LVII. Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career, His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes; And fitly may the stranger lingering here Pray for his gallant spirit's bright repose; For he was Freedom's champion, one of those, The few in number, who had not o'erstept The charter to chastise which she bestows On such as wield her weapons; he had kept [wept.(1) The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him LVIII. Here Ehrenbreitstein (1), with her shatter'd wall Black with the miner's blast, upon her height Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ball Rebounding idly on her strength did light: A tower of victory! from whence the flight Of baffled foes was watch'd along the plain: But Peace destroy'd what War could never blight, And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rainOn which the iron shower for years had pour'd in vain. (1) The monument of the young and lamented General Marceau (killed by a rifle-ball at Alterkirchen, on the last day of the fourth year of the French republic) still remains as described. The inscriptions on his monument are rather too long, and not required: his name was enough; France adored, and her enemies admired; both wept over him. His funeral was attended by the generals and detachments from both armies. In the same grave General Hoche is interred, a gallant man also in every sense of the word; but though he distinguished himself greatly in battle, he had not the good fortune to die there: his death was attended by suspicions of poison. A separate monument (not over his body, which is buried by Marceau's) is raised for him near Andernach, opposite to which one of his most memorable exploits was performed, in throwing a bridge to an island on the Rhine. The shape and style are different from that of Marceau's, and the inscription more simple and pleasing:-" The Army of the Sambre and Meuse to its Commander-in-Chief Hoche." This is all, and as it should be. Hoche was esteemed among the first of France's earlier generals, before Buonaparte monopolised her triumphs. He was the destined commander of the invading army of Ireland. (1) Ehrenbreitstein, i. e. " the broad stone of honour," one of the LIX. Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long delighted The stranger fain would linger on his way! Thine is a scene alike where souls united Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray; And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey On self-condemning bosoms, it were here, Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to the year. LX. Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu ! There can be no farewell to scene like thine ; Their cherish'd gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine! (') The brilliant, fair, and soft,—the glories of old days, strongest fortresses in Europe, was dismantled and blown up by the French at the truce of Leoben. It had been, and could only be, reduced by famine or treachery. It yielded to the former, aided by surprise. After having seen the fortifications of Gibraltar and Malta, it did not much strike by comparison; but the situation is commanding. General Marceau besieged it in vain for some time, and I slept in a room where I was shown a window at which he is said to have been standing observing the progress of the siege by moonlight, when a ball struck immediately below it. (1) [On taking Hockheim, the Austrians, in one part of the engagement, got to the brow of the hill, whence they had their first view of the Rhine. They instantly halted - not a gun was fired—not a voice heard: but they stood gazing on the river with those feelings which the events of the last fifteen years at once called up. Prince Schwartzenberg rode up to know the cause of this sudden stop; then they gave three cheers, rushed after the enemy, and drove them into the water.-E.] LXI. The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, Still springing o'er thy banks, though Empires near them fall. But these recede. LXII. Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls Gather around these summits, as to show [below How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man LXIII. But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan, Nor blush for those who conquer'd on that plain; Themselves their monument; the Stygian coast Unsepulchred they roam'd, and shriek'd each wandering ghost. (1) (1) The chapel is destroyed, and the pyramid of bones diminished to a LXIV. While Waterloo with Canna's carnage vies, Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand; They were true Glory's stainless victories, Won by the unambitious heart and hand Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band, All unbought champions in no princely cause Of vice-entail'd Corruption; they no land Doom'd to bewail the blasphemy of laws Making kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause. LXV. By a lone wall a lonelier column rears A gray and grief-worn aspect of old days; 'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years, And looks as with the wild-bewilder'd gaze Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands When the coeval pride of human hands, [lands. Levell❜d Aventicum (1), hath strew'd her subject small number by the Burgundian legion in the service of France; who anxiously effaced this record of their ancestors' less successful invasions. A few still remain, notwithstanding the pains taken by the Burgundians for ages (all who passed that way removing a bone to their own country), and the less justifiable larcenies of the Swiss postilions, who carried them off to sell for knife-handles; a purpose for which the whiteness imbibed by the bleaching of years had rendered them in great request. Of these relics I ventured to bring away as much as may have made a quarter of a hero, for which the sole excuse is, that if I had not, the next passer by might have perverted them to worse uses than the careful preservation which I intend for them. (1) Aventicum, near Morat, was the Roman capital of Helvetia, where Avenches now stands. LXVI. And there-oh! sweet and sacred be the name!— Julia the daughter, the devoted gave Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave. Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave The life she lived in ; but the judge was just, And then she died on him she could not save. Their tomb was simple, and without a bust, And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust. (1) LXVII. But these are deeds which should not pass away, In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, (2) (1) Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain endeavour to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Cæcina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago;-it is thus:"Julia Alpinula: Hic jaceo. Infelicis patris infelix proles. Deæ Aventiæ Sacerdos. Exorare patris necem non potui: Male mori in fatis ille erat. Vixi annos XXIII."— I know of no human composition so affecting as this, nor a history of deeper interest. These are the names and actions which ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy tender. ness, from the wretched and glittering detail of a confused mass of conquests and battles, with which the mind is roused for a time to a false and feverish sympathy, from whence it recurs at length with all the nausea consequent on such intoxication. (2) This is written in the eye of Mont Blanc (June 3d, 1816), which even at this distance dazzles mine. — (July 20th.) I this day observed for some time the distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentière in the |