leagues from that city. They are eight in number, and their intrinsic value is estimated at two thousand pounds. The largest, a splendid circle of gold one foot in diameter, bears the name of King Receswinthus, who reigned in the middle of the seventh century. This diadem is adorned with fine rubies, pearls, and sapphires, and round it runs a row of little crosses of carnelian and gold. From these crosses letters of gold and carnelian are suspended by golden chains, and these form the words Recesvinthus Rex Offeret-"King Receswinthus offers (this)." From these again hang twenty-four drops of gold and pearls, and below these are twenty-four pink rubies, each cut into the shape of a heart, so that a gorgeous fringe of golden chain-work and jewels adorns the crown, and a large jewelled cross is suspended from it in front. The second crown, supposed to be that of his queen, is not so rich as the first, but it too is adorned with precious stones and fringed with rubies. The other crowns are of a very plain pattern, and are supposed to be the coronets of Gothic nobles. The inscription on the crown of Receswinthus shows that it was offered to a church, for it was not an uncommon thing for kings in the Middle Ages to hang their crowns above the altars of some famous sanctuary. Thus Canute gave his crown to Winchester Cathedral, and many of the cathedrals of the continent either have, or formerly hundred years the Iron Crown has held the foremost place amongst the diadems of Europe, for it was formed by the skillful hands of Roman goldsmiths in the sixth century, and sent by Pope Gregory the Great to the Gothic Queen Theodolinda, when she had freed Lombardy from the Arian heresy. Its form is simple, as one might expect from its ancient date. It is a broad flat ring or diadem of gold, adorned with enamelled flowers and precious stones; stones not cut into facets, as in modern jewelry, but emeralds, sapphires, and rubies in their rough uncut form as they came from the mine. But inside this circle of gold and jewels is a thin band of iron, from which the crown takes its name, and this iron, tradition asserts, is one of the nails of the true cross hammered out into a ring. Long and angry have been the battles fought by antiquaries on this point. Those who deny its authenticity, headed by Muratori, certainly bring weighty arguments to the support of their view; but the tradition has survived all their learned folios, gallant champions have fought, pen in hand, in its defence, and still in the language of the people the crown of Monza is called il sacro chiodo, "the holy nail." It graced the imperial front of Charlemagne and a long succession of German emperors, ending with Charles V. But the last sovereign who wore it was Napoleon I. In May, 1805, he assembled at Milan the dignitaries of the Empire, the represen-had, royal crowns in their treasuries. On one of the tatives of his royal and imperial allies, and a splendid circle of marshals and generals, and in their presence he placed it on his head, repeating the proud motto of the Iron Crown: "God has given it to me; woe to him who touches it!" In 1859, the Austrians, retreating from Lombardy, took the Iron Crown with them to Mantua, and subsequently to Vienna. There it remained until, by the treaty which ceded Venetia to Italy in 1866, it was restored to its old home in the sacristy of the cathedral at Monza, and there it rests to-day amid the other treasures of Theodolinda-her jewelled comb, her golden hen and seven chickens (the symbols of Lombardy and its seven provinces), and the crown of her husband Agilulph. Next in age to the Iron Crown, but far exceed ing it in value and beauty of workmanship, are the crowns of the old Gothic Kings of Spain, discovered seventeen years ago near Toledo. They were found in some excavations which were made in an ancient cemetery at Fuente di Guerrazar, two smaller coronets there is an inscription indicating the church which possessed these splendid crowns. The inscription is in barbarous Latin, and it may be translated: "In the name of the Lord, Sonnica offers this to Santa Maria di Abaxo." Now, a church of that name stands at the foot of the hill on which Toledo is built, full two leagues from the cemetery. How, then, did the crowns make their way to it? Not by theft, or they would not have remained there long. Probably, when, fifty years after the reign of Receswinthus, the Moors came pouring into the valley of the Tagus and took Toledo, some Gothic priest or noble removed the crowns from the church to save them from the plundering infidels, and, unable to take them with him in his flight, buried them in the cemetery of Fuente, hoping, doubtless, to come