that it would be safe in their hands; but on the completion of Monk's scarcely less infamous treachery, it again fell into the hands of the Stuarts, and remained faithful to them even after the last of their family had been driven from the throne, and the Dutchman William raised in their stead. The governor then resented all the overtures of the revolutionary sovereign, and even the entreaties of the degenerate Stuart, his still more heartless wife. The town meanwhile had submitted and recognised the new government; its citizens having never completely succeeded in regaining the royal favour, forfeited by their treacherous surrender of the First Charles to his enraged English subjects, in return for the arrears of their pay. But the castle, which had no such stain upon its fame, still held out, and a very protracted blockade was necessary before it eventually, in the summer of the following year (1689) submitted to the continental dynasty's authority. The Duke of Gordon was its governor during this period, and he displayed in the course of the siege all the chivalrous courage of a race of men unhappily extinct-extinct in the person of the last of his descendants who, in the perpetual revolution of human affairs, subsequently evinced on the plains of Egypt as much of Highland spirit and lofty devotion in defence of the German race, as his great ancestor had exhibited in opposing them.

This was the last link in the long chain of connection between the Castle of Edinburgh and the Stuarts; that family, after a series of calamities unprecedented in history, from the murder of the first James in Scotland, till the final expulsion of its seventh monarch of the name from the English throne, being nearly doomed to an utter prostration of its hopes. In the rash and ill-commenced attempt to restore its fortunes in the year 1715, the citadel which so long had known them was nearly captured, but its holders refused to know them longer. The assailants, who had made a daring escalade by means of ropes, were discovered when almost at the top of the stupendous height, and easily arrested before they could surprise the garrison. In the bolder outbreak of 1745, no attempt whatever was made upon the castle, though the insurgents remained in possession of the town. The usual communication betwixt the two indeed continued almost uninterrupted; both parties having apparently resolved to rest its possession on the more decisive combats to be fought on the plain, and when these eventually terminated in favour of the established government, the history of the Castle of Edinburgh was simply that of an ordinary garrison fortress, undisturbed by martial achievements. During the latter part of the last century when Paul Jones made his daring attempt upon the adjoining port of Leith, the guns of the citadel threatened once more to be brought into requisition; but the distance, three miles, was too considerable for them to act with effect, and the bold freebooter consequently escaped uninjured.

In 1818, we may add, the interest in the old castle, which had been dormant for nearly a century, was suddenly revived by the discovery of the ancient regalia of Scotland in an apartment which had been shut up, and sedulously guarded, since the legislative union betwixt the two kingdoms in the year 1707. The crown, sword of state, and two sceptres, were then said to have been deposited in the stronghold, but considerable incredulity existed on the subject, and even scandalous reports prevailed as to their removal and misappropriation. On application, however, being made, chiefly through the interest of Sir Walter Scott, orders were

transmitted by government for a search; and when the room was opened the whole regalia were found, covered with a piece of mouldering linen, precisely in the same condition they had been left a hundred and eleven years previously. The discovery formed the subject of an interesting antiquarian volume, published a few years ago by the Bannatyne club of Scotland, but it were unnecessary now farther to allude to its contents; the chief interest of the work, its associations with the illustrious minstrel of the north, now sleeping

“With him that sleeps below,"

though the jewels are still exhibited to numbers of inquiring strangers.

To the Editor of "The Patrician."

SIR, Monsieur Erpen de Saulier was at the taking of Jerusalem in 1101. His arms were, (viz: he bore on his standard) "d'azur une Croix d'or à Croissette d'or recroissetté." Can any of your heraldic readers inform me how this coat should be properly described, so as to be properly coloured? Can it have been the parent of the Maltese cross? Secondly. Can you tell me what were the arms of the Counts d'Arques? (nearly related to Robert, Duke of Normandy.)

I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,

F. O. MORRIS.

.

ROMANTIC HEROES OF HISTORY.

CHARLEMAGNE.

