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useless and mischievous stuff, many, many shelves that now groan under heavy weights would stand empty.

Travelling over a very even road, and country extremely flat, (for from Aix-la-Chapelle I met with but one hill) I arrived at Cologne, the capital, not only of the archbishopric of that name, but of the Circle of the Lower Rhine. My spirits, which were not in the very best tone, were not at all raised on entering the city, by the ringing of church-bells, of all tones and sizes, in every quarter. Being a stranger, I thought it had been a rejoicing day; but, on inquiry, found that it was the constant practice. Never, in my life, had I heard such an infernal clatter: never before had I seen any thing so gloomy and melancholy-the streets black-dismal bells tolling-bald-pated friars, in myriads, trailing their long black forms through the streets, moulding their faces into every shape that art had enabled them to assume, in order to excite commiseration, and begging alms with a melancholy song calculated for the purpose, somewhat like that of our blind beggars in London, and productive of the same disagreeable effect upon the spirits. In short I was not an hour in Cologne, when those circumstances, conspiring with the insuperable melancholy of my mind, made me wish myself out of it.

Nevertheless, Cologne is a fine city; and if it be any satisfaction to you to spin those fine imaginary ligaments that, in the brain of the book-worm, connect the ancient and modern world, I will inform you, that it was anciently called Colonia Agrippina, because Agrippina, the mother of Nero, was born there, aud honored it with a Roman colony, because it was her birth-place. The mind, forced back to that period, and contemplating the mischiefs of that monster Nero, cannot help wishing that Cologne had been burnt the night of her birth, and Miss Agrippina buried in the ruins, ere she had lived to give birth to that scourge of the world.

Although the established religion here be the Roman Catholic, extraordinary as it may appear, they are very jealous of power; and though the elector, by his officers, administers justice in all criminal causes, they will not permit him, in person, to reside above three days at a

time in the city, when he visits it; .at Bonne.

nor to bring a great train with him for this reason he commonly resides

Cologne has a very considerable trade, particularly in Rhenish wine; and its gin is reckoned the best in the world, and bears a higher price than any other in all the nations of Europe.

Like all great Roman Catholic cities, it has a profusion of churches, crosses, miracles, saints, and church trinkets; and I really think it has more steeples and bells than any two cities in Germany. As Liege was called the Paradise of Priests, this ought to be called the Golgotha of Skulls and Skull-caps. In the church of Saint Ursula, they shew, or pretend at least to shew, the bones of eleven thousand virgin martyrs. The skulls of some of those imaginary virgins are in silver cases, and others in skull-caps, of cloth, of gold, and velvet. And in the church of Saint Gerion, are no less than nine hundred heads of Moorish cavaliers, of the army of the Emperor Constantine, (previous to that saint's conversion to Christianity) who they say was beheaded for refusing to sacrifice to idols: by the bye, the Popish divines burn, instead of beheading, for not sacrificing to idols Every one of those heads, however, has a cap of scarlet, adorned with pearls. The whole forms a spéctacle no doubt equally agreeable and edifying. It struck me, however, as an extremely ludicrous sight, malgre the solemnity of so many death's heads: and when their story was recounted, I could not help internally chuckling, and saying (rather punningly, to be sure) "Ah! what blockheads ye must have been, to suffer yourselves to be separated from your snug warm bodies, rather than drop down and worship an idol, in which so many good. Christian divines have shewn you an example!" This, you will conclude, I said to myself: an avowal of my sentiments in that place might have given my head a title to a scarlet cap and pearls; and as I had some further use for it, I did not think it expedient to leave it behind me in the church of Saint Gerion-so, very prudently, kept my mind to myself.

H

Coming out of the church, a multitude of beggars, all in canonical's, or student's habits, surrounded, beseeching me for alms-one, pour l'amour de Dieu; another, pour l'amour de la Sainte Vierge; a third, pour le salut de notre Redempteur; a fourth, pour l'amour de Saint Gerion; and so on!

wished in donations, anotold him my charity-bank

When I had gone as far as ther attacked me: though I was exhausted, he persevered, and was uncommonly solicitous-till at length, having exhausted the whole catalogue of saints that are to be found in the calendar, he raised his voice from the miserable whine of petition, and exclaimed with great energy, "Par les neuf cent tetes des Cavaliers Maures qui sont sanctifies au Ciel, je vous conjure de me faire l'aumone!" This was too formidable an appeal to be slighted; and so, in homage to the skulls and red caps, I put my hand in my pocket, and stopped his clamours.

