we left our baggage and set out for the Cathedral.  Of all Gothic buildings, the plan of this is certainly the most stupendous;