CHARLEMAGNE, Charles I., or Charles the Great, whose greatness is so indissolubly united with his name, was the eldest son of Pepin, the last Maire du Palais, and was left heir to the turbulent district of Austrasia, a division of the French Empire, on his father's death. The nobles, however, who even in those days possessed power to annul their sovereign's will, upset the late ruler's testament by giving him Neustria instead, apparently in the hope that his warlike spirit would be more under their control within the limits of that pacific kingdom, while a less ambitious brother, Carloman, would be more effectually subjected to them if embroiled with the restless marauders around Austrasia. Pepin's will, bequeathing Austrasia to Charlemagne, and Neustria to Carloman, was accordingly reversed; and each put in possession of the territories assigned to the other. But Charlemagne was of a temper too aspiring to be thus controlled. His ambition was lofty, his stature more lofty still; and in these days, when strength of arm was so paramount, few had courage to oppose a man whose figure and strength far towered above other men's, and whose mind was in all respects as great as his person. On the death of Carloman, accordingly, which shortly after took place, he reduced Austrasia to his authority, and compelled Gerberge, a relict of the late sovereign, to seek shelter in Lombardy, as he had previously constrained Hunauld, Grifon's son, to fly for refuge to the Duke of Gascony, when that prince attempted, on Pepin's death, to recover Aquitaine.

The Gascon Duke, with his protégé, and all that he possessed, were quickly compelled to surrender to Charlemagne's arms; but the power of the Lombard King was not so readily subdued, and his reduction led to more important consequences. Didier, that Gothic sovereign, confiding in the strength of the Alps, had not only readily afforded protection to Carloman's children and to Hunauld on his subsequent escape, but marched an army to constrain the Pope to bestow the French crown upon the former. The Pope defended himself by spiritual weapons, beginning to be powerful even in those days; but though the dread of excommunication was sufficient to deter Didier from his design of assailing Rome, other armour was necessary to arrest the danger. Charlemagne's aid was accordingly required; and like an avalanche, when least expected, he burst through the passes of the Alps. The Lombard King's army fled; Pavia, whither he retired, was invested-Verona surrendered to his arms; and returning thence to the former city, he ultimately compelled it by famine to submit, and Didier to surrender with the whole of

his family. Adelgise, the Lombard monarch's son, alone escaped. The father himself was sent to a monastery in France, and the race of the Lombards in Italy, thus, after a reign of upwards of two hundred years, was brought to a close. Such was the result of Charlemagne's first expedition into that classic land: the Pope was restored to safety, and his territory augmented. A second, for the purpose of opposing Adelgise, Didier's son, who had returned with reinforcements from the Roman Emperor in the East, was equally successful; and a third was undertaken for the coronation of his son Louis, and the baptism and coronation of another son, Pepin-ceremonies, in those days, frequently performed together, and in lifetime of the reigning sire. During a fourth, he was engaged in suppressing several insurgent princes, most of whom experienced his clemency, as others had previously felt his rigour; and, on a fifth, or some subsequent occasion, he finally received from the Pope, the iron crown of Italy as Emperor of the West; the long race of the Roman Emperors being thus at last divided, and the title restored to the land whence it sprung. An intrigue was at the same time set on foot to secure for Charlemagne the empire of the East. Constantine Pogonat, the weak and profligate Emperor at Constantinople, had there been deposed and deprived of his eyes, by Irene, a mother still more brutal and abandoned; and, with a woman thus depraved, it was proposed by some priests that Charlemagne should contract an alliance by marriage. But his taste or his fortune, and the expulsion of Irene, frustrated the ignominious proposal; and he remained satisfied with the iron crown, and title of Emperor of the West, which Pope Leo III. bestowed upon him while he was prostrated at devotions on his knees, ignorant or unconscious, it is said, of the honour designed him.

