“Hast ever heard of the peace of Aix la Chapelle, reader” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—The Peace of Aix‐la‐Chapelle or Peace of Aachen usually refers to the 1748 treaty that concluded the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). Ruskinʼs cousin, Mary Richardson (1815–49), mentions visiting the room in the Hôtel de Ville of Aix‐la‐Chapelle where this treaty was signed and the dignitaries dined afterward (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 17).

Aix‐la‐Chapelle was noted as a place where numerous treaties were negotiated—a reputation that Ruskin goes on to burlesque. For the Ruskins traveling the reopened Continent following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars—as well as for John Murray III in his 1836 guidebook to the Continent—the treaty that Aix‐la‐Chapelle would inevitably have brought to mind was the Congress of Vienna, which set the terms for withdrawing the Alliesʼ forces from France. Murray directed the visitor to the Hôtel de Ville where both the 1748 and 1818 treaties were signed (he was partially mistaken about this fact) (Murray Hand‐book for Travellers on the Continent, 202).

The settlements ending eighteenth‐century wars on the Continent were significant to British tradesmen like the Ruskins, Linda Colley argues; merchants viewed these conflicts favorably, “particularly before 1775”, as having filled “the pockets of a multitude of [British] commercial pawns. . . . [T]he War of Spanish Succession, the War of Austrian Succession and, above all, the Seven Years War seemed to many traders abundantly worthwhile”. The Seven Years War, especially, she says, seemed “the high point of the interplay between commercial interests and British imperial aggression”, as its settlement helped “British exports [to] reach a record level” and resulted in taking captive “vast areas of the world” for Britain (Colley, Britons, 99). For similar reasons, tradesmen supported the Peace of Aix‐la‐Chapelle concluding the War of Austrian Succession.

In a popular history of modern times that (in its first version of 1757–58) ended with the latter treaty, Tobias Smollett (1721–71) reflects Colleyʼs assessment of tradesmenʼs views, albeit tempering the popular view with his characteristic skepticism: “The Peace of Aix‐la‐Chapelle, however unstable or inglorious it might appear to those few who understood the interests, and felt for the honour of their country, was nevertheless not unwelcome to the nation in general. . . . The English . . . had suffered considerable losses and interruption in the article of commerce, which was the source of their national opulence and power. . . . To a people influenced by these considerations, the restoration of a free trade, [and] the respite from that anxiety and suspense which the prosecution of a war never fails to engender, . . . were advantages that sweetened the bitter draught of a dishonourable treaty, and induced the majority of the nation to acquiesce in the peace, not barely without murmuring, but even with some degree of satisfaction and applause” (Smollett, History of England, 3:218–19; and see Greene, “Smollett the Historian”).

Colley looks to this kind of sentiment as evidence of her larger thesis that “the relationship between the [British] trading interest on the one hand, and the landed interest that dominated the legislature and policy‐making on the other, though by no means an equal or an invariably tranquil one, was for much of the eighteenth century and after mutually beneficial. Trade was not only an indispensable part of the British economy, but also vital for the stateʼs revenue and naval power. In return, traders depended on the state for the maintenance of civil order, for sympathetic legislation, for protection in peace and war, and for access to captive markets overseas”. Although this mutually supportive relationship between land and trade was later frayed by the protracted Napoleonic conflict, which was costly to British trade, the relationship was for many Britons the foundation of patriotism. This was especially the case for Tory Lowland Scots like the Ruskins, whose patriotism intensified following the failed invasion in 1745 by the Young Pretender, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, who was supported by Highland Scots. Both in the midst and in the aftermath of that crisis, Colley argues, Jacobitism was defeated not only by British Protestantism and anti‐Catholic fervor but also by fear of civil war, apprehension of loss of lives and property, and the belief that successful Jacobitism would lend an advantage in trade to France (Colley, Britons, 71, and see 71–85). Thus, for British travelers, Continental sites commemorating peace treaties could stir patriotism, evoking not only military pride but also the mercantile interests that underlay that patriotism.

