Cologne.
Köln, (or Cologne), the principal town in the Rhenish Province of Prussia,
the seat of the supreme court of justice for the west bank of the Rhine,
one of the chief commercial cities in Germany, and a military stronghold
of the first class, is an old Catholic city dating its foundation from the
1st century of the Christian era. In the beginning of the present century,
it had 200 churches and chapels; it has at present 25 only, two of which
are prodestant.
The Cathedral.
The first place that the traveler naturally goes to visit is the
Cathedral, (Ger. Dom), which "is perhaps" says Bædeker, "the most
magnificent Gothic edifice in the world." This superb edifice is over an
acre and a half in extent! It is 448 feet long and 249 feet through the
transepts; the choir is 149 feet high. The magnificent south portal cost
more than $500,000.
The central portal in the west end is 93 feet high, and 31 feet wide. The
central window is 48 feet in height and 20 feet wide. The projected height
of the twin towers is 511 feet. These are intended to consist of four
stories, the third of which is approaching completion. A model
representing in miniature what this structure is intended to be in the
height of its glory when its towers are completed and crowned with spires,
may be seen in a store adjacent to the _Dom-platz,_ where the "only
veritable" Cologne water (eau de Cologne) may also be obtained.
The foundation of this vast edifice was laid in 1248. Little work was done
at it between 1322 and the beginning of the 16th century, and none from
the latter date until 1816, when its restoration was begun under the
auspices of the King of Prussia. Since that time $2,000,000 have been
expended upon it. Those lower portions of the walls which were built 600
years ago, are old and gray and washed thinner by the rains of those half
a dozen centuries. Such as appreciate the poetry of architecture, see in
its multitude of spires and finials (large and small) a thousand vegetable
forms, uniting to produce a bewildering effect upon the imagination; but
no word-picture can do justice to the almost matchless beauty of this fine
blossom of Gothic architecture. The tourist will love to go round about it
and inspect and contemplate its every part, to take near views and distant
views of it, and to revisit it time and again; and when he has bid adieu
to Cologne and returned to his far distant home, he will dream dreams, by
day and by night, in which he revisits and beholds again the beauties and
glories of this magnificent temple.
_St. Ursula,_ a church that is said to have been been built in the 11th
century, contains a monument erected (1658) to St. Ursula, a princess of
England, who, according to the legend, when on her return from a
pilgrimage to Rome, was barbarously murdered by the Huns at Cologne with
her 11,000 virgin attendants. The skulls and bones of these martyrs are
preserved in cases placed round the church. Large sections of the walls in
the church are shelved and divided into pigeon holes, each containing a
skull! I saw no less than 600 or 700 of these skulls (by actual count).
The bones "are worked into the walls in a species of sepulchral mosaic."
These bones, it is said, had been in their graves about 400 years. The old
pictures of the apostles are painted upon slates, one of them bearing the
date 1224.
In the Golden Chamber are preserved the most sacred relics; here is a bone
which is claimed to have been in the right arm of St. Ursula, while a
gilded shrine contains the rest of her bones. Do these identifications not
prove conclusively that anatomy was better understood when these bones
were classified than it is even now? The name of the anatomist who
selected St. Ursula's bones from among 11,000 and identified them is not
given, but he certainly deserves much credit for it. Here are thorns from
the crown and a piece of the rod with which Christ was scorged, one of the
six jars of alabaster used at the marriage in Galilee, and a piece, about
as thick as a hair and an inch or two long, of the "true cross." So they
_say_. These things were brought hither from Syria by the crusaders in
1378.
The Museum.
The Museum in Cologne is one of the most interesting that I have yet seen.
Its curious old paintings carry one back to the wretched times of the
middle ages, when nothing but superstition and the night-mare of hell
could influence predatory man to humanity on civil order. A picture of the
Last Judgement is characteristic of the religious notions of those early
times. In this, Christ is represented as sitting on one rainbow and
resting his feet upon another. To his right stands a beautiful castle,
into which numbers of beautiful persons are going. But on the left, how
horrible! A massive time-worn citadel from whose large chimney tower issue
flames and smoke, into which winged devils are descending, while others,
carrying wretched-looking men in their clutches, fly about near it, or are
approaching it with their struggling victims, and hideous monsters of
quaint, fantastic forms accompany them in their excursions! One of these
hideous beasts is represented with an extra head upon one shoulder and one
under its breast; it has also faces upon its knees!
Among the other relics of antiquity, is Cheopetra with a little snake
creeping over her bosom, Christ on the Cross surrounded by Mary and the
Apostles, Madonna in an arbor of roses, Lions Fighting, Mourning Jews,
Summer Night on the Rhine, and Galileo in Prison, deserve special notice
among the hundreds of other admirable paintings.
A fine iron bridge 1,359 feet long, and wide enough for a double line of
rails and a separate roadway, crosses the Rhine directly east of the
Cathedral.
