XVI

FRANKFORT CATHEDRALFRANKFORT CATHEDRAL

FRANKFORT CATHEDRAL

{157}The façade of the cathedral is entirely lacking in a decorative sense, and the lateral portal, on the south, is much encumbered by surrounding structures, though one sees peeping out here and there evidences of a series of finely sculptured figures.

Above the entrance to the cloister is an equestrian statue of St. Bartholomew, a masterwork of sixteenth-century German sculpture. The skull of the apostle is preserved in the church proper.

The general plan of the church is that of a Greek cross, but the termination which holds the choir is of much narrower dimensions than the other three arms.

The grand nave offers nothing of remark, but the side aisle to the right contains a fine "Ecce Homo" in bas-relief, placed upon the tomb of the Consul Hirde, who died in 1518. Unfortunately the heads of many of the figures, including that of the Christ, are badly scarred and broken.

In the right transept are a series of very ancient German paintings and a number of escutcheons, coloured and in high relief, commemorating benefactors of the church.

The walls in the choir are covered with ancient frescoes of the frankly German school.{158}They undoubtedly date back to the fifteenth century, at least.

At the right of the choir is the tomb of the Emperor Gunther of Schwarzburg, who died here in 1349.

Above the high altar is a fine tabernacle,—a feature frequently seen in German churches,—of silver-gilt. To the left is an ancient iron grille of remarkable workmanship.

At the head of the left aisle of the nave is a chapel containing a "Virgin at the Tomb," a coloured sculpture of the fifteenth century, surmounted by a very ornate Gothicbaldaquin.

In the left transept is the tomb of a knight of Sachsenhausen bearing the date of 1371. Here, too, is a somewhat dismantled and fragmentary astronomical clock of the species best seen at Strasburg.

The Protestant church of St. Nicholas is a fine ogival edifice, which in more recent times was profaned by commercial uses. It has since been restored and its red sandstone fabric is surmounted by a fine spire.

The interior shows a remarkably fine ogival choir as its chief feature, an organ-buffet carried out in the same style, which is most unusual, and a charming wooden staircase with{159}an iron railing leading to a tribune at the crossing. All of the accessories are modern, but the effect is unquestionably good.

The church of St. Leonard dates from the thirteenth century and possesses as its chief exterior features two rather diminutive spires. The Emperor Frederick II. ceded the site to the city, for the erection of a church, at the above mentioned period.

The church of St. Catherine is of the seventeenth century, and, like most religious erections of its age, is in no way remarkable. The exterior, however, shows a rather pleasing square tower, which is surmounted by an octagonal campanile. The interior has some fine modern paintings, well painted and equally well displayed.

The church of St. Paul was formerly a Carmelite foundation. It is strictly modern, and was only completed in 1833. Its form is rather more pagan than Christian, being simply a great oval, one hundred and thirty odd feet in length by one hundred and eight in width. The interior is surrounded by a fine Ionic colonnade.

In 1848 St. Paul's was appropriated to the sessions of the German parliament, to which purpose the structure was well suited.{160}

The Liebfrauenkirche has a fine "Adoration" sculptured above its principal portal. It is a good example of German sculpture in stone. Within the walls is a painting attributed to Martin Schoen which merits consideration.

Coat of Arms, Frankfort

{161}

MAYENCE

Mayencehas been variously called the city of Gutenberg, and of the Minnesingers. The Romans in Augustus's time had already fortified it and given it the name of Magontiacum.

Near Mayence is the cenotaph of Drusus, where his ashes were interred after the funeral oration by Augustus, who came expressly from Rome into Gaul for the purpose.

Mayence as a Roman colony was a military post of great importance, and the key to the fertile provinces watered by the Rhine.

An episcopal seat was established here in the third century, but Christianity had a hard struggle against wars and internal disorders of many kinds.

Many times the city has been devastated and rebuilt. In 718 Bishop Sigibert surrounded the city by a series of walls, and between 975 and 1011 Archbishop Willigis built the cathedral and the church of St. Stephen, at which{162}time the real Christianizing of Mayence may be said to have begun.