Numerous excursions into Germany, to repel the inroads of the Saxons, had in the interval occupied Charlemagne's attention. Under Wytikynd, a Danish leader, these men, then a barbarous and warlike race, had made frequent inroads into France, and defeated Charlemagne's lieutenants in his absence. The revenge of Charlemagne was prompt; it being his policy to strike by terror before he subdued by clemency. Rotgand, a revolted nobleman, had been beheaded by him in the second of his Italian expeditions; but Tassillon, another, whose guilt was still more flagrant, had been spared in a second, and allowed by Charlemagne to escape, with the loss of his hair, after the nobles had condemned him. The Saxons now experienced treatment similar. Four thousand of them were barbarously decapitated after one unsuccessful revolt; but a still greater number were removed with their wives and families, to be kindly treated, into France on the reduction of another. On both occasions Charlemagne experienced the value of clemency, though perhaps he was ignorant of its importance as an element in human government. Few of the nobles of Italy afterwards revolted; and Wytikynd, captured with another Saxon leader, in the last revolt, was so overcome by the conqueror's generosity in sparing their lives instead of putting them to death as anticipated, that he at once embraced and ever afterwards proved faithful to Charlemagne's cause and religion. The Danes and surrounding tribes were gradually in like manner induced to give their adhesion; and long before his death, Charlemagne's authority was firmly established at Aix-la-Chapelle, which he founded and inhabited, as the central capital of his vast dominions. His government was wise, and it is only to be regretted that

he was induced to perpetrate these cruelties chiefly for the propagation of a religion which requires no such aid.

The Huns and Saracens were next forced to acknowledge Charlemagne's power, and bend beneath the force of his all-conquering arm. The former of these, a rude nation who lived chiefly in fortified camps named ringues, were dispersed by the instrumentality of his eldest son Charles; but advantage over the other was attained only by the sacrifice of Roland, Charlemagne's chivalric nephew. Abderame, king of the Saracens, had in his need invoked the French monarch's aid, when his own turbulent subjects threw off his command; and though Charles at first demurred to grant assistance to an infidel, he ultimately acquiesced, in the hope of alleviating the condition of the eastern Christians, and despatched Roland with an army into Spain, who speedily restored it to Abderame's dominion. On his return, however, with many other French nobles, he was assailed by the Saracens and Gascons while marching through a defile in the valley of Roncevaux; and the rocks hurled down by the barbarians from the adjoining cliffs, put an end to the existence of the whole of these preux chevaliers, but entombed him in a grave of fame, as imperishable as the hills of which it was composed.

Charlemagne's empire had now attained its utmost magnitude. His power extended from the Guadalquiver to the Danube, from the straits of Calais to the Mediterranean, and almost all the kingdoms intervening, from France on the north to the extremity of Italy on the south, either owned his dominion or were governed by tributary kings. The States of the Church alone were exempted: these Charlemagne both enlarged and endeavoured to render independent: still, such is the subserviency attendant on power, that they were quite as subject to his control as any of the subsidiary kingdoms. The Pope, as previously recorded, had already bestowed on him the title of Emperor of the East, whether by premeditation or accord is now unknown; and the expulsion of the infamous Irene, by Nicephorus, gave him an opportunity of contracting an engagement with that prince's successor, by which it was stipulated that he should henceforth retain the title, together with almost all the other's dominions in Italy. Nicetas, an Eastern patrician, alone opposed this arrangement; and he was one of the few who successfully disputed Charlemagne's power. Availing himself of the inability of Pepin, Charlemagne's second son, to resist him, he took Dalmatia, and expelled from Venice all the nobles attached to Charlemagne's sway. But this was only a speck on the bright and extended disc of Charlemagne's domains, and his descendant ever afterwards retained the title of Emperor of the East, until at last, on the lapse of ages, both emperors and empire glided avay.

He had in the interval, however, encountered those vicissitudes inseparable from humanity, which teach monarchs as well as men, that they are but insects in Creation's eye. In the 68th year of his age, Charlemagne had the misfortune to see Pepin, his second son, stricken down in Italy; and his eldest, Charles, one greater still, fall in a brilliant campaign against the Bohemians, in Germany. Four years afterwards, the aged sovereign himself fell a victim to fever, while preparing to translate or correct a copy of the Holy Scriptures into one of the four languages of which he was master; and assembling his nobles around him so soon as he felt the last hour approach, he died after a reign of forty-eight years, bequeathing his vast empire to Louis, his only surviving son.