were generally at war with their archbishops Even Napoleon could not make them comformable The city is now attached to Prussia, but stil retains most of its ancient privileges, and all it ancient spirit of insubordination and independence When, in 1830, the king of Prussia wished t force upon them an unpopular magistrate, th 'whole city rose, and obliged the obnoxious presi dent to resign; the government, armed with al its legal and military terrors, could do nothing against the determined spirit of this half-civilized fearless, reckless, yet merry, good-humoured po pulace. A history of this grotesque revolution which had the same duration as the celebrated trois jours de Paris, and exhibited in its progress and issue some of the most striking, most cha racteristic, most farcical scenes you can imagine were worthy of a Colonese Walter Scott. How I wish I could give you some of my friend's ric graphic sketches and humorous pictures of popula manner! but I feel that their peculiar spirit would evaporate in my hands. The event is celebrated in their local history as ,,la Révolution du Carnaval!" and this reminds me of another peculiarity of Cologne. The carnival is still celebrated ther with a degree of splendour and fantastic humour exceeding even the festivities of Rome and Naples in the present day; but as the season of the carnival is not the season for flight with our English birds of passage, few have ever witnessed these extraordinary Saturnalia. Such is the general ignorance or indifference relative to Cologne, that I met the other day with a very accomplished man, and a lover of art, who had frequently visited the place, and yet he had never seen the Medusa.

MEDON.

Nor I, by this good light!-I never even heard of it!

ALDA.

And how shall I attempt to describe it? Unless I had the,,large utterance of the early gods,“ or could pour forth a string of Greek or German compounds, I know not in what words I could do justice to the effect it produced upon me. This wondrous mask measures about two feet and a half in height; the colossal features, and I may add, the colossal expression, grand without exaggeration-so awfully vast, and yet so gloriously beautiful; the full rich lips curled with disdain the mighty wings overshadowing the knit and tortured brow-the madness in the large dilated eyes the wreathing and recoiling snakes, came upon me like something supernatural, and impressed me at once with astonishment, horror, and admiration. I was quite unprepared for what I beheld. As I stood before it my mind seemed to elevate and enlarge itself to admit this new vision of grandeur. Nothing but the two Fates in the Elgin marbles, and the Torso of the Vatican, ever affected me with the same inexpressible sense of the sublime: and this is not a fragment of some grand mystery, of which the remainder has been ,,to night and chaos hurled;" it is entire, in admirable preservation, and the workmanship as perfect as the conception is magnificent. I know not if it would have affected another in the same

It is nearly twice the size of the famous and well known Medusa Rondaniui, now in the Glyptothek at Munich.

manner. For me, the ghastly allegory of the Medusa has a peculiar fascination. I confess that I have never wholly understood it, nor have any of the usual explanations satisfied me; it appears to me, that the Greeks, in thus blending the extremes of loveliness and terror, had a meaning, a purpose more than is dreamt of by our philosophy.

,

MEDON.

But, how came this wonderful relic to Cologne, of all places in the world?

ALDA.

It stopped there on its road to England.

MEDON.

By what perverse destiny ?-was it avarice on our part, or force or fraud on that of others?

ALDA.

It was, as Desdemona says,,,our wretched fortune" but the story, with all its circumstances, does so much honour to human nature, that it has half reconciled me to our loss. You must have heard of Professor Wallraf of Cologne, one of the canons of the cathedral, who, with his professorship and his canonship together, may have possessed from five to seven hundred francs a year. He was one of those wonderful and universal scholars, of whom we read in former timesmen who concentrated all their powers and passions, and intellectual faculties, in the acquirement and advancement of knowledge, without any sel

fish aim or object, and from the mere abstract love of science. Early in life this man formed the resolution to remove from his native city the reproach of self-satisfied ignorance and monastic prejudices, which had hitherto characterized it; and in the course of a long existence of labour and privation, as professor and teacher, he contrived to collect together books, manuscripts, pictures, gems, works of art, and objects of natural history, to an immense amount. In the year 1818, on recovering from a dangerous illness, he presented his whole collection to his native city; and the magistracy, in return, bestowed on him a pension of three thousand francs for the remainder of his life. He was then more than seventy. About the same time a dealer in antiquities arrived from Rome, bringing with him this divine Medusa, with various other busts and fragments: he was on his way to England, where he hoped to dispose of them. He asked for his whole collection twelve thousand francs, and refused to sell any part of it separately. The city refused to make the purchase, thinking it too dear, and Wallraf, in despair at the idea of the glorious relic being consigned to other lands, mortgaged his yearly pension in order to raise the money, purchased the Medusa, presented it to the city, and then cheerfully resumed his accustomed life of self-denial and frugality. His only dread was lest he should die before the period was expired. He lived, however, to pay off his debt, and in three months afterwards he died. * Was not this admirable? The first time I saw the Medusa I did not know

Professor Wallraff died on the 18th of March, 1824.

this anecdote; the second time, as I looked at it, I thought of Wallraf, and felt how much a moral interest can add to the charm of what is in itself most perfect.

MEDON.

I will certainly make a pilgrimage to this Medusa. She must be worth all the eleven thousand virgins together. What next?

ALDA.

Instead of embarking in the steam-boat, we posted along the left bank of the Rhine, spending a few days at Boun, at Godesberg, and at Ehrenbreitstein; but I should tell you: as you allow me to diverge, that on my second journey, I owed much to a residence of some weeks at Bonn. There I became acquainted with the celebrated Schlegel, or should rather say, M. le Chevalier de Schlegel, for I believe his titles and his,,starry honours" are not indifferent to him; and in truth he wears them very gracefully. I was rather surprised to find in this sublime and eloquent critic, this awful scholar, whose comprehensive mind has grasped the whole universe of art, a most agreeable, lively, social being. Of the judgments passed on him in his own country, I know little, and understand less; I am not deep in German literary polemics. To me he was the author of the lectures on,,Dramatic Literature," and the translator of Shakspeare, and, moreover, all that was amiable and polite: and was nrt this enough?