The venerable old cathedral has many times been battered and bruised, and fire and bombardment have reduced its original form into somewhat of a hybrid thing, but it remains to-day the most stupendously imposing and bizarre cathedral of all the Rhine valley.

Cenotaph of Drusus, Mayence

In general its architecture is decidedly not good, but it is interesting, and therein lies the chief charm of a great church.

During the siege of the French the cathedral at Mayence, in 1793, again took fire, and the western end of the roof of the choir, the nave, and the transept all succumbed.

For ten years it remained in this state, until the order for restoration came from the omnific{163}Bonaparte, then first consul. In 1804 the edifice was consecrated anew.

In the year 636 there was held at Mayence an assembly of the bishops of the Frankish kingdom convoked by Dagobert, then king.

Among the bishops of Mayence none had a reputation so popular as that of St. Boniface, who had been sent out by Pope Gregory III. as a missioner to the Rhine country.

Boniface had given Pepin-le-Bref the sacrament at Soissons in 752, upon the fall of the Merovingian dynasty, and in return King Pepin gave the bishopric of Mayence to St. Boniface.

In 813 a numerous council met here, at the orders of Charlemagne, under the presidency of Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne and chaplain of the holy palace at Rome.

In the tenth century the church at Mayence did not fall to the sad state that it did elsewhere. Ecclesiastical writers of France have always referred to this period asle siècle de plomb, but at Mayence it still steadily approached the golden age.

Mayence was still distinguished by the zeal of its archbishops, whose good influences were far-reaching.

Under the episcopate of St. Boniface and{164}his immediate successors the cathedral of Mayence was probably a wooden structure, as were many of the earlier churches of the evangelizing period in Germany and Gaul.

The work on the mediæval cathedral was completed by 1037, under Archbishop Bardon, and its consecration took place in presence of the Emperor Conrad II.

Twelve years after this ceremony, Pope Leo IX. came to Mayence and held a famous council, at which the emperor was present, accompanied by the principal nobles of the empire.

The cathedral fell a prey to the flames in 1087, as well as three other neighbouring churches, say the older chronicles, and the ancient structure disappeared almost entirely, so far as its original outline was concerned.

Archbishop Conrad of Wittelsbach restored the nave inside of three years, and the monument again took on some of its ancient magnificence. In 1198 Emperor Philip of Suabia, son of Frederick Barbarossa, was solemnly crowned in this cathedral by the Archbishop of Tarentaise, the Archbishop of Mayence being at that time in the Holy Land.

The twelfth-century work doubtless was erected on the foundations of Archbishop Bardon's structure.{165}

The restoration of the transept and the western choir followed, and the work went on more or less intermittently until the middle of the thirteenth century, when the fabric approached somewhat the appearance that it has to-day.

The completed structure was consecrated in 1239, and, save the chapels of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the body of the edifice has not greatly changed since that time.

During the Thirty Years' War it became practically a ruin, however, though its later rebuilding was on the original lines.

In 1793 the revolution which sprang up in France forced its way to the Rhine, and, when Mayence was besieged, the roof of the cathedral caught fire and the church itself was pillaged and profaned.

For a long time the old cathedral remained abandoned, as after an invasion of barbarians, which is about what the revolutionists proved themselves to be. In 1803 Napoleon saw fit to order it to be restored, and in the following year it was returned to its adherents.

The ancient metropolis, however, lost the distinction which had been given to it in Roman times, and the glory first brought upon{166}it by St. Boniface lapsed when the arch-episcopal see was suppressed. Mayence is now merely a bishopric, a suffragan of Cologne.

In its general plan the cathedral at Mayence follows the outlines of a Latin cross, though its length is scarcely more than double its width.

It is most singular in outline and has two choirs, one at either end, as is a frequent German custom, and the sky-line is curiously broken by the six towers which pierce the air, no two at the same elevation.