At the Hôtel de Ville in Aix‐la‐Chapelle, Murray mentions, its grand salon was hung with “portraits of the ministers and sovereigns who assisted” at the negotiations of the Congress of Vienna (Murray Hand‐book for Travellers on the Continent, 202). The idea of a portrait collection commemorating the Congress was connected with a scheme by George, the Prince Regent (1762–1830), and his circle to commission the fashionable portraitist, Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), to paint the monarchs and major military heroes involved in the victory over Napoleon—an ambitious undertaking that was finally realized in the decoration of the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle to display the collection. The commission led Lawrence to attend the Congress at Aix‐la‐Chapelle in 1818, so that he could take advantage of the gathering of monarchs and dignitaries and persuade them to sit for their portraits. For this purpose, he was assigned rooms of the Hôtel de Ville for a studio. Lawrence enlarged on the distinction thus conferred on a British artist: “Sent here by royal command, the magistrates of a royal city, in which for centuries the Emperor has been crowned, granted me the principal gallery of the Town House for my painting‐room; and to this the three greatest monarchs in recent political importance, have condescended to come to be painted by me” (Williams, Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence, 2:119). None of Lawrenceʼs portraits for this commission would have remained at Aix‐la‐Chapelle, unless the collection included mezzotints based on them; in fact, at his death, Lawrence retained the portraits that would only later be assembled at Windsor Castle. Nonetheless, the episode at Aix‐la‐Chapelle, along with Lawrenceʼs further travels and commissions on the Continent, was influential in giving a boost to the reputation of English art in Europe—a reputation that reached a high‐water mark with the so‐called “English Salon” of 1824, which included Lawrenceʼs portraits along with John Constableʼs (1776–1837) landscapes. By 1827, the loose “English manner” of painting was championed by the French Romantics, especially by Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), over the objections of the French neoclassicists (Peltz and Funnell, “Lawrence in Europe”). When the Ruskins visited the Hôtel de Ville, Mary Richardson commented on portraits, although it was “getting too dark to see”, and she could make out only what she believed to be a “full length portrait of king of Prussia” (Frederick William III [1770–1840]) (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 17).

“If thou ever travellest from Spa to Aix” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—In 1833, this journey led from Belgium into Prussia, which had acquired Aix‐la‐Chapelle (Aachen) in the Congress of Vienna. After the revolution of 1830, which created Belgium, Aix‐la‐Chapelle lay at the tripoint joining the borders of that new nation, Prussia, and the Netherlands. As recorded in the diary of Ruskinʼs cousin, Mary Richardson (1815–49), on 23 May the family traveled from Namur on the Meuse to Liège, where they paused to admire the cathedral and bishopʼs palace. They then proceeded to Spa in Belgium, where they stopped the night. On 24 May in Spa, they drank the mineral waters, and they heard a requiem mass in a church. Then passing from Belgium through customs on the Prussian border they arrived at Aix‐la‐Chapelle, where they stayed to view the cathedral, leaving the next day, 25 May (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, pp. 11–17). Like Spa, Aix was known for its mineral springs, but it owed its primary historical importance to Charlemagne (742–841), who built a palace here and made it a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. Now subject to Prussia, the city was “returning to its ancient prosperity” and “increase of population”, according to John Murray III, by acquiring “handsome new streets and fine buildings”; thus, Mary, still rather smug this early in the family journey, pronounced with relief that the town was “pretty and clean” (Hand‐book for Travellers on the Continent, 202; Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, pp. 15, 17).

“Thou shalt find a treaty . . . his above mentioned quadrupeds be surrendered to their own will, and guidance” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—Mary Richardson relates that, on the road from Spa to Aix‐la‐Chapelle, the Ruskins suffered delays and danger owing to lack of ready horses and to the inexperience of a postilion, who allowed the team to straggle to the side of the road and almost inside a shop. The incident drew such a crowd around the carriage that it “looked like a church coming out” (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 13–14). Many episodes in Maryʼs diary back up Ruskinʼs satirical comments on the “treaties” that provided for the alleged comforts or inefficiency of postilions at the expense of travelersʼ convenience. In fact, however, British amazement and satire over French postilions was a common topos; see Touring and Travel on the Continent.

“A cathedral is a noble, a beautiful, a sublime thing” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—Aachen Cathedral. The gothic structure, with its fourteenth‐ to fifteenth‐century choir, was formed around the eighth‐ to ninth‐century Palatine Chapel of Charlemagne. Ruskinʼs moonlit depiction is akin more to a Romantic evocation of gothic ruin by Walter Scott than to an accurate description of Carolingian architecture.

“Wake—” (MS VIII)—On 65v of MS VIII, at the end of the sixth paragraph, after the word “monarch”, appears in draft the one‐word sentence: “Wake—.” The imperative, which appears in neither the MS IX fair copy of “Aix la Chapelle” nor the Library Edition printed version, seems meant as an incantation by the narrator, directed at the “dead forms of departed monarchs” whom the narrator imagines coming to life and emerging from their stone monuments.