Those miserable modes of peculation are the most pardonable of any produced by the church: we have no right to regret a trifle sacrificed at the shrine of compassion, even when that compassion is mistaken; but our reason revolts at imposition, when it calls coercion to its aid, and assumes the name of right.

Without any national predilection, which you know I am above, I think our church affairs in Scotland are arranged upon a better system than any other that I know of: hence their clergy are in general examples worthy of imitation, for learning, piety, and moral conduct.

LETTER XVIII,

LABORED investigations to establish connec

tions between the history of the ancient and business of the modern world, and virulent disputes about trifles of antiquity, such as in what year this place was built, or that great man was born, when and where Julius Cæsar landed in England, whether he passed this road or that,

what rout Hannibal took over the Alps, and such like, are so essentially uninteresting, useless, and unimportant, so unprofitable, and, one would think, so painful too, that it is wonderful how so many men of great learning, have been unwise enough to employ their lives in the research.

It does not follow, however, that when information that tends to recall to our minds the great men of antiquity is presented to us, we should reject it. A man of classical taste and education feels a delight in those little memorials of what gave him pleasure in his youth. I know a gentleman, who, being at Seville, in Spain, travelled to Cordova, for no other purpose but to see the town where Lucan and Seneca were born: and I dare say, that if you were at Cologne, you would be much pleased to see the town-house, a great Gothic building, which, contains a variety of ancient inscriptions; the first to commemorate the kindness of Julius Cæsar to the Ubii, who inhabited this place, and of whom you have found mention made by him in his commentaries, and also his building two wooden bridges over the Rhine: a second commemorates Agustus sending a colony here. There is also a cross-bow of whalebone, twelve feet long, eight broad, and four inches thick, which they who speak of it conjecture to have belonged to the Emperor Maximin. There are also some Roman inscriptions in the arsenal, the import of which I now forget. It is very extraordinary, but certainly a fact, that there are, about Cologne, families yet existing, who indulge the senseless ambition of pretending to be descended from the ancient Romans, and who actually produce their genealogies, carried down from the first time this city was made a colony of the Roman empire. Of all kinds of vanity, this is perhaps the most extravagant; for, if antiquity merely be the object, all are equally high, since all must have originated from the same stock; and if it be the pride of belonging to a particular family who were distinguished for valor or virtue, a claim which often only serves to prove the degeneracy of the claimant, it could not apply in the case of a whole people: but this is among the frailties of humanity; and we are often so

dazzled with the splendor of terestrial glory, that we endeavor to be allied to it even by the most remote and ridiculous connections. I heard of a man, whose pride and boast, when drunk, was, that Dean Swift had once thrown his mother's oysters (she was an oyster-wench) about the street, and then gave her half a crown as an atonement for the injury. On the strength of this affi nity did he call the Dean nothing but Cosin Jonathan, though the Dean was dead before he was born!

But of all the stories I have ever heard as illustrative of this strange ambition, that which the late lord Anson has left us is the most striking. When that great man was travelling in the East, he hired a vessel to visit the island of Tenedos: his pilot, a modern Greek, pointing to a bay as they sailed along, exclaimed in great triumph, "There, ay, there it was that our fleet lay."--" What fleet?" interrogated Anson--" Why, our Grecian fleet, at the siege of Troy," returned the pilot.

While those doughty descendants of the ancient Romans indulge the cheerless idea of their great and illustrious line of ancient ancestry, the prince who rules them felicitates himself with the more substantial dignities and emoluments of his modern offices. As elector and archbishop of Cologne, he has dominion over a large, fruitful, and opulent country: he is the most powerful of the ecclesiastical electors: he has many suffragan princes, lay and spiritual, under him; and he is archchancellor of the Holy Roman Empire. The revenues

of his archbishopric amount annually to one hundred and thirty thousand pounds Sterling; and as elector, he is possessed of other great benefices. I presume, because he is a prince, that he is a man of sense; and, I will venture to say, that, as such, he would not barter those good things for the power to demonstrate that Lucretia was his aunt, Brutus his grandfather, and the great Julius Cæsar himself his cousin-german.

Christ chose his disciples out of fishermen. The Chapter of Cologne is, perhaps, on the contrary, the very most aristocratic body existing, being composed of forty canons, who are princes or counts of the empire-Of those, twenty-five choose the archbishop, and many ad

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