There are three portals which give entrance from various directions. There is yet a fourth entrance from the market-place, which takes one through a sort of cellar which is not in the least churchly and is decidedly unpleasant.

The principal nave is supported by nine squared pillars, which are hardly beautiful in themselves, but which are doubtless necessary because of the great weight they have to bear.

In the Gothic choir is a heavybaldaquinin marble, bearing figures of the twelve apostles. The high altar is directly beneath the cupola, or lantern, of the principal tower. It is quite isolated, and has neither flanking columns nor abaldaquin. On feast-days it is{167}brilliantly set forth with candelabra in a fashion which would be theatrical, if it were not churchly.

MAYENCE CATHEDRALMAYENCE CATHEDRAL

MAYENCE CATHEDRAL

Behind this altar is the space reserved for the clergy, a somewhat unusual arrangement, but not a unique one. At the extreme end is the bishop's throne.

The general appearance of the interior constructive elements would seem to place the work as a whole well within the thirteenth century, though the extreme easterly portion is more ancient still.

There is very little of pure Gothic to be noted. Mostly the fabric is a reproduction of the Lombard style, though much undeniably Gothic ornament is used. The bays of the nave are singularly narrow and of great height, almost the reverse of the pure Italian manner of building which elsewhere made itself strongly felt along the Rhine. The height of these bays is more than two and a half times the width. The bays of German churches, in general, have a much greater length than those of Italy, and herein is a marked difference between the Italian and German styles in spite of other resemblances.

There are in the cathedral numerous paintings of questionable artistic worth and an{168}abundance of coloured glass, which is condemned as comparatively modern and of no especial interest.

The altar of St. Martin, with statues of Sts. Martin and Boniface, is near the baptistery. There are eight lateral chapels, out of fifteen in all, which are bare and without altars, showing a poverty—whatever may have been the cause—which is deplorable.

In the Bassenheim chapel is a remarkable marble group taken from the church of Notre Dame, a Gothic edifice destroyed during the siege of 1793.

There are numerous and beautiful funeral monuments scattered about the church, the most celebrated being that which surmounts the tomb of Frastrada, the third wife of Charlemagne, who died in 794, and was originally interred in the church of St. Alban. The remains were removed to the cathedral when the former church was burned in 1552.

On the tomb of Frastrada one may read the following eighth-century inscription:

"Frastradana, pia Caroli conjux vocitata,Christo dilecta, jacet hoc sub marmore tecta,Anno septingentesimo nonagesimo quarto,Quem numerum metro claudere musa negat{169}Rex pie, quem gessit Virgo, licet hic cinerescit,Spiritus hœres sit patriæ quæ tristia nescit."

There are also the tombs of thirty-two archbishops,—a veritable valhalla of churchly fame. Mostly these tombs are ordinary enough, those of Archbishop Berthould of Hennéberg and of the doyen of the chapter being alone remarkable.

The chapel of St. Gothard, a dependency of the cathedral, was built by Archbishop Adelbert I. in 1135-36.

The ancient cloister at Mayence dates from the mid-thirteenth century. Archbishop Siegfried was responsible for the work which was consecrated in the year 1243 in the presence of the Emperor Conrad, on the occasion of a synod which was being held at Mayence at that time. The cloister, as it exists to-day, is made up in part of this ancient work and in part of a more modern construction, this latter being the portion which adjoins the church proper.

The chapter-house was built at the end of the twelfth century or at the beginning of the thirteenth. It is a square apartment covered with an ogival vaulting which springs from a range of pillars with delicately sculptured{170}foliaged capitals. It is decidedly the architectural gem of this composite edifice.

To the north of the cathedral, in the Speise-Markt, is a remarkably fine fountain, restored, or perhaps rebuilt, in the sixteenth century by the Archbishop of Mayence. Abaldaquinsupported by three pillars rises above a well or spring, and on a stone slab one reads the following inscription in letters of gold:

"Divo Karolo V Cesare semp Augus. post victoria gallicam rege ipso ad Ticinum superato ac capto triumphante, fatalique rusticorūper Germnia (sic) cospiratione prostratâ, Alber. card. et archiep. Mog. fontēhanc vetustate dilapsa ad civiūsuorum posteritatisque usum restitui curavit anno MDXXVI."