back for them at no distant day. But years on years passed before the Christians returned to victory from the Asturian hills, and then no one knew where the rich treasure was concealed, and there it lay for eleven hundred years, until in our own days an accident brought the buried crowns to light, and the bright jewels which had passed long centuries in darkness, once more flashed in the sun. Another ancient crown now in the regalia of the Austro-Hungarian empire, has a singular history. It is the famous "Sacred Crown of Hungary." Tradition says that it was formed by the hands of angels for the sainted King Stephen; but history gives us the true story of its twofold origin, for the crown is partly Roman, partly Byzantine, and is, in fact, two crowns united, one above the other. The first was sent by Pope Sylvester II. to Stephen when he was crowned in 1001. It was a golden diadem, enriched with pearls and precious stones. Seventy years later, Duke Geyza, one of the Hungarian nobles, received as a present from Michael Ducas, Emperor of the East, a splendid Byzantine crown; and when he became King of Hungary, he joined this circlet to the diadem, so as to make of the two a single crown. From the broad jewelled ring which forms its base spring four arches of gold. At the base of each is an enamelled portrait; the largest represents our Saviour; the others, Geyza himself, and the Emperors Ducas and Constantius Porphyrogenitus. Four smaller enamels on the front of the crown represent the archangels Michael and Gabriel, and saints George and Demetrius. Besides the pearls, the stones which adorn it are sapphires, amethysts, and rubies, many of them rough and uncut, like those of the crown of Monza. At the back is a very large sapphire, surrounded by four green stones, on the precise character of which jewellers are not agreed. This crown was regarded as the palladium of the Hungarian nation. It was more than a mere mark of sovereignty. They seemed to look upon it with a superstious awe, as almost a living thing. It had its palace in the castles of Ofen or Vizegrad; the two nobles who were responsible for its safe keeping were among the highest officials of the kingdom; and under their orders they had a strong guard of picked men, who garrisoned the palace honored by the residence of the Sacred Crown. No king could rule until it had been placed on his brow; if he died between his election and coronation, his name was struck off the roll of kings; and even a pretender acquired a quasi-right of sovereignty if he could, by fraud or force, secure possession of this double crown. In 1301 there was The a disputed election to the vacant throne. rival claimants were Robert of Anjou and Naples, and Prince Wenzel the Younger of Bohemia. War raged between the rival parties, and the prince had suffered some defeats, when his father Wenzel, King of Bohemia, came to his aid. Marching into Hungary, he occupied Ofen, seized the Sacred Crown, and taking it with him, returned to Prague, accompanied by his son. accompanied by his son. The Hungarians then gave up both claimants, and elected Otho of Bavaria; and, by some means which history does. not record, most probably by paying down a good round sum of money, Otho succeeded in inducing old Wenzel to give him up the crown, without which his election would have been of little use to him. In order to reach his new kingdom, he had to pass through the territories of Austria, Now ensues a series of strange incidents scarcely credible regarding the crown, which was for a time contended for by rival kings, and at length lost. At last, being found, Joseph II. brought it to Vienna, but it was soon sent back to Hungary. During the revolution of 1848, it was in the hands of the Provisional Government, and on the defeat and flight of Kossuth, it mysteriously disappeared. Some said it had been brought to London, others that Kossuth had broken it up and sold its jewels in Turkey. Neither report was true. A few months after, a peasant offered for a sum of money to restore the missing crown, and pointed out a tree, amongst the roots of which Kossuth and his friends had buried it, in order to deprive the Austrians of this symbol of sovereignty. It was solemnly restored to the castle of Ofen. "It is only now," said an Austrian statesman, "that we are really reigning again in Hungary." Only a few years ago the crown was brought from its castle under happier auspices, to be placed on the brows of Francis Joseph, as a symbol of the reconciliation betwen two great nations, when, after the crushing blow of Sadowa, Austria yielded all the claims of Hungary. The ancient crown of Scotland, now in the castle of Edinburgh, has had adventures