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Best friends must part, and so must you and I;
Yet, if what's said, or wise ones wrote be true,

There comes some consolation with the sigh;
Should Kaiser1 speed it well, we'll soon descry,
The Ara-Ubiorum 2.-There, in days of yore,
As Roman records amply testify,

Germanicus, thy angel partner 3 bore,

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2 This appellation was given to Cologne by the Ubians, in the time of the Romans; but which the Emperor Claudius afterwards changed to Colonia Agrippina, in honour of his wife Agrippina. In the time of Cæsar the country of the Ubians appears to have been a place of note.-(Comment. lib. iv. cap. iii.)

3 Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Agrippa, and wife of Germanicus, whom she accompanied to Syria; and, when Piso poisoned him, she brought his ashes to Italy, and accused the murderer, who stabbed himself.

4 That other Agrippina, surnamed Julia, the daughter of Germanicus ; she was first married to Domitius Enobarbus, and, after his death, to the Emperor Claudius, her uncle, whom she destroyed, in order that her son Nero might succeed him.

XXXVIII.

Similar names, but

opposite qualities.

Though than her mother far more beautiful;

More beautiful, but Ah! how different!
For virtue one, for t'other, base misrule,

Stood paramount :-A monster was she sent,
To bring a Nero forth, and soon to vent,
Her mad ambition;-That a son might reign,

A husband first must fall;-those ties be rent,
That bind mankind to man. Sure 'twere in vain,
To hope for mercy for so black a stain!

XXXIX.

Yet e'er that horrid, murderous deed was done,
And while it pleas'd her fantasy to spare
The helpless Claudius (so the legends run),
She knew to prize and praise her native air;
So made the Ubian city far more fair 1 !—

1 This took place about the 50th year of the Christian æra.-(See Nouveau Merian, ou Tems Anciens et Modernes du Rhin, page 290.)

Colonia Agrippina, thenceforth call'd,

In later days Cologne,-Vitellius' there,
First wore th' imperial crown,-within it wall'd,
Sylvanus sought for empire, and cabal'd.

XL.

A Roman origin.

This sure were wrong, t' anticipate the city,
Which, with some patience, we shall shortly spy;

Meanwhile, it were unfair, what's more á pity,

To take no heed of Monheim in our eye;

Its castle too, and Rolbach; by the bye,

A purer rivulet runs not in this clime;

Now, there's an error I would here descry, "Tis praise all premature,-who bawls sublime! And blurs the first fond glance, mistakes his time.

Monheim

Rolbach.

1 Aulus Vitellius, a Roman, who was raised by his vices to the throne, and who ultimately fell, under the fury of the populace, horrified at his enormities, A. D. 69. We learn, by Lendroy's Voyage du Rhin, page 395, that Vitellius was proclaimed Emperor at Cologne.

2 We also learn, from the same work and page, that at Cologne, Sylvanus had address enough to get himself clothed with the purple. He is well known to have been an officer of Constantius (the third son of Constantine the Great), who had revolted: he was afterwards slain by his soldiers.

Mulhelm.

Industry.

XLI.

Is that Cologne then, rising on the verge?—
No! no I promise you shall longer wait:
'Tis Mulheim,—many a lovely bark and barge,
Here ply, for plenty reigns.—It was her fate,
And well it was for Berg (the ducal state)
That thither driven, in some religious broil1,
Reformers came, and came to propagate,

Not merely their bold truths, but by their toil,
To weave, and fabricate, and mend the soil.

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Whence is it ever, I would briefly ask,
That industry, and comfort, and content,
Are far more rarely found with those who bask,
'Midst Popish pride, and pomp magnificent,

1 In the latter end of the fifteenth century, the reformed religion met with many advocates in various cities on the banks of the Rhine: one of the most distinguished of these was Herman de Wied, the Elector of Cologne, the friend of Melancthon and of Bucer: in the succeeding century, the Archbishop Gebhard, who married the beautiful Countess of Mansfield,

-Than where, with simpler ritual, penitent,
The people do confess but to their God?—

And, he will heal whoe'er in truth repent,
And take them purified to his abode,
Free from the burden of this earthly clod!

XLIII.

And why should mended morals prove the fruits
Of Luthern light ?-Do, pray, but ope your eyes,
Your ears, and I'll repeat-for here it suits

Both mode and metre.-Make the people wise,
And they will read and judge, not criticise ;
'Twere hard to blame the but obedient priest,

"Tis in the Pontiff that the mischief lies; Who'd rule by darkness, fasting, fête and feast ; The while the lands run waste-that were the least.

Defects of the

Roman Ca

tholic Reli

gion.

was also much attached to the cause of the reformers; but, having testified a desire to make the electorate hereditary in his family, he was driven from the city, in 1583; and, at the same time, the religion which he had embraced was abrogated, and its followers banished. Then it was that so many industrious Protestants left Cologne, and went and settled at Mulheim. (See Le Nouveau Merian, page 303–304.)

D

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