The Meistersingers of Mayence owed their origin to Henry Misnie, who, according to some authorities, was a canon of the Church, and, according to others, a doctor of theology. He was devoted, at any rate, to poetry, and was, in the fourteenth century, founder of the school of the Master-singers.

He dedicated a great part of his songs to the Virgin, his ideal of all that was pious and good. Later he widened the range of his dedications to include all of the female sex, and beautiful women in particular. He is known{171}in the history of German poetry under the name of Henry von Frauenlob.

His death caused a universal sorrow among the fair sex of Mayence, who gave his funeral such honours as were never before known.

The majority of the great procession which conducted his remains to the tomb, which had been prepared in the cathedral, were women, "eight of the most beautiful bearing a crown of roses, lilies, and myrtle." This is a pretty enough sentiment, but it seems quite inexplicable to-day. History records that the master-singer's favourite drink was the noble wine of the Rhingau, and it is commonly supposed to have inspired many of his beautiful songs.

Legend steps in and says that "the naves of the cathedral were inundated by the libations which went on at this funeral ceremony."

A modern white marble monument, put into place in 1842, and replacing one that had previously disappeared, stands as a memorial to the sweet singer of the praises of women.{172}

BACHARACH, BINGEN, AND RUDESHEIM

Bacharachis famous for its legends and its wine. With the former is associated the ruins of St. Werner's Church, a fragment of exquisite flamboyant Gothic, though built of what looks like a red sandstone. The Swedes demolished it in the Thirty Years' War, but the lantern and the eastern lancet window still remain to suggest its former great beauty.

This beautiful chapel was built as a memorial to the child Werner, whose body was fabled to have been thrown by the Jews, his supposed murderers, into the Rhine at Oberwesel. Instead of floating down-stream with the current, it went up-stream as far as Bacharach, where it was recovered.

There is at Bacharach a twelfth-century church in the Byzantine style, which is now a Protestant temple. It is an incongruous affair in spite of the fact that the style is fairly{173}pure of its kind, so far as the body of the church is concerned. Surmounting it is a needle-like spire which rises above the crenelated battlement of its tower in a most fantastic manner.

Bachrach

The city walls have great ornamental and{174}picturesque qualities, and were, in former days, defended by twelve towers of imposing strength.

The evolution of the name of Bacharach is decidedly non-Christian. It is frankly pagan, being descended fromBacchi ara,—the altar of Bacchus,—which was the name originally given to a rock in the midst of the river, which, in varying seasons, is sometimes covered by the flood, and again quite dry. When its surface appears to the light of day, the vineyard owner hails it as a sign of good vintage.

In proof of the quality of the wines of Bacharach, it is said that Pope Pius II. used every year to have a great tun of it brought to Rome for his special use, and that the Emperor Wenceslas granted their freedom to the citizens of Nuremberg in return for four tuns of the wine of Bacharach. To-day Bacharach is, with Cologne, the great wine centre of the Rhine valley.

Asmanhausen, a few miles up the river, is the central mart for the red wines of the Rhine. Near Asmanhausen is Ehrenfels, where the Archbishops of Mayence had a château in the thirteenth century. The château is still there, but it is nothing more than a magnificent ruin.

{175}

Bishop Hatto's Mouse TowerBishop Hatto's Mouse Tower

Bishop Hatto's Mouse Tower

{176}{177}Opposite Ehrenfels is Bingen, with its Mäuseturm. The chief sentimental memory of Bingen is unquestionably the legend of Bishop Hatto and his "Mouse Tower on the Rhine."

The legend of Hatto, versified by Southey, has stamped the memory of the Mouse Tower and its associations so indelibly upon the mind that it overshadows in interest all else in the vicinity.