not unlike some of those of the Hungarian diadem. It is supposed to have been made for King Robert Bruce, and is formed of two circles of gold, the upper one being surmounted by a row of crosses and fleurs-de-lis, while the lower and broader ring is adorned with precious stones in their rough unpolished state. From this rise two arches of gold, which unite in a ball and cross. Even when the Stuarts became kings of England, they came to Scotland, after their English coronation, to receive this crown at Scone. Charles I. indeed wished to have the crown and regalia of Scotland sent up to London, in order that the ceremony might take place there, but this was regarded as an infringement of the rights of the kingdom, and he had to come to Scotland, where he was crowned, June 18, 1633. When, after his father's death, Charles II. asserted his rights in Scotland, he was crowned at Scone on January 1, 1651. On Cromwell's advancing across the Border, the crown and regalia were sent away from Edinburgh to the strong castle of Dunnottar, on the shores of the North Sea, lest they should fall into his hands. They were placed under the protection of a picked garrison, commanded by the Earl Marischal and Ogilvy of Barras, a veteran soldier. Several guns were sent to reinforce the castle, among others Mons Meg, and the great embrasure through which this monster was fired is still shown at Dunnottar. On the 3d of January, 1652, the Cromwellian General, Lambert, having closely invested the castle, summoned it to surrender. This summons was rejected, and the siege began. Ogilvy had previously asked that a ship might be sent to carry off the crown, sceptre, and sword of state; but Charles had not been able to comply with his request. It soon became evident that the castle could not hold out long, and it was therefore necessary to devise some plan for saving the regalia. The chief agent in the plot was the wife of the Rev. James Granger, of Kinneff, a small church four miles from Dunnottar. She obtained from General Lambert permission to pass through his lines, in order to visit the lady of the castle, and on her return secretly brought away the Scottish crown. Her maid followed her, bearing two long bundles of lint, as if for spinning, but in one of them the sword of state was hidden, and in the other the sceptre. On reaching Kenneff, she gave them to her husband, and that night they went into the church, raised a flag of the pavement in front of the pulpit, dug a hole, and buried there the crown and sceptre. In another part of the church they hid the sword in the same way. When, on the fall of the castle, the regalia were found to be gone, great was Lambert's indignation. Tradition says that he suspected the Grangers, and tortured them in vain in order to extort their secret. But suspicion was at length lulled to rest by the report that the crown had been sent abroad. Occasionally, the minister and his wife went by night into the church to change the cloths in which the crown was wrapped, in order to preserve it from the damp; and at the Restoration they gave up the regalia in safety to Charles II. A grant of two thousand marks rewarded Mrs. Granger for her faithful service. After the Union, when, on account of the strength of the Jacobite party, the English government very unwisely exhibited on many occasions the mistrust with which they regarded the sentiment of Scottish nationality, the crown and regalia, as its most striking emblems, were shut up in a strong coffer in the crown room of Edinburgh Castle. This took place in 1707, and there they remained for more than a century, until they were again restored to light by the commission appointed for that purpose in 1818. Of the modern crowns of continental Europe, perhaps the most remarkable is the well-known triple crown or papal tiara, or perhaps we should say tiaras, for there are four of them. The tiara is seldom worn by the Pope; it is carried before him in procession, but, except on rare occasions, he wears a mitre like an ordinary bishop. Of the existing tiaras, the most beautiful is that which was given by Napoleon I. to Pius VII. in 1805. It is said to be worth upwards of nine thousand pounds. Its three circlets are almost incrusted with sapphires, emeralds, rubies, pearls, and diamonds; and the great emerald at its apex, said to be the most beautiful in the world, is alone valued at sixteen thousand francs. Napoleon had another magnificent crown made for himself in 1804. It was this crown that he so proudly placed upon his head with his own hands in the cathedral of Notre-Dame. It is a jewelled circle, from which spring several arches, surmounted by the globe and cross, and where the arches