“Saw Charlemagneʼs easy chair” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—The throne, constructed from marble slabs, on which German kings sat for coronation as Holy Roman Emperor from the tenth through the sixteenth centuries. Ruskinʼs brisk, comical description of the throne should perhaps be related to the extinction of the Holy Roman Empire as recently as 1806, a consequence of Napoleonʼs victory in the Battle of Austerlitz over armies led by the last of the emperors, Francis II (1768–1835), and by Tsar Alexander I (1777–1825).

“Sarcophagus sculptured, Grecian, basso relievo” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—The third‐century AD Roman sarcophagus, in which Charlemagne supposedly was buried. Still kept in the cathedral treasury, the marble sarcophagus depicts, carved in high relief, the myth of Plutoʼs abduction of Persephone to the underworld. In 1833, the same year as the Ruskinsʼ visit, a sacristan regaled Frances Trollope (1779–1863) with a story of the emperorʼs burial that abridged the traditions about the interment and disinterment—unless the writer herself confused the legends. According to this version, the vault below the original octagonal domed structure was first opened by Frederick Barbarossa I (1125–90)—an honor traditionally attributed to Otto III (980–1002), with Barbarossa repeating the disinterment later. Finding Charlemagneʼs corpse robed and sitting erect in a stone chair, Barbarossa is said to have reinterred the bones in the Roman sarcophagus (some being saved as relics), while the stone chair was installed in the octagonal gallery to become the German coronation throne. As he relayed these legends, the sacristan recalled how he had helped attend Napoleon and Josephine in their tour of the cathedral. Allowing Mrs. Trollope to ascend and seat herself on the throne, the sacristan told her how Josephine had likewise indulged in that honor, whereas Napoleon reverently avoided touching any of these relics of the Holy Roman Empire or stepping on the stone covering Charlemagneʼs tomb (Trollope, Belgium and Western Germany in 1833, 1:108–11). For a shrewder account of this kind of anecdote by a Swiss guard of the cathedral, see the 1828 travel narrative by John Barrow (1764–1848), Family Tour through South Holland (p. 232).

“Last judgment. I think. in the hotel de ville” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—The gap that Ruskin left following the title, “Last Judgment”, in the MS VIII draft, combined with his ambiguous use of punctuation, suggests that he may have been struggling with two lapses. One, as indicated by the name that, in the MS IX fair copy, takes the place of the gap—“Michael Angelo”—Ruskin could not identify the name of the artist attributed to the “Last Judgment” picture. Two, as suggested by the ambiguous punctuation following “Last Judgment” and “I think”—points that appear to function as pause‐periods (see Editorial and Encoding Rationale and Methodology: Element, Attribute, and Value Usage—Commas, Periods, and Other Punctuation), but that may indicate full‐stops—his expression of uncertainty, “I think”, may apply either to the missing artistʼs name or to the location of the work, whether in the cathedral or in the Hôtel de Ville. In MS IX, Ruskin resolved at least the first of the two ambiguities by supplying a name; and he appears to have attempted to resolve the second problem, the ambiguous modifier, by placing parentheses around the sentence: “(Last judgment, Michael Angelo, I think, in the Hotel de Ville)”.

This solution both agrees and disagrees with the diary of Ruskinʼs cousin, Mary Richardson (1815–49). She declares that it was the Hôtel de Ville where they viewed a “‘Last Judgment’ . . . at top of stair”, but she says the work was “by Rubens”, not Michelangelo. Both accounts mention the bad light: because the family arrived at the Hôtel de Ville toward the end of their day in Aix‐la‐Chapelle, Mary found that it was “getting too dark to see”, and they especially “couldnʼt see” the “Last Judgment” (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 17). According to a guidebook published locally in Aix‐la‐Chapelle around 1830, the Hôtel de Villeʼs “sallon de lecteur de la bibliothèque” exhibited two “grands tableaux”, one a “jugement dernier” by Bartholomeus Spranger (1546–1611) (Veuve Kaatzer Aix‐la‐Chapelle et ses environs, 8). However, the Last Judgment currently recognized in the literature on Spranger is a copy—one scholar considers it an adaptation, “implanted . . . with [Sprangerʼs] own aesthetic values”—of a Fra Angelico triptych, commissioned by Pope Pius V for his tomb. The provenance for this large work (46 by 58 inches), which appears well‐documented, excludes Aix‐la‐Chapelle (Metzler, Bartholomeus Spranger: Splendor, 78–79). Still, it is intriguing that the Ruskins may have seen a copy or reproduction of a work of Catholic art that, depending on the artist, could have represented such extremes of feeling. (Engraved reproductions at least of Michelangeloʼs Last Judgment had been widely available since the sixteenth century, especially given the limited and privileged access to the Sistine Chapel [Barnes, Michelangeloʼs Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response, 88].)