" 'Tis the safest place in Germany;The walls are high, and the shores are steep,And the stream is strong and the water deep."

How the rats came and—

". . . whetted their teeth against the stonesAnd how they picked the Bishop's bones"—

is an old story with which children have been regaled for generations past.

The great white "Mouse Tower" stands to-day on its tiny island in the middle of the waters of the Rhine, between Bingen and Ehrenfels, to perpetuate the story, while its ruined walls look down, as they always have, on the steady flow of the Rhine water, making its way from the place of its birth in the Canton{178}of Grisons to the cold waters of the German ocean off the coast of Holland.

Rudesheim

Rudesheim, but a small town of less than three thousand inhabitants, is noted for its wines and its ruins. Its church, though a fifteenth-century edifice of more than ordinary beauty,—if we except its nondescript spire,—comes decidedly last in the city's list of attractions.

The remains of the four châteaux in the neighbourhood are the chief object of the casual tourist.

The town is the centre of a vineyard, the grapes being grown in great profusion near it. The favourable nature of the locality for grape-growing was discovered, it is said, by Charlemagne, who, remarking the rapid disappearance of the snow on the slopes about Rudesheim, declared his belief that fine wine might be grown there. Sending to France for some plants, they were placed in the earth, and have ever since yielded a grape worthy of their parentage, a grape still called Orleans.

From this town the tourist may make a{179}pleasant excursion to the Niederwald,—having first given his attention to the history of Rudesheim, once the seat of an imperial court held in the Nieder Burg,—and scan its four ancient castles. Of these, one belonged for a time to Prince Metternich, who, however, sold it to Count Ingelheim, its present possessor; another is picturesquely posted at the upper part of the town, and still retains some curious relics of the Bromser family, its old possessors. A tradition still exists, telling how Hans Bromser, being taken captive in Jerusalem, made a vow to Heaven that if released he would dedicate his only daughter to the service of the Church. Gaining his liberty soon afterward, he returned to the Rhine to find the child he had left when he started for the Crusades grown to womanhood; and he learned also that, secure of her father's sanction, she had betrothed herself to a youthful knight. Love and duty well-nigh rent the maiden's heart in twain, till love conquered, and she begged her stern parent to relent. This he refused to do, and threatened her with a father's curse should she marry.

Despairing, she threw herself into the Rhine, and her body floated down-stream as far as Bishop Hatto's Mouse Tower, at{180}Bingen. This gave rise to another legend, that when the surface of the waters is troubled it is caused by the uneasy spirit of Bromser's daughter, wrestling with the dreadful fate to which she was driven.

Coat of Arms, Bingen

{181}

LIMBURG

Thecathedral of Limburg-on-Lahn, not farther from the juncture of the Lahn and Rhine than is Frankfort-on-the-Main, may well be considered a Rhine cathedral.

The Lahn is by no means so powerful a stream as is the Main or the Neckar; nor is it either picturesque, or even important as a waterway.

It has this one virtue, however: it forms a setting to Limburg's many-spired cathedral that is truly grand.

Limburg played a great part in the middle ages, and its origin goes far back into antiquity. Under Drusus acastellumwas erected here, which was destroyed by the Franks and the Alemanni.

The counts of the lower Lahn province were among the most powerful in all Germany. They gave their city the name of{182}Roemercastel, which name, to some extent, may be said to live up to to-day. Later the Franks called it Lintburc, from the little river Linther, which flows into the Lahn at this point.

The cathedral of Limburg is the most imposing and homogeneous of all theromano-ogivaledifices of Germany.

Consecrated to St. George, this church dates from the latter years of the twelfth century and the early part of the thirteenth. It was erected by Count Henry of Nassau, and replaced two more ancient edifices on the same site.

Without a doubt it is a mediæval monument which stands supreme in its class, though its grandeur comes not so much from mere magnitude as it does from the general disposition of its plan, and the wonderful blending of the transition elements which, after all is said and done, in Germany, are not elsewhere very pronounced.

