according to the necessity of the times.

Another bishop lies in a tomb fashioned like a fortalice, with a laurel at each angle. He reposes at their base in a semi-military, semi-ecclesiastic costume. Each archbishop of Köln kept his grave open throughout his archiepiscopate, to receive his dust, when needed. A fantastic custom, more honoured in the breach than the observance, demanded that every year of his rule should be marked by means of a small staff of white wood suspended to an iron hold-fast.

We follow M. Durand from the cathedral into the ancient Romanesque church of Saint-Martin; a church to be visited upon market-day, at the hour when the peasants of the neighbourhood abandon their fruits and vegetables to hear mass. In their temporary seclusion from worldly affairs, these rude and angular figures, with their fixed serious gaze, and solemn, stiff, and almost awkward air, seem to have stepped out of some old woodwork, or ancient German engraving, like those of Martin Schoen.

Verily, Köln, metropolis as it is of the banks of the Rhine, is still the city of the apostles and the princes of the Church, and even in these days of German Rationalism, the capital of Roman Catholic Germany.

What shall I say of its town-hall, which is situated between the Gürzenich (custom-houses) and the cathedral? I cannot do better than imitate my predecessors, and quote from Victor Hugo:-It is one of those enchanting harlequinlike edifices, he says, built up of portions belonging to all ages, and of fragments of all styles, which we meet with in the ancient communes, the said communes being themselves constructed, laws, manners, and customs, in the same manner. The mode of formation of these edifices and of their customs is curious to study. It is an agglomeration rather than a construction, a successive development, a fantastic aggrandizement, or encroachment upon things previously existing. Nothing has been laid out on a regular plan, or digested beforehand; the

The general effect of this ancient structure is, however, very imposing. It was begun in 1250, and terminated in 1571, and is therefore a record of three centuries of architectural progress. Its portico is in the Renaissance style, and the second story is embellished with small triumphal arches made to serve as arcades, and dedicated by quaint inscriptions to Cæsar, Augustus, Agrippa, Constantine, Justinian, and Maximilian. Among the sculptured bas-reliefs, you may remark a worrying a lion. This man, named Gryn, was a mayor of Köln. The archbishop Engelbert III. had, to rid himself of a troublesome opponent, exposed him to combat with a lion. His courage brought him safely through the perilous experience. The inhabitants, rendered furious by his perfidy, avenged their mayor by hanging to a gate, which at this very day is called Pfaffarthor, or the Priestgate, the first priest who fell into their hands.

The large and splendid hall in the interior, where the Hanseatic League formerly held its sittings, is adorned with nine large statues of knights.

Beside the town-hall stands the "Chapel of the Council," which formerly enshrined the Dombild, now preserved in the St. Agnes chapel of the cathedral. The Dombild, I may remark, represents, when thrown open, the adoration of the three kings, in the middle, and on the flaps (volets) St. Geryon with his companions, and St. Ursula with her virgins; when shut up, the Annunciation; it bears the date of 1410. The author of this remarkable picture is unknown; but it is generally attributed to Master Stephen Lotheren, of Köln, the pupil of Master William.

The "Chapel of the Council" contains a fine Roman mosaic, discovered when digging the foundation of the new hospital; and, also, a small collection of ancient pictures. In its fine tower, ornamented with many statues, and constructed in 1407, the municipal council was wont to assemble; at present it meets in the adjacent building, erected in 1850.

Near the Jesuits' church and not far from the quays of the Rhine, stands the church of Saint Cunibert, commenced, and consecrated in 1248, by the Archbishop Conrad. It stands on the site of an older church, built in 633 by the prelate whose name it bears. In its architectural character it is

Romanesque; two portions only belong to the ogival style. Its small side-door presents a most remarkable combination of Oriental art and Gothic form. The front has been restored. The two Romanesque towers in the rear were formerly of a much greater height. The principal tower, having fallen into ruins, was rebuilt in 1850 in the ogival style; it has no other merit than that of magnitude. The most noticeable feature of the church is the thirteenth century stained glass in the apex; this is very rich and beautiful. There are also several small pictures on wood, by artists of the early German school.

Of course, no visitor to Köln fails to make a pilgrimage to that legendary edifice, the church of St. Ursula. From an artistic point of view it presents very little that is interesting or remarkable; except in the choir, the tomb of St. Ursula (dating from 1668), and her statue in alabaster on a pedestal of black marble, with a dove at her feet.

The legend runs that St. Ursula, daughter of a British king, set sail with a train of 11,000 virgins, to wed the warriors of an army which had migrated, under Maximus, to conquer Armorica from the Emperor Gratian. The ladies, however, losing their way, were captured at Köln by the barbarous Huns, who slew every one of them because they refused to break their vows of chastity.

This story is told in a series of most indifferent pictures, to the right of the visitor as he enters

the church.

The reliques of the virgins cover the whole interior of the building; they are interred under the pavement, let into the walls, and displayed in glass cases about the choir.

As in St. Ursula's, so in St. Gereon's church, the principal ornaments are bones; its walls being lined with the remains of the 6000 martyrs of the Theban legion, who, with their leader Gereon, perished in the persecution under Diocletian, because they refused to renounce the Christian faith. The church itself is one of the finest in Köln. The nave dates from 1262; the other portions, including the choir and crypt, are as early as 1066-69. Mr. Hope thus describes the decagonal nave:-" By a singular and theatrical arrangement, arising out of these various increments, its body presents a vast decagonal shell and cupola, the pillars of whose internal angles are prolonged in ribs, which, centering in a summit, meet in one point, and lead by a high and wide flight of steps,

rising opposite the entrance, to an altar and oblong choir behind it; whence other steps again ascend to the area between the two high square towers, and to the semi-circular east end, belted, as well as the cupola, by galleries with small arches and pillars, on a panelled balustrade. The entrance door, with square lintel, low pediment, and pointed arch, is elegant; and the crypts show some remains of handsome mosaics."

