these pillars (numbering more than sixty) is curiously fashioned and covered with elaborate tracery and foliage, each differing from the others. All are executed in dark stone. They support a lowarched, brick vaulting, ribbed with stone; and a high second story, varying in design on the four sides; and above this a high, ugly, slated roof. The area is not scrupulously clean. The architecture suggests that pleasing, half-Moresque cloister that, until recently, existed in the old Bourse at Antwerp. There is a second court not in so good order. Perhaps, however, the edifice best worth seeing at Liège is the Church of St. Jacques. It cannot be associated with this story, having been built between 1513 and 1528; but it is a very rare and interesting example of the richest Pointed architecture, and contains some of the most perfect existing painted glass. The exterior is, as usual in many continental towns, obstructed by inferior buildings; but the interior is open and in tolerable order. It is built of pale stone, resembling that of Caen in texture and color. The roof is intricately ribbed and nearly covered with Arabesque polychromatic decoration. The apse is superb, with a range of low-arched chapels, an elaborately traceried triforium (that extends through the church), and a very lofty clerestory, with sumptuously carved corbels, canopies, and statuary. There are several very ancient churches - much older than the time of the story — that will repay examination. From the tower of St. Martin's, situated in the upper part of the city, a worn, venerable gray tower, may be had perhaps the best view of Liège and its environs, with the great quadrangle of the bishop's palace, the varied town around it, the rivers that meet there, and the great, green, yet thickly inhabited hills that enclose all. While Quentin examined the old city, he had an opportunity to witness an uproar in it, characteristic of the times, and in which he innocently became an important actor. Escaping this, however, he soon was involved in a more desperate affair, - a night assault and capture of the bishop's castle by the insurgent citizens. Constantly watchful of the ladies of Croye, he sought to serve them during this trouble, and succeeded in rescuing one of them; but it must be confessed greatly to his agitation, when he found that he had saved the aunt of the Countess Isabelle, and not that lovely being herself, who was somehow then betrayed into the power of William de la Marck. This misfortune at once caused Quentin to explore the bishop's palace where the fierce rebel held a wild revel, rendered tragic by the murder of the bishop, an event startlingly described by Scott. Quentin bravely contrived to escape thence with the lady Isabelle, and to elude the black troopers of Marck who pursued them. 66 The place of action then changed from Liège to Peronne, at that time a great castle held for the Duke of Burgundy. Once a very strongly fortified place, and of considerable importance, it is now rather an out-of-the-way and infrequently visited town about thirty miles east of Amiens. It is "situated upon a deep river, in a flat country, and [was] surrounded by strong bulwarks and profound moats at the time of the story. It has been thought "one of the strongest fortresses in France." Indeed," adds a note to the novel, "though lying on an exposed and warlike frontier, it was never taken by an enemy, but preserved the proud name of Peronne la Pucelle, until the Duke of Wellington, a great destroyer of that sort of reputation, took the place in the memorable advance upon Paris in 1815." "Though still fortified by a brick rampart and a ditch, it is no longer of any importance as a fortress, from its being commanded by . . . neighboring heights." It "is much dilapidated," says Murray, ever present and ready. "A large part is probably not older than the sixteenth century. Yet there remain many dismal dungeons on the ground-floor. The chamber occupied by Louis is still pointed out in the Tour Herbert; and, beside it, the miserable cell, on a level with the moat, where Charles the Simple ended his days, a wretched captive." The town is not of unusual interest. There the splendid Duke received King Louis and a small retinue, and entertained them at a great supper, during which the Duke charged his royal guest with having instigated the murder of the Bishop of Liège. An exciting uproar ensued, — and a scene that is historical, described by Philip de Comines, during which Louis narrowly escaped a fatal bar to his career, fortunate, indeed, in finding the scene end in nothing worse than his confinement by the Duke, who was violently incensed at news he then received from Liège, especially the account of the murder of his friend and ally the bishop. Several important incidents ensued. Examination was had into the subject of the king's complicity with the revolt of the Liègeois and its consequences, and a variety of diplomacy was exhibited. The Countess Isabelle, in the course of her fortunes, established there, refused an exalted alliance offered to her. Finally, the King and the Duke became in a degree recon ciled; and Louis escaped from captivity by submission to terms that his powerful vassal exacted from him, terms specifying that he would in person accompany the Duke and employ the royal troops in subduing the rebellion that he had instigated. The King, performing these "bitter and degrading conditions" (to which he was further obliged to swear, upon a crucifix said to have belonged to Charlemagne), left Peronne with the Duke and their respective troops and attacked Liège. Desperate fighting ensued, account of which is fully and graphically given on the pages of the novel, — an account that will entertain an evening or two at a hotel there, and that need not be sketched here, since this military move brought again