The seven spires and towers of this cathedral form a wonderful grouping and make a sky-line more broken than that of any other great church in all Europe.

There is a certain symmetry about this outline, but it is not pyramidal, after the manner{183}of the cathedral at Bonn. In short, it is reminiscent only of itself.

LIMBURG CATHEDRALLIMBURG CATHEDRAL

LIMBURG CATHEDRAL

On the west are a pair of massive towers with conical caps, which give a façade at once remarkable and distinguished.

Flanking the north transept are two smaller towers, and the same arrangement is found just opposite on the south.

Above rises the great central octagon, surmounted in turn by a dwindling octagonal spire, not beautiful in itself with its steeply inclined slate or lead roofing, but which, under all atmospheric conditions, lends a harmony to and is a key-note of the whole structure which is wonderfully effective.

The interior plan is conventional and simple enough, consisting of the usual three naves, with an easterly apse, surrounded by an ambulatory and flanking chapel.

Within, as well as from the outside, the effect is one of an ampleness which is not borne out by the actual dimensions, which fact, of course, shows most able design and execution.

The elevation of the nave, choir, and transepts is divided into four ranges of openings, such as are seen at Soissons in the Isle of{184}France, and, in a less complete form, in Notre Dame at Paris.

This has always been a daring procedure, but in this case it has been carried out with success, and gives the desired effect,—that of ampleness and height.

In the clerestory windows are found the rounded arches which mark the link which binds the Gothic arches elsewhere in the fabric with the earlier Romanesque style.

The vaulting is of the Gothic order throughout, with gracefully proportioned shafts and full-flowered capitals.

All this preserves the simple elements of early Gothic in so impressive a way that the observer will quite overlook, or at least make allowance for, the row of round-headed windows aloft.

The triforium gallery is a charming feature, and has seldom been found so highly developed outside of an early Gothic church. In general the feature is French, and this is perhaps the only example outside France which is so reminiscent of that variety frequently to be met with in the cathedrals of the Isle of France.

The triforium is pierced through to the nave by a series of double narrow arches enclosed{185}within a larger broad-framed arch, while in the transepts and choir the desired effect is accomplished by tripled arches with the same general scheme of arrangement.

With regard to furnishings and accessories, this great cathedral is singularly complete.

There is a highly ornate pulpit in sculptured wood which some will consider the peer of any seen elsewhere. It is decorated further by a series of painted wooden statues of the saints, Nicholas, Ambrose, Augustin, Gregory, and Jerome.

There is a finecustodecovering a pyx, which is surmounted by a fifteenth-centurybaldaquin, and a tomb of a former canon, ornamented in bas-relief.

There is also a pair of baptismal fonts, enormous in size and said to be contemporaneous with the foundation of the cathedral.

A tomb of Daniel of Mutersbach, a knight who died in 1475, is placed in one of the chapels at the crossing, and near by is a mausoleum to that Conrad who, by virtue of a charter given by Louis in 909, founded the church which preceded the present edifice on this site.{186}

It bears the following inscription in the barbarous Latin of the time:

CLAUDITUR HOC TUMULO PER QUEMNUNC SERVITUS ISTOFIT CELEBRIS TEMPLO, LAUS, VIRTUS,GLORIA CHRISTO.

{187}

COBLENZ AND BOPPART

Coblenz

Itis an open question as to whether the charming little city of Coblenz is more delightful because of itself, or because of its proximity to the famous fortress of Ehrenbreitstein,—"the broad stone of honour."

"Here Ehrenbreitstein with her shatter'd wallBlack with the miner's blast upon her height,Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ballRebounding idly on her strength did light."

The city occupies a most romantically and historically endowed situation at the junction of the Moselle and the Rhine.

At Coblenz the sons of Charlemagne met to divide their father's empire into France, Germany, and Italy; there also Edward III. in 1338 met the Emperor Louis, and was by him appointed vicar of the empire; and at Coblenz the French raised a monument to{188}commemorate the subjugation of Russia. Soon after the inscription was finished, the Russian commander entered Coblenz in pursuit of Napoleon. With memorable and caustic wit he left the inscription as it stood, just adding, "Vu et approuvé par nous, Commandant Russe de la Ville de Coblence, Janvier 1er, 1814." Here also is the monument to the young and gallant General Marceau, killed at the battle of Altenkirchen, 1796.

