Some forty or fifty “lofty spirits” were disenthralled by this volley of the burgher guards, several others were wounded and made prisoners, but a vast number escaped across the frontiers, to unite with their kindred hearts in Belgium; and seventy, who were tried on the insulting imputation of robbery and incendiarism, were basely condemned by the Prussian authorities to undergo the inglorious punishments awarded to such offences. So ended the revolution of Aix-la-Chapelle. Aix-la-Chapelle is still a venerable old city, especially when seen from a distance, and its very name is connected with imperial ideas; Charlemagne and his chivalry, Kings, Emperors and Popes, wars, congresses and treaties, all of which have, at one time or another, been associated with its name. But it has now few objects of great interest within itself--its interest is with the past. Its Dom Kirke, _the_ chapel whence the ancient city of Achen derived its appellation, to distinguish it from others of the same name in Savoy and Provence, like some relic from the sea encrusted with shells and parasites, is scarcely discernible in the midst of the coatings of modern buildings with which it is shut up and enveloped,--a confused agglomeration of styles, Gothic, Saxon, Byzantine and Moresco. But the central dome, the nucleus of the entire building, and that portion said to have been originally selected to cover in the Emperor’s tomb, stand still erect and firm, no doubt in consequence of perpetual repairs and restorations, “a thousand years roll over it in vain,” and it exhibits, unquestionably, the oldest specimen of Saxon architecture in the world. It had been originally a simple domed octagon, with arched windows in each of its sides, and surrounded within by a gallery, sustained by pillars of porphery, from the Palace of the Exarch of Ravenna, which were carried hither by Charlemagne. These are at least identical--they have survived the ravage of the Normans, and all the subsequent ravages of Germany till the French greedy To rive what Goth and Turk, and Time had spared, carried them off to Paris, and as only a portion of them were ever returned, they have not yet relieved the white-washed columns by which they were replaced. Other chapels have, at various times, been run out from the sides of the ancient centre, so that the whole is now an informal and confused mass, but without anything striking or magnificent, unless it be the large windows of the choir built about five hundred years ago, which as they rise from the foundation quite to the vaulted roof give it the appearance of a gigantic conservatory. Suspended in the midst of the choir is a crown for the Virgin, the gift of Queen Mary of Scotland, and in various parts of the church are hung a greater profusion of those votive models of broken limbs and infant’s marks than I have seen elsewhere.