ANECDOTE OF FRENCH HEROISM,

415 tremendous slaughter on both sides, terminated in the retreat of the imperial troops. In this battle an extraordinary instance of prowess and enthusiasm occurred, which is said to have decided the fate of the day: the French had frequently attacked an Austrian redoubt, the possession of which was of great consequence to them, and had as often been repulsed with great carnage; at last a French general rode up to the grenadiers commanded by Captain Gros, and exclaimed, " Soldiers, swear to me that you will make yourselves masters of that redoubt?" "We swear," replied Gros, holding up his hand, and his soldiers doing the same: they returned to the attack with redoubled fury, and the havoc became dreadful: the French troops were upon the point of again giving way, when their leader had his right arm crushed by a grape shot, upon which, with a smile of triumph, he grasped his sabre with his left, rallied his men and carried the redoubt. As we turned a considerable meander of the river by Neuendorff, one of the grandest spectacles I almost ever contemplated opened upon me: the mighty rock of Ehrenbreitstein, formerly called the Gibraltar of the Rhine, with its dismantled batteries and ruined castles, rose with awful and unexampled majesty on the south; at its base was the palace formerly belonging to the Elector of Treves, and the town bearing the name of this wonderful fortification; and immediately opposite to it, as we advanced a little farther, the beauti

ful city of Coblentz appeared. Here we were obliged to be separated from our horse, on account of the Moselle, which discharges itself into the Rhine at this place, the mouth of which we crossed by the assistance of our boatmens' poles. Over this river there is a handsome stone bridge of many arches, and formerly there was a bridge of boats from this city to Ehrenbreitstein, which has been most judiciously removed, and succeeded by one of the flying bridges before described, by which a more convenient communication is kept completely open, and the navigation is not impeded. Coblentz is a very ancient city; it was the seat of the Roman emperors, and of the kings of the Franks, and a favourite residence of the archbishops and electors of Treves, who, in ancient times of broil and peril, resided in the castle which crowns the majestic rock opposite to the city. Before the French revolution there were three parish churches, two colleges, a church belonging to the Jesuits, four convents of monks, dominicans, carmelites, franciscans, and capuchins, and three nunneries. At that period the population of the inhabitants, of the garrison, and the vale of Ehrenbreitstein, was calculated at 13,000 souls; at present it is not supposed to exceed nine thousand. The city has many good and some handsome buildings, and is further recommended by its supplies of excellent mines, pit-coal, wood, and lime. Its best square is the Clemenstadt; there are several handsome hotels, of

which the ancient hotel, the vast rock which formerly protected it, and the antiquity of its buildings, cast a gloomy grandeur over the whole place, which never exhibited so much gaiety as in the winter of 1791, when the French princes and their followers were nobly entertained and protected here by the Elector, before they marched to Champagne, to experience those disasters which finally confirmed the overthrow of their devoted house.

Coblentz derives its name by not a little meander of etymology, from the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle at its base. Ausonius, one of the most celebrated of the Latin poets of the fourth century, wrote five hundred verses in commemoration of this river, which, compared with the majesty of the river into which it rolls and is lost, is scarcely worthy of such an honor: the view from its banks is also in an equal degree of comparative inferiority, and by the unceasing agitation of its confluence, it has the reputation of having alarmed the tender nerves of the river-fish, of which the inhabitants of this city are not so well supplied as the neighbouring towns.

One of the most beautiful objects in this place is the new palace, built to the south of the city, close to the Rhine, by that splendid and amiable prince, the Elector Clement Vencelas; it is of brick stuccoed, to resemble

stone, has a noble Ionic portico, and including its wings, extends one hundred and eighty yards. A further description of its exterior, as I have made a drawing of it, and moreover as it is now converted into an hospital, were useless. Its grand stair-case, its apartments consisting of a chapel, an audience-hall, concert-room, library, cabinet, diningroom, besides an immense number of other rooms, excited the admiration of every visitor, by their magnitude, magnificence, or elegance. Its furniture, its mantle-pieces, its tapestry, and inlaid floors, all corresponded in taste and splendor with the rest of the building; now not a vestige of its consequence or original destination remains, but what its walls display. Most of the windows are broken, stuffed with hay, or further disfigured by having linen hanging out to dry from them; the area before the grand front, which was formed into an elegant promenade, is now broken, and its graceful plantation totally destroyed. A little way further to the southward, on the opposite side, under the impending rocks of Ehrenbreitstein, is the old palace, a sombre building, which the Elector Clement quitted almost entirely on account of its gloom, and the humidity of its situation.

The Elector of Treves excited the indignation of the French against him very early in the French revolution, by encouraging the expatriated French princes to reside