the action of the story to the place that was the last scene of it. Very properly, however, mention may here be added, that the Scotch archer conducted himself with all his characteristic pluck and endurance, and that his uncle did due vengeance upon the ferocious William de la Marck. But only the words of Scott himself should tell the fortunes of the Countess Isabelle, and how "sense, firmness, and gallantry" were put in possession of "wealth, rank, and beauty;" and this sketch may end with the lines that complete his elaborately and magnificently finished composition: "Some better bard shall sing, in feudal state, How Braquemont's Castle op'd its Gothic gate, Travellers who have passed from France into Belgium may be supposed to journey through that pleasant land, and to see its abundant relics of the richest people of the Middle Ages, and some of the most sumptuous architecture of that period. Then they may traverse the famous and beautiful valley of the Rhine, with its profuse attractions of scenery and art, of history and romance, of brilliant and gay watering places, ancient cities, and modern comfort united to old-world wonders, until Switzerland — that fascinating country—is reached; and, in it, the scene of the opening of another of the Great Magician's mediæval romances, the action of which is represented to have occurred only half a dozen years after the adventures of Quentin Durward, and that introduces several of the historical persons portrayed in the story bearing his name. This opening scene is near the picturesque and delightful city of Lucerne, charmingly situated on the Lake of the Four Cantons. XLV. "ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN." Twenty-seventh Novel of the Series; Written 1828-29; Published May, 1829; Author's age, 58; Time of action, 1474-77. WHILE HILE the history and the sublime and beautiful scenery of Switzerland seem to have inspired few native writers, or indeed any whose works possess the world-wide celebrity of their country, and whose names have become as familiar as have those of the authors of some other countries, any such deficiency seems curiously supplied by associations that many of the most prominent writers of other lands have created in it with themselves and with their works. Indeed, during the last hundred years, few great European authors have omitted mention of Switzerland, and several have invested some of its noblest scenes with the charms of their genius, that are suggested almost everywhere throughout its extent. Near Geneva, at Ferney, in full view of the Alps and of the lake, Voltaire lived and wrote for nearly twenty years (1759–1777). Farther east, along the same lake, at Lausanne, lived and wrote Gibbon. There, he has informed us, "in a summer-house in my garden," on "the night of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve . . . I wrote the last line of the last page" of the "History of Rome, in her Decline and Fall." Yet farther east is Clarens, celebrated by Rousseau in his "Nouvelle Héloïse," and by that greater genius whose immortal verse lives like sweet music through many a glorious Swiss scene,- by Byron, whose more exquisite sentiment apostrophizes, "Clarens, birthplace of deep Love! Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought: " "T was not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot, Peopling it with affections; but he found It was the scene which passion must allot Not far beyond it is Chillon, where lingered Bonnivard, as told by Byron, where came the tragic end of Héloïse. On the other hand from Geneva, who, when near Chamouni, does not recall those familiar words of Coleridge? "Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !" And how better has an American poet, in verse, associated with those noble lines and that sublime spot the idea expressed in prose at the opening of this chapter. Says Holmes (in “ Urania”), — "Unblest by any save the goat-herd's lines, Mont Blanc rose soaring through 'his sea of pines'; In vain the Arve and Arveiron dash, No hymn salutes them but the Ranz des Vaches, Till lazy Coleridge, by the morning's light, Gazed for a moment on the fields of white, And lo, the glaciers found at length a tongue, Mont Blanc was vocal, and Chamouni sung!" Again, beneath the mighty mountain walls of the Lake of the Four Cantons, where Tell and his brave Swiss lived and fought, how suggestively are read noble words in bright letters upon a crag rising from the deep waters : "Dem Sänger Tell's, Friedrich Schiller. Die Ur-Cantone, 1859." '(To Frederick Schiller, the bard of Tell. The Swiss Cantons: 1859.) " And how one longs to hear Rossini's stirring music resound through that adequately grand scene! And among the high Alps of the Oberland of Berne, how are its heights and the peerless crest of the Jungfrau haunted by that strange, awful spirit,— Byron as "Manfred"! But one need not add illustration of the eloquence of European or of American genius with which this land of the Swiss is all vocal. And one must repress the many thoughts that come of the exciting records of adventurous mountain-climbers and Alpine-Club men. Theirs is a new and lesser, but far from ignoble, literature, full of manliness if not of sentiment. Among all the writers who have associated their doing and thinking with this wonderful land, so comprehensive a genius and author as Sir Walter Scott is not wanting, but introduces us among its central glories to one of his later works, indeed, almost the last work of his imagination, that, if not of highest strain, is yet far above any similar rivals in that region. He began this work during the autumn of 1828, when, as he said, he had become "a writing automaton," while he was making his gigantic efforts time and he-against misfortune. He finished it "before breakfast on the 29th of April," 1829, and "immediately |