In traveling through foreign lands, one sees so much that is indecent,
obscene, and shockingly profane, according to his our way of thinking,
that he scarcely knows what to include and what to suppress in his
accounts of foreign manners, customs and institutions. Some writers
incline to the policy of rendering a true account of what they touch, but
will restrain their pens from giving any notice of about one fourth of all
they see, because they do not wish to pain the feelings of their readers
by reciting to them narrations of horrible tragedies that occurred in the
past, or of groveling superstitions that prevailed; such as we all wish
had never disgraced the history of infant humanity or constituted the
day-dreams of our ancestors. They carefully select that which flatters and
pleases the vanity of their fellows, and pass by unnoticed, everything
else. This course may tickle vain people, but it cannot meet with favor
among those who love the truth, and the whole truth. There are sins of
_omission_ as well as of _commission,_ and writers betray and deceive the
world as much by the former class as by the latter. Some fastidious
writers are afraid to call things by their proper names, considering it
more appropriate to paint an African with a brownish color than to shock
the beholder with a picture of a man with a _black_ face! I can not take
the reader through Europe in that way. To paint a negro we need _black_
paint, and to describe scenes which are unfamiliar we need words and
language that is not used in the drawing room or parlor every time we
meet. So much for the introduction to an episode that is characteristic of
the profanity of some of the descendents of the old Teutonic stock, when
they become exasperated. The second day that I spent in Cologne, I went to
a German barber to be put into trim for making my descend into the lower
latitudes and consequently warmer countries. Another customer was ahead of
me. While the barber was at work upon him, all the time in a rage and
swearing _barber_ously at some proceedings, a thunder storm came up very
suddenly, and so obscured the light of the sun (though it was midday) that
he could not see to go on with his work. Hereupon he began first to swear
at the clouds, then at the Lord himself, using all the epithets of abuse
that he could find in his entire vocabulary of profanity, there were heavy
peals of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning, but, the darker it became
and the more tremendous the crashes of the thunderbolts, the more the
senseless and exasperated barber cursed and swore. After the shower and
hail, I walked out into the pure fresh air and under the blue vault of
heaven smiling down upon the refreshed vegetation, and tried to draw a
picture of that profane man's mental panorama, but I never succeeded even
to this day. Such behavior is not of rare occurrence, else I should not
have related it; but even sacred history refers to similar incidents. The
wicked, it is recorded, danced and were merry even until the waters of the
flood swept them away.
A certain divine related to me a similar story concerning the behavior of
a large body of the passengers with him on the "Great Eastern," when she
was foundered at sea and obliged to return, after they had advanced 500
miles. When the storm was assailing the great ship, breaking down its
masts and tearing away its rigging, so that most of the passengers were in
despair and expected to sink any hour, they kept prayer-meetings almost
continually. Another faction found fault with these, declared that praying
was an intolerable nuisance and asked the Captain to prohibit it. The
Captain decided that he would not interfere, whereupon the party offended
took to dancing, cursing and swearing, and tried their utmost in this way
to break up the prayer-meetings,
I heard similar profanity on my return trip across the Atlantic. One night
when a storm assailed our ship, so that the waves rolled over the deck and
the fierce rocking of the vessel threw many almost out of their beds, I
heard many of them swear, even during the very time that the thunder
rolled with tremendous roarings and crashes across the heavens. It seems
almost impossible that conscious intelligent beings could behave thus, but
the fact that they do, helps us to believe other strange truths recorded
in history, without which, no correct conception of man's former depraved
condition can be formed at this advanced day. For example, few seem to
appreciate the part played by the Catholic Church with her images,
shrines, sacred relics, paid magnificent temples, in taming and civilizing
man, because they do not know who and what he was when the light of
intelligence first began to direct his footsteps, and he had not yet
learned to control his selfish nature which had hitherto been guided by an
instinct worth a hundred times more than intelligence without morality or
religion. We make a sad mistake yet in the nineteenth century, in
cultivating the intellect and leaving morality so much out of the
question. We see some of the fruits already in the corruption which
prevails alike in all circles without regard to party or sect. I will
recur to this again in speaking of the influence of the church, when I
come to describe the magnificent churches of Italy.
On the second afternoon that I spent at Cologne there had been a shower,
and from sunset till dusk I beheld one of the grandest atmospheric
phenomena that I had ever witnessed. From a window of Mlüler's Hotel
(facing the _Dom-Platz_) I was looking over the Cathedral at the western
sky, as the sun throw its colored light through the small drops of rain
still descending, and thus colored both the green foliage of the trees and
the grand edifice before me, presenting a scene of such enchanting beauty
as would afford almost a sufficient excuse for one to go into raptures, or
sink down in a fit of ecstatic delight.
I may add that before leaving Cologne, I saw among the many dog-teams used
in distributing produce over the city, a span whose disproportion I shall
never forget; there was a dog hitched to one side of the shaft and a woman
took hold of the other side and assisted him in pulling the load!
Bonn.
