and when the parties were supposed to have met, a pistol was put into his hand, which he fired and was awakened by the report. After the landing of the army at Louisburgh, his friends found him one day asleep in his tent, and evidently much annoyed by the cannonading. They then made him believe he was engaged, when he expressed great fear and evident disposition to run away. Against this they remonstrated, but at the same time increased his fears by imitating the groans of the dying; and when he asked who was hit, they named his particular friends, and at last they told him the man next himself in his company had fallen, when he instantly sprang from his bed, rushed out of the tent, and was only roused by falling over the tent ropes.

We will briefly allude to that peculiar effect of Imagination termed Superstition, and without reference to examples of the expiring bigotry of the darker ages, with which most of our readers are acquainted, we will entertain a hope that now the gates of learning are thrown open to every candidate for intellectual superiority, and industry and perseverence fill the chair of social pre-eminence, we cannot fail to crush the hydra superstition, and drop a curtain over the sad ignorance and credulity which induced the ancients to believe that the bleeding of Ulysses was stopped by a charm-to believe of Cato, the censor, that he could reduce dislocated limbs by an incantation-Sir Theodore Mayence, to believe in supernatural agency, and Sir Walter Scott in charms, for he says in his "Lay of the Last Minstrel,”—

"She drew the splinter from the wound, And with a charm she staunched

The blood."

Amidst all the triumphs of truth and the progress of philosophy, superstition is defined to be a belief in what is wholly repugnant to the laws of the physical and moral world; credulity, to be belief without reason; scepticism, its opposite, reason without belief.

Dr. Paris, the late learned President of the Royal College of Physicians, writing on the subject remarks, "that credulity, although nearly allied to superstition, differs widely from it, for credulity is an unbounded belief in what is possible, although destitute of proof and, perhaps, of probability, and is a far greater source of error than superstition; for the latter must be more limited in its influence, and can exist only, to any considerable extent, in the most ignorant portions of society, whereas the former diffuses itself through the minds of all classes, by which the rank and dignity of science are degraded, its valuable labours confounded with vain pretensions of

empiricism, and ignorance is enabled to claim for itself the prescriptive right of delivering oracles amidst all the triumphs of truth and the progress of philosophy-for men who believe without reason are succeeded by others that no reason will convince."

We must, in conclusion, infer that the "Swan of Avon" was not wrong when he declared

"That we were such stuff as dreams were made of,

And our little life is rounded with a sleep;"

or our great poet Milton, when he penned the fact that "The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven a Hell, and Hell a Heaven;"

or an author whose name has escaped us, when he wrote

"The unwilling brain feigns often what it would not,

And we trust Imagination with such fantasies

As the tongue does not fashion into words."

ΤΗ

The Dom of Cologne.

HIS may be deemed a trite subject, and no doubt it in some measure is so; but there are few ecclesiastical buildings which possess the varied and enduring interest attached to the Dom of Cologne. It has been more than six hundred years in building, and is not yet anything like finished. During this time, the work was for nearly three hundred years entirely suspended, and the repairs alone, when it was resumed after this break, in 1824, cost £52,500. In the year 1842, the estimate for the entire completion of the Dom, according to the original plan, was five million of thalers-£750,000 of our money. To accomplish this, forty or fifty years of peace in the world around were said to be indispensable. It may occur to us now whether these conditions are likely to be fulfilled if they happen not to be so, the building of the Dom of Cologne may stretch out far towards the end of the 20th century.

The first stone was laid on the Feast of the Assumption, 15th of August, 1248. On that day next week, six hundred and eighteen years will have been completed since the foundation was laid by Conrad of Hochsteden, the then Archbishop of the diocese of Cologne, and the "setter up and puller down" of the Cæsars of Germany. Among three whom his efforts raised to the Imperial

throne, was Richard Earl of Cornwall; and when the Archbishop came to London to conduct him to his new dignity, his brother the king, Henry III., caused by a brief, a collection to be made all over England for the building of the Dom. So far England took an early part in the work-1257.

There is no doubt that the multiplied territorial possessions of the Electoral Archbishops, sufficient during the years elapsed to have built an hundred Doms, were the immediate cause why the church was not completed. There was no feudal broil of the age, no quarrel about fiefs and inheritances, in which these prelates did not take an active part; and some of them even were present in battles, if indeed they did not personally take part in the combat. Some bright exceptions there were, as the saintly Anno, who devoted all he possessed to the benefit of his see and the church. Besides all this, Cologne was a free town, distinct from the diocesan territories of its Archbishops; and as such, owned a free spirit. To subjugate the town, all the energies and efforts of the various Archbishops were successively directed, but in vain Cologne was determined to preserve its freedom, and did so; for at last the wearied prelates retired from it, and fixed their court at Bonn ;they left the wonderful Dom to its fate. But to the people of the free town the building of the cathedral church had always been an object of intense interest: it is so to the present day. There is a little newspaper published there, called the "Domblatt," which regularly reports progress in the building, and amount of contributions towards it.

