independent dukes, and as long as even the fiction of an election was continued under the Austrian rule, an analogous ceremony was continued on the Zolfeld, a meadow not far from Clagenfurt, the capital, which has for the noblest ornament of its market-place, the large marble tazza, possibly constructed out of the Morastone there, as the still larger one now the principal ornament of the Schloss Garten before the museum at Berlin, was formed out of a Druidical stone, which, though at present 22 feet in diameter, was one-third larger before the manipulation. The name of the Zolfeld would undoubtedly be more correctly written Solfeld (campus solis), analogous to the Campus Maii or Martis (Champ de Mars) of the Gauls, revived and burlesqued by Napoleon during the Hundred Days. The ceremony was as follows:— The ducal stool was an erection of stone, like the imperial chair at Rhense (of which more immediately). On this simple throne was seated a plain countryman, before whom the newly-elected prince was introduced, clothed in the peculiar peasant costume of the province, betwixt a lean and sorry ox and horse, followed by his nobles. In this attire he swore to observe the country's laws and privileges; and then, and not before, could he put himself in the peasant's place, on the regal seat, and receive the homage of his subjects: this mockery of freedom was last played in 1551. The usages at the coronation of the emperors of Germany as kings of Hungary bring the matter nearer to some of the observances at the same solemnity in Westminster Abbey. There, near the town of Presburg, and adjoining the Danube, is a field called the King's Field, and in it an artificial hill, with four entrances, and roads up to the summit, answering to the four cardinal points. Immediately after the coronation, the chosen king rides unattended up one of the ascents,
