The Hôtel de Ville a remarkable, and now almost ruinous old building, is said to occupy the site of the birth place of Charlemagne, and one of the lofty towers embedded in the building is ascribed to the Romans, whose bathing propensities found a thousand allurements in the hot springs of this beautiful valley. The interior contains a series of halls and saloons, in which congresses have been held, and treaties of peace negociated at various times, during the last century and the present, including that of 1818, when the allied armies were withdrawn from France. Its walls, covered with frescoes and its ceilings once richly stuccoed are now dropping into dust and decay, and the prestige of antiquity is destroyed by converting it into the bureau of the police, at the door of which a crowd of impatient English, were muttering “curses not loud but deep,” upon the vexations of the passport system. In the little square opposite it, stands a fountain of stone, surmounted by the bronze statue of Charlemagne, which has afforded a model for so many of his portraits, standing in armour, crowned, and with the orb in one hand and his renowned falchion in the other. This work of art received as usual, the sterling mark of the French virtuosi, by performing the pilgrimage to the Louvre. On either side of the fountain are two pedestals each supporting a huge bronze eagle. Aix, as a halting place for invalids, may be a sufficiently agreeable spot for a temporary stay, the air from its situation must be mild and healthful, and the views around it are in every way charming. The merits and virtues of its waters, whatever they are, are of course as salubrious now as before the revolution of fashion, and the hills around it abound in agreeable and healthful excursions. The obelisk on the Louisberg rising immediately above the city, which was raised by Napoleon to commemorate his victories, was upturned by the Cossacks in search of the coins which they understood it to be the custom to deposit in the foundation of such erections, but was restored by the King of Prussia, and its vaunting inscriptions obliterated. The little village of Borcette or Burscheid, at the foot of the hill opposite the Louisberg, and about half a mile from the city gates, is another cockneyfied lounge of the citizens and invalids, with mathematical flower-beds and gravel walks in right angles and parallels. At all these places are to be found the usual pastimes, theatres, music-bands, bazaars, cafés, dancing, and all the unmeaning _petits jeus_ of a watering place.