A good railroad whisks us along, through monotonous corn-fields, from Leipzig to Magdeburg, in three or four hours. This is the strongest fortification (always excepting Kœnigstein) on the Elbe—and contains more than fifty-thousand people, garrison and all. It is, or rather _was_, in Saxony; but, thanks to the auspices of Napoleon, in favour of his pet of Dresden, it is now Prussian, and likely to be long so. It is of immense extent, and would require thirty or forty thousand men to defend it—consequently double that number to invest it. As all great virtues are assailed by virulent abuse, so all strong cities are honoured with long sieges. The history of Magdeburg should be printed and posted on the gates of Paris. It has had its ups and downs in its day. It was besieged many a time, and sometimes taken. Although it repulsed the famous Count Wallenstein, in the thirty years’ war, it fell, after two years’ siege, before the magnanimous Tilley (1631), who sacked the city; but in his humanity, spared the whole of the inhabitants—except THIRTY THOUSAND, whom he massacred, without distinction of age or sex!! These are among the “splendid miseries” to which fortified towns and cities have been entitled, time immemorial—from the days of Alexander and TITUS, to those of Napoleon and Wellington—from the sacred heights of Solyma, to the sandy plains of Haerlem! This doubtful glory—this dangerous pre-eminence, appears to be the height of a great people’s ambition—though it is probable that a nation’s strength has more in its moral courage and physical energies, than in dead walls and deep ditches.