"By Coblenz, on a rise of gentle ground,There is a small and simple pyramid,Crowning the summit of the verdant mound:Beneath its base are hero's ashes hid."

The Moselle, which joins the Rhine at Coblenz, was, like the Rhine itself, referred to by Cæsar.

The pleasant valley of the Moselle—indeed it is one of thepleasantest(which is a vague term, but one easily understood by all) in all Europe—was celebrated by one of the longer poems of Ausonius, who wrote in the fourth century.

For those who would translate the original, his description will not be found inapropos to-day:{189}

"Qua sublimis apex longo super ardua tractuEt rupes et aprica jugi, flexusque sinusqueVitibus adsurgunt naturalique theatro."

Vines then, as now, clothed the slopes of the hills and cliffs which sheltered the deep-cut stream.

A Roman governor of Gaul once proposed to unite the Moselle with the Saône (as it is to-day, by means of the Canal de l'Est), and thus effect a waterway across Europe from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

The church of St. Castor stands on the spot of the famous conference between the sons of Charlemagne. It is one of the most ancient of the Rhine churches, and was founded by Louis the Pious in 836.

Of this early church but little remains to-day except some distinct features to be noted in the choir.

The four towers form a remarkable outline, and two of them, at least as to their lower ranges, are undoubtedly of the eleventh century.

In this church are a series of remarkable decorations, one on the wall above the spring of the nave arches, another above the entrance of the choir aisle, and yet another in the{190}semicircular roofing of the apse. It may be a question as to how far such decorations are in really good taste, but they certainly lend a warmth and brilliancy to an edifice that might otherwise be cold and unfeeling.

Many are the historic incidents connected with this venerable building. The notification of the sons of Louis the Pious took place in 870; the reconciliation of Henri IV. of Germany with his sons occurred in 1105; St. Bernard preached the Crusades here before a vast congregation, recruiting for the army for the East over one thousand citizens of Coblenz alone.

COBLENZ and Its BRIDGECOBLENZ and Its BRIDGE

COBLENZ and Its BRIDGE

Near the church of St. Castor is the house of the Teutonic Order, of fine Gothic design, but to-day turned into a military magazine.

On a hill overlooking the city was the famous Chartreuse convent, the ruins of which are now swallowed up by Forts Constantine and Alexander.

The bridge which crosses the Moselle at this point is in itself a wonderful old relic. It spans the river on fourteen arches, and dates from 1344, save that its watch-tower was built at a later day.

The bridge of boats which crosses the Rhine, on thirty-six pontoons, partakes of the{191}same characteristics as its brother at Mayence, though by no means is it so celebrated.

Above Coblenz the Rhine narrows considerably, and the mountains and hilltops draw in until one's progress, by water, is almost as if it were through a cañon.

Niederlahnstein has a fine ruined church in St. John's, whence it is but a short distance to Boppart.

Boppart

Boppart was the ancientBandobrigaof the Romans, and, like many another place along the Rhine, is closely linked with the memory of Drusus.

Boppart was made an imperial city, and many Diets were held within its walls.

The Hauptkirche, with its twin-jointed spires, was built about the year 1200.

It is thoroughly Romanesque, if we except the spires which are linked together by a sort of galleried vestibule, after a manner that is neither Romanesque nor anything else.

The inside galleries over the aisles (männerchöre) are interesting, though by no means a unique feature in Rhine churches.

There is a queer intermixture of pointed and round-headed arches in both the nave and{192}choir, but nothing to indicate that it was anything but a Romanesque influence that inspired the builders of this not very appealing church.

The vestibule which joins the spires, and the most unusual groining of the vaulting of the body of the church, are two features which the expert will linger over and marvel at, but they have not much interest for the lay observer who will prefer to stroll along the river-bank and pick out charming vistas for his camera.