On the roof of the Dom stands the far-famed Crane-not a bird, but a machine for hoisting the large stones required. This Crane is regarded almost with the same sacredness as the Dom itself. As far in the distance as you can see the Dom, so far you see the Crane, not so very unlike an unuțterably large bird, its beak projecting into the air, sitting where it has done for hundreds of years, seeming to watch over the unfinished edifice like some guardian presence. It is made of wood, and therefore must have been often renewed in the long interval of time; and this was always carefully done. It was once taken quite down; a serious epidemic broke out, and the calamity was attributed to the removal of the Dom-guardian: it was immediately restored to its place.

No description can give an idea of the feelings which arrest the mind when, standing beneath the unfinished southern tower, you look up to the clustering reeds which clothe it, and though a small portion only is built, the grandeur of the whole design seems to infuse itself into the mind of the beholder. The same design

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planned six hundred years ago by "Master Gerhard," is to be carried out without any change :-we say "Master Gerhard," because though there have been arguments as to who the original architect was, and we must ever regret that his name should be actually unknown; yet as Boisserée, the best historian of the Dom, is of decided opinion that it was Master Gerhard" whose wonderful genius composed the plans for this great work, we would not wish to think otherwise. It is pleasanter to think that the name of the Dom's presiding genius should not be entirely lost he who could plan so mighty a structure, and build patiently, knowing that he could never see it finished, deserves to be recorded among the great names of art. It is certain that from the beginning of the work till the end of the century, (the 13th century,) when he died, the works were entirely under the direction of Master Gerhard. While the Archbishops were contending with the rights of the free town, uttering excommunications, &c., he was toiling at his work amid all hindrances that is all we gather about him. He died, leaving a family of three sons and one daughter: all of these embraced the monastic life, and in the course of years finished their lives, each in his separate cloister.

The whole building is 500 feet long, the transept breadth 250, the roof 200, the towers each at the bottom 100 feet wide, and in height intended to be 500 feet. The foundation of the towers is ascertained to be 45 feet deep in the ground. The stone for the building is brought down the Rhine from the Seven Mountains.

Seventy-four years after the foundation, the choir was finished for service, and soon after the poet Petrarch visited Cologne, and has left on record his admiration of the work. Slowly, however-very slowly it went on-in 1463, Conrad Ruyn, Grand Master of the brotherhood of the Stone Masons of Southern Germany (query, Free Masons) went on with the nave, and in the year 1300 it was finished so far as the capitals of the pillars: then the building ceased. The nave stood roofless for more than 300 years; the guardian Crane was left brooding in solitary affection on the roof of the choir. Yet even this dismal period was a period of peace and repose, though of inactivity. It was broken in 1794, when the French Republican army took possession of Cologne, sacked the treasures of the Dom, disbanded the monks who fed daily 12,000 persons at their Convent gates, but probably did not stable their horses in the nave of the cathedral because of the inconvenient absence of the roof. In 1801, at the peace of Luneville, the entire church property of the Rhine provinces was secularised and divided. Then was completed the humiliation of the Dom: in its workshops

lay the archives, the records, the plans, the parchments, the leases, the accounts of expenditure-every particular of its history for the past 600 years. All these were torn out of their coverts, and scattered in all directions as lumber. After the great peace was established in 1814, the King of Prussia, of whose dominions Cologne formed a part, undertook to re-organise the building of the Dom. Search was made everywhere for the original plans: six of them were at length recovered from various hiding places, and the architects were enabled to trace and map out the designs of good Master Gerhard.

When the German Volunteers returned home after the war, some one went into the garret of a public house in Darmstadt to paint a triumphal arch. He discovered a large parchment skin, stretched out upon the floor, nailed fast down, and used for the drying of beans. This was the original plan of the northern tower. It was remembered that in 1801 a division of some of the booty from the Dom had taken place in this same public house, and thus had the design of the tower escaped destruction. The parchment was but little injured; the signature of the architect, however, was gone.

Wherein did true genius and greatness consist? In the builder up-Master Gerhard-or in the destroyer, Napoleon I., for it was under his rule as First Consul that the archives of the Dom of Cologne were dispersed to the four winds?

"WEL

The Old Manor House.

ELL, Sir John, the next thing for you to do, is to go down to the property with a witness to take possession, which is done in this manner:-The person in charge will turn a sod of the turf, and then you will take the spade and do the same." So spoke John Tape, of the firm of Tape and Twill, London, to Sir John Preston who had just won a long lawsuit concerning an estate in the country.

Accordingly, next morning, Sir John Preston and his friend Mr. Wilson took their seats on the stage coach bound for the small village of Baddington, where they arrived about five o'clock and alighted at the only Inn in the place, known by the sign of the Crown. Upon entering, they were met by the landlord, of whom they enquired how far it was to the Manor House.