join the circle there are alternately flowers and miniature eagles of gold. After his downfall, it remained in the French treasury until it was assumed by another Bonaparte, when Napoleon III. made himself Emperor in 1852. It is now in the regalia of France, which have only just been brought back to Paris from the western seaport to which they were sent for security during the Prus sian invasion, just as the Scottish regalia were sent to Dunnottar. If we may judge from some of the German photographs of the Emperor William, the crown of the new German Empire is of a very peculiar shape, apparently copied from the old Carlovingian diadem. It is not a circle, but a polygon, being formed of flat jewelled plates of gold united by the edges, and having above them two arches, supporting the usual globe and cross. Crusader king, Baldwin of Jerusalem. It consists of a jewelled diadem of gold, ornamented with leaves and trefoil, and in two of these ornaments are thorns said to have been taken from the crown of our Saviour. The tradition recalls the words of another king of Jerusalem, the chivalrous Godfrey de Bouillon. When, after the taking of Jerusalem, the Crusaders made him king, and offered There are several antique crowns in the churches of the Continent. One of the most interesting is that in the treasury of the cathedral of Aix-la-him a crown, he is said to have put it aside, saying: Chapelle, which is an offering sent there by Mary, Queen of Scots. It is a gold circlet adorned with jewels and pearls. A still older crown is preserved in the great church of Namur. It is that of the "I will never wear a crown of gold in this city, where my God once wore a crown of thorns;" a reply worthy of Tasso's hero, the deliverer of the Holy Sepulchre. RIPPLES FROM THE RHONE. BY FRED. MYRON COLBY. IN TWO PARTS.-PART I. THE RHONE has not the great name which marks the Rhine. No poet has sung its praises; no legends are in the hand-book. The superstitious creations and fantastic shapes of water-sprites, gnomes, and Black Huntsmen, have never revelled among its waves nor haunted its olive groves and sunny vineyards. Neither does the traveller seem to fancy the most rapid of the great European streams. The few who make its acquaintance usually do so with knapsack on back and steelpointed baton in hand, when they stand upon the mother glacier and watch the river child glide brightly into air; or perhaps it is near fair Geneva that, loitering on a stone bridge, they mark the second start in life of the strong river, and philosophize, if they are addicted to the habit, regarding the corruption which fouls the pellucid waters of the snow from their partnership with those of of the clamorous and uncleanly Arne. If they ever descend the stream it is with no thought, no perception of its beauties. They regard it only as a mere beast of burden. They are bound south, and they know that the "swift, arrowy Rhone" will add wings to the speed of steam; that stepping on board the long, low steamboat from the noble quays of Lyons at summer's dawn, they will step ashore amid the uproarious Avignon porters by the summer's eve. All else is a blank-the flight past rocks and vines and carnlands, by old Roman VOL. IX.-25 towers, villages and cities, where medieval architecture mingles with the modern, and under bridges of stone whose arches may have been laid by one of the Cæsars, and which may have bristled with the lances of proud old Raymond's warriors in the brave Crusading days-all this is unnoticed. Why is this partiality exhibited? Why should the Rhine, with its castled rocks, its Mayence, its Coblentz, and its Cologne, its memories of Cæsar, Charlemagne and Napoleon, be the delight of tourists who scarcely deign to look upon the Rhone, equally as famous for its historical lore? We answer: It may be fancy; it may be the secret charm of fable which has invested the northern stream with memories of mermaids and Oreads to the exclusion of the other, or it may be the tyranny of Fashion. Really we incline to the latter. For the moment let us put the two streams in juxtaposition so that we may the more readily compare their respective charms and beauties, and arrive at a just conception of the same. The two rivers have their sources in the same Alpine mountains. One Rhine spring rises to the north of the Pennine Alps, no more than twenty miles from the cold fountain cradle of its southern sister, the Rhone. The same rain and melted snow feed them, but each stream follows the course it has traced. The one flows towards the north, traversing the vast forests of the Germanic tribes, ancestors of the Angles, the Saxons, and the Franks; cold, cloudy, industrious, resolute, are