The convent of Marienburg, which rises high on the hillside back of the town, has an ancient history and was a vast foundation to which references are continually met with in history. To-day it is a hydropathic establishment for semi-invalids and devotees of bridge and tea parties.

The Carmelite church contains some richly carved sixteenth-century monuments, now somewhat mutilated, but very beautiful.

TheTemplehofperpetuates the fact that it was the Knights Templars of Boppart who first mounted the breach at the storming of Ptolemais in the third crusade.

This completes the list of Boppart's ecclesiastical monuments.

GENERAL VIEW of BOPPARTGENERAL VIEWof BOPPART

GENERAL VIEWof BOPPART

{193}In the fourteenth century the town was a "free imperial city"; but, following upon political dissension with its neighbours, it was returned to the guardianship of the Archbishop of Trèves.

Previously it would appear that the inhabitants had not been very religious, but the archbishop was able to induce them to build him a château here as a place of temporary residence; "the first service," says the chronicle of the time, "which we have rendered our gracious master."

Coat of Arms, Coblenz

{194}

LAACH AND STOLZENFELS

Laach

Backof Coblenz is the charming little lake of Laach, at the other end of which is the picturesque but deserted abbey of Laach, one of the most celebrated, architecturally and historically, of all the religious edifices along the Rhine.

Once a Benedictine convent, it was pillaged and its inmates dispersed during the overflow of the French Revolution, and is now naught but a ruin, though in many respects a grandly preserved one.

The abbey was founded in 1093 by Henry II. of Laach, Count Palatine of Lower Lorraine, and the first Count Palatine of the Rhine.

Its magnificent church, built in the most acceptable Gothic, contains the remains of its founder and many nobles.

The monks of the abbey were, in the middle{195}ages, greatly celebrated for their knowledge of the sciences and their hospitality. Their library was richly stored with bibliographical treasures, and they possessed a fine collection of paintings. To-day the abbey and its dependencies is but a shadow of its former self; its library and its picture-gallery have disappeared, and, early in the nineteenth century, the establishment was sold for a price so small that it would be a sacrilege to mention it.

ABBEY of LAACH in the Olden Time

Stolzenfels

The mention of the castle of Stolzenfels hardly suggests anything churchly or devout,{196}though those who know the history of this most picturesque of all Rhine castles (restored though it be) know also that it was an early foundation of Archbishop Arnold of Trèves in the thirteenth century, and was, during the century following, the residence of his successors.

Placed high upon its "proud rock," the restored fabric to-day wonderfully resembles the castled-crag of one's imagination.

Archbishop Werner of Strasburg also made it his residence in turn, and later the English princess betrothed to the Emperor Frederick II. of the Hohenstaufen dynasty was entertained there.

The castle was nearly destroyed by the French in 1688, and in 1825 the ruin was made over to the then prince royal, afterward King of Prussia.

Within the reconstructed walls, topped with a series of crenelated battlements, after the true mediæval manner, one finds an ample courtyard, from which lead the entrances to the various parts of the vast fortress.

Innumerable apartments open out one from the other, all forming a great museum filled with all manner of curios and relics.

In a corner of one great room was long{197}kept (they may or may not be there yet; the writer does not know) the Austrian and Swiss standards taken in the Thirty Years' War.

STOLZENFELS

There was also a cabinet containing the sabre of Murat, taken at Waterloo; the sabres of Blucher, of Poniatowski, and Sobieski; and{198}the swords of the Duc d'Albe and De Tilly; and, incongruously enough, a knife and fork said to have belonged to Andreas Hofer, the hero of the Tyrol.

In the chamber of the king is a magnificent piece of ecclesiastical furniture in the form of a processional cross said to date from the eighth century.

The fine Gothic chapel is decidedly the gem of the whole fabric and its accessories, and, though only finished in its completeness, during the present day, it is a master copy of the best style of the Gothic era.

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