On Friday morning, August 13th, I left Cologne and went by rail to Bonn,
21 miles further up the Rhine. It is the seat of the Freidrich Wilhelm
University, and contains about 26,000 inhabitants. The Poppelsdorfer
Allee, an excellent quadruple avenue of fine horse-chestnuts, three
quarters of a mile long, is the principal promenade of the town. At the
end of it stands the Schloss containing the University, with a library
(200,000 volumes) and a museum rich in Roman antiquities. The Münster (or
Cathedral) dates from the 12th and 13th centuries. In the Münsterplatz
stands a fine bronze statue of Beethoven, a celebrated German musician,
who was born in the Bonngasse, No. 515. This statue faces south, (as do
most of the statues that I have seen in Europe, except when the
surroundings are unfavorable). One side of the pedestal contains the
following inscription:
LUDWIG
VAN
BEETHOVEN
Geb. zu Bonn MDCCLXX.
The other three sides contain base reliefs representing muses playing upon
musical instruments.
Half a mile above the Poppelsdorfer Schloss rises the Kreuzberg (400 feet
high) crowned with a white church. This contains the "Holy Steps" 28 in
number, which must only be ascended on the knees, and are in imitation of
the Scala Sancta at the Lateran in Rome, piously believed to be the
identical steps of the Prætorium ascended by the Savior when he appeared
before Pilate.
The view from the tower of this church is one of the most beautiful on the
Rhine. After enjoying the scenery a while, with a party of ladies and
gentlemen whose society I had joined in the church below, we came down,
and I took a rustic seat on an eminence and surveyed the beauties of the
landscape more at leisure. The most beautiful part of the Rhine is from
Bonn to Mayence, and this view from the Kreuzberg constituted for me a
fine initiation into the charming scenery that fell to my portion to enjoy
the coming three days. Large sections of the country here are entirely
without fences, there being no hedge-fences even, and the landscape
checkered by the different fresh colors of the various crops, spreads out
like a beautiful carpet of green, red, yellow, gray, and a dozen other
tints and shakes, all mixed up, or like a pavement rich in mosaics. We had
also gone into the cellar of the church to see the skeletons and bodies of
26 _Servitten_ lying about in boxes or coffins set in rows upon the
ground. These, it is said, built the church in 1627. The bodies of several
of them seem to have petrified more or less perfectly, but the rest of
them are mere skeletons, and present an anatomical display that reminded
me of what I had seen in St. Ursula, in Cologne, as above described. This
cellar is perfectly dark and is entered by a trap-door in the form of a
heavy stone, which an attendant removes by means of a crow-bar. The steps
leading down are narrow and the passage very low, so that several of the
ladies at first declined to enter, but we persuaded them, however, to
accompany us. A tallow candle afforded us some little light, and after
brushing away the cobwebs which the spiders had spun since the last party
had made their entry, we came upon the sickening sight of the dozen or
more skeletons still preserved. The ladies in the party were intelligent
and dressed tastefully, and I shall never forget how the gaudy colors of
their dresses contrasted with the gloom of that nasty cellar.
The frequent odd adventures into such places as many would not like to
enter in their own homes in the presence of their friends and companions,
constitutes a prolific source of amusement. After we had crept out of that
dirty cobwebbed passage, our clothes were slightly soiled and cobwebby.
With the remark, "If we were all with our fashionable circles at home, I
suppose we should not go on this way," or some such allusion, that reminds
the company of how differently they are wont to go on at home,-one can,
under such circumstances generally provoke a fit of merriment. To the
traveler, every day is a day of adventures--frequently of rather funny
adventures!
At 2:30 p.m., I left Bonn by rail for Mehlen, (5 miles further up), where
I crossed the Rhine on a ferry and came to Königswinter on its right bank.
Southeast of this village lie "The Seven Mountains" (Siebengebirge). From
the Drachenfels (1,066 feet high) the view is the most picturesque, and
this one, about a mile from the village, I ascended. Donkeys and donkey
boys are found here in aboundance, but I would have nothing to do with the
donkey, and immediately set out to make the ascent on foot. I did not come
far before a girl crowned me, with a wreath made of leaves, and asked me
to buy it. The scenery is so romantic, here, that many will yield to the
importunities of these poor girls and give them a _groschen_ (2½ cents)
and make the rest of their journeys with wreaths of leaves upon their
hats! The ruins of the castle of Drachenfels (or dragon's rock) erected in
the beginning of the 12th century, is near the summit of the peak. The
cavern of the dragon may be seen from the Rhine half way up the hill.
"This dragon was slain by Sigfried, the hero from the Low Countries, who,
having bathed himself in its blood, became invulnerable."
The summit of Drachenfels commands one of the noblest prospects of the
Rhine. Here sat Byron when he wrote the following beautiful lines:
"The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which hear the vine;
And hills all rich with blossomed trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine
And scattered cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strew'd a scene which I should see
With double joy went _thou_ with me."
While luxuriating here amidst these grand and beautiful scenes of the
Rhine, we were visited, by a shower, after which I enjoyed the sublime
sight of _looking down upon a rainbow_ which stood in the valley below me!
That evening I rode by rail to Ehrenbreitstein which is opposite to
Coblentz.