the countries it waters, fit types of the majestic stream which gives them life. The other flows to the south towards the sunrise; it crosses all the towns where the Greeks and Romans successively planted the germs of civilization, the traditions of their genius, and those melodious languages immortalized by the noblest poets and the greatest authors that ever honored humanity. The Rhine, stately and calm, glides on its way to that northern sea through countries richly illustrated by history, legend, and romantic minstrelsy, as well as the evidences of modern industry. Over its vinecovered borders and dead volcanoes hover the shadows of three mighty men-Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon. What memories are hers-of Romans marching and countermarching, and building camps, towers and towns on its banks and gorges; of their victories and reverses; of the feudal ages when "banners waved on high and battles passed below;" when mighty strongholds rose up as if by magic, the homes of knightly robbers who levied toll on travellers and burghers, till the latter put iron pots on their heads and came to drag them down; of great movements of emperors and kings, generals and ecclesiastical councils, and all the long fierce argument-not yet ended-between the French and Germans-the men of Frankenland and the men of Hessenland. The Rhone, by turns a rivulet and a torrent, now flows, now precipitates itself through a land filled with poesy which has never been sung, beneath a blue sky, towards an azure lake-that glorious midland sea, which from the beginning of history has seen developed on its banks all the destinies of mankind, and where perhaps some day will be decided the future fate of humanity. Between sunrise and sunset its waters sweep from the land where the chestnut and the walnut abounds, through the zone where the mulberry is almost exclusively the tree; next past the region where men are clipping and twisting and trimming the olive, at once sacred and classic, and, finally, fairly into the flats, where tropical rice grows out of the fever-haunted swamps and Hindoo-like jungles of the Carnague, thus accomplishing in a day a run of one hundred and ninety leagues from a climate which may be described as temperate, to one which is to all intents and purposes torrid. Mars and Minerva have done great things on the Rhone as well as on the Rhine. From the earliest age it has been a historic river. Back of all its annals of war and bloodshed and ambition, in the beginning of the old savage days, long before the tales of the great religious wars of France were in vogue, grim tales going back to the Albigenses and Count Raymond of Toulouse; and in later days dealing with the feuds which Ivry put an end to, but which were renewed when the peasants of the wild hills of the Cevennes, in their white camisas, Largue d'Oc for shirts, from which the name of Camisards is derived, worn over their clothes as uniforms, held out the long and obstinate contest of the dragonades, and frequently beat even the great Charles Hector, Duc de Villars, with the best of the cavaliers of the Grand Monarque, there is outlined against its horizon the great name of Hannibal. This famous Carthaginian worthy was one of the greatest military heroes that the world has ever known, and he was no less great as a statesman in time of peace than at the head of his armies. Livy's estimate of his character is unfair. Polybius, a much more candid and correct historian, expressly contradicts the charge of cruelty and inhumanity brought against him, and of his alleged faithlessness not a single instance is known. As a general and statesman his name rivals any other after those of Cæsar and Napoleon. Scipio was a boy compared with him. With Roman soldiers Hannibal would have conquered the world. Nay, he was more than a great general and a politic statesman. He was an ardent patriot. Washington, Bruce, Gustavus Vasa, Touissaint L'Ouverture, were not more gifted with the spirit of patriotism. He was also a man of cultivated mind, the friend of learning and progress and the patron of scholars. Like his father, the great Hamilcar Barcas, he seems to have possessed too those irresistible personal attractions which enabled him to guide and control all those who were under him without any difficulty. That he was beaten at last does not detract from his glory. His fame is as secure as though he had conquered the haughty Cornelian and turned the tables on old Delenda est Carthago; and it was better for the world that Rome should triumph. There was no grander exploit ever performed either in ancient or modern times than Hannibal's march from Saguntum to the valley of the Po. If |