As I Stood Lost In Wonder And Admiration, My Friend, Who Introduced Me To This World Of Wonders, Pointed To A Window In One Corner Of The Building; There, She Said, Louis XVI.

Passed much of his time making locks; and there, from that balcony, Marie Antoinette appeared with her children and the king, when she addressed the wild, enraged Parisian mob.

We saw the private apartments of the unhappy queen, and the small door through which she escaped from the fury of the soldiers. We went to see the little Trianon which she had built for her amusement; a lovely place it is. Here she tried to put aside state and the queen, and be a happy human being.

Here Marie Antoinette had a laiterie, a milk house, where she is said to have made butter and cheese. Here she caused to be built twelve cottages after the Swiss fashion, and filled them with poor families whom she tried to make happy.

We went into her dairy. It was fit for a queen to make butter in. In the centre of the beautifully shaped room was a large oblong, white marble table; on each side were places for admitting the water, and under them beautiful marble reservoirs in the shape of shells, and, underneath, large slabs of white marble. All is still, all so chaste, so beautiful, all as it once was, and she, the poor sufferer, what a story of blighted hope and bitter sorrow! See her the night before her trial, which she knew would end in death, mending her own old shoes, that she might appear more decently. The solemn realities of life had come to her unsought.

I left Paris and travelled through Belgium to Cologne. The day I arrived was some holiday; so there was grand mass in the cathedral, and such music! - the immense building was filled with the sound. The full organ was played, and some of the priest singers took part. Never did music so overcome me. The sublime piece, - as I thought of Beethoven's, surely of some great composer, - performed in this glorious old cathedral, was beyond all that I had ever dreamt of. It seems to me that I might think of it again in my dying hour with delight. I felt as if it created a new soul in me. Such gushes of sweet sound, such joyful fulness of melody, such tender breathings of hope, and love, and peace, and then such floods of harmony filling all those sublime arches, ascending to the far distant roof and running along through the dim aisles - O, one must hear, to have an idea of the effect of such music in such a place.

At Bonn we took the steamer; the day was perfect, and our pleasure was full. You must see one of these fine old castles on the top of the beautiful hills - you must yourself see the blue sky through its ruined arches - you must see the vines covering every inch of the mountain that is not solid rock, and witness the lovely effect of the gray rock mingling with the tender green - you must hear the wild legend of the owner of the castle in his day of power, and feel the passage of time and civilization that has changed his fastness of strength and rapine to a beautiful adornment of this scene of peace and plenty, its glories all humbled, its terrors all passed away, and its great and only value the part it plays in a picture, and the lesson it preaches, in its decay, of the progress of justice and humanity.

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