The baptistery, an elegant structure of the same date as the nave, contains a font of porphyry, said to be a gift of Charlemagne.

In the late Gothic choir of the semi-Romanesque church of St. Andrew are preserved the relics of the great chemist and necromancer, Albertus Magnus. The church of the Jesuits (1636) contains the crosier of St. Francis Xavier, and the rosary of St. Ignatius Loyola.

Our space forbids us to dwell at any length on the numerous and interesting churches of this thrice-holy (and most odoriferous) city. But one of the most ancient-nay, I believe it wears the palm of unsurpassed old age-is that of Santa Maria di Capitolio. It is reputed to have been founded in 700, by Plectruda, wife of Pepin d'Héristal, and mother of Charles Martel, who erected a chanonry beside it. It is very clear that Plectruda's tomb belongs to an earlier date than the edifice which now enshrines it; and which, judging from its Romanesque style, was erected about the beginning of the eleventh century. It was restored in 1818 (the porch and choir in 1850), and enriched with stained glass windows. In addition to the curious tomb of its foundress, this church possesses an object of interest in an altar-piece attributed to Albert Dürer. Painted in 1521, and placed in a side chapel, left of the choir, it represents in one compartment the Death of the Virgin, and, in the other, the Dispersion of the Apostles. In the Hardenrath Chapel will be found some interesting mural paintings, portraits, and a Miracle of St. Martin, by Lebrun. The Schwarz Chapel contains the brass font (1594), surmounted by a figure of St. Martin on horseback.

The Church of St. Peter should be visited for the sake of the great picture of Rubens, forming its altar-piece, of the Crucifixion of the Apostle, with his head downwards. It was painted shortly before the master's death. Wilkie and Sir Joshua Reynolds both criticise it adversely; but the visitor who contemplates it, however, without

pressed by it, and will pronounce it, we think, not unworthy of Rubens.

The artist was baptized in this church, and the brazon font used on this occasion is still preserved. Until he was ten years old (1587), he lived in the house, No. 10 Sternengasse where Maria de' Medicis died in 1642.

The church of the Minorites, that of St. Mauritus, those of St. Pantaleon and St. Andrew, are well worth visiting. The same may be said-I wish that I had space to say more—of the double iron bridge (1352 feet long), across the Rhine; the noble quays; the house of the Templars, No. 8 Rheingasse; the new Rathhause, and the Wallraff-Richartz Museum of pictures, founded and enriched by the two citizens whose name it bears.

So much for Köln. But stay, how can we leave the city without an allusion to its Eau de Cologne? To that celebrated perfume, which is nowhere more necessary than in Köln itself, though its evil odours are not quite so overpowering as they were in the days of Coleridge:

"Ye nymphs, who reign o'er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,

Doth wash your city of Cologne:

But tell me, nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?"

"My eyes," says a traveller, "are still dazzled by the placards announcing in gigantic letters the sale of this precious perfume. Its distillation is the most important industry of the city. There are twenty-four manufacturers of it, and upwards of a hundred vendors. The annual production is estimated at from eight to nine million litres, worth about £6,000,000. But what a display of charlatanism for such a sum! The ancient Colonia Agrippina has no longer its consuls, its patricians, its princes, electors of the Holy Empire. It is swayed by the dynasty of the Jean Marie Farinas, an encroaching dynasty, swollen by usurpers and pretenders, who flood the streets with their products, their ensigns, their agents. Every wall is plastered over with provoking bills, which would be amusing enough if we were not weary with the 'posters' of other cities. All the crossways are guarded by bill-distributors and touters, who almost take you by the collar and force you to

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invested in an outer garb of white straw. There are upwards of thirty rivals, more or less legitimate heirs of the same name, sons and grandsons, nephews and great-nephews, disciples and successors of the illustrious Jean Marie Farina, inventor, in 1672, of the Eau de Cologne, sole possessors of his secret, sole manufacturers of the true 'water,' sole inheritors of his genius. Their lives are spent in decrying one another, viva voce or in writing. In fact, the question of whose or which is the genuine Eau de Cologne has quite a literature of its own, into which neither reader nor writer will be desirous of plunging."

We have now brought our readers to the point where the valley of the Rhine terminates, and the once grand and rolling river enters upon the low plains of Holland to creep sluggishly through winding channels, and finally mingle with the sea in two dreary estuaries. Soon after entering the Netherlands, the great river bifurcates into two arms-the left, called the Waal, and the right, the true Rhine. The Waal, near Fort Louvestein, is joined by the Maas, and forms the Merve or Mervede, which, below Dordrecht, takes the name of the Old Maas. The Rhine proper, a short distance above Arnheim, throws off the New Yssel, which was anciently a canal, cut by the Roman Drusus to connect the Rhine with the Old Yssel. At Wyk by Duerstede the Rhine again divides; one branch, the Lek, uniting with the New Maas near Ysselmonde; the other, the Kromme Rhine, separating at Leyden into the Vecht and the Old Rhine, the latter eventually reaching the North Sea to the north-west of Leyden. The delta of the Rhine is a low semi-inundated level, extending from lat. N. 51° 35′ to 52° 20′, and occupying nearly 50,000 square miles. It is protected from the ocean-floods by artfully disposed and solidly constructed dykes or embankments, varying from twenty to thirty feet above the river-level.

Here, then, as it is only with the German Rhine we had to deal with that romantic and beautiful Rhine valley, which so abounds in old associations and chivalrous memories, and which has been so frequently the cause, the scene, and the prize of sanguinary wars-our task is done.

ERMAN SEMINAR LIDRAR

TAYLOR

INSTITUTION

OXFORD

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