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strangers, and that gratis, except as to the freewill offering of a few silver groschen to the housekeeper; especially as everywhere else in Cologne pretty heavy payment is the law: a dollar and a-half opened to us the shrine of Caspar and his royal brothers,—we handled St. Ursula's skull for half a dollar,-and in every church the sacristan or Suisse expects a douceur. Cologne is spoilt by travellers: the children are beggars, the men fee-hungry commissionaires, and the women are as importunate as the children: n. b. I saw to-day, in this virtuous town, three carriage loads of "unfortunate females" going to prison, under escort of the police, as a terrible example. In the evening, bought some prints,—especially that charming one of the Annunciation by William of Cologne, -and walked upon the bridge of boats awhile, and so to the perpetual exigencies of journalizing, feeding and bed. It is curious how few English we have met hitherto; but they are all going one way, helter skelter, and don't meet except at the great gambling baths, or the Swiss depôts so also of Americans: everybody is a bird of passage, and the flock flies

one way.

That Rathhaus, with its small "place" approached by three genuine Roman arches, is a perfect gem; and the "place" afore

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said is made up of all sorts of picturesque architecture, florid gothic, Roman, Greek, Moresco, and plain stone-house building: but I cannot stop to describe it: memory has taken its photograph. So also, in our many hours of rambling through the dirty, smelly, roughly paved old city, we have dropt upon divers other pieces of high and curious antiquity as the Templar's Palace, now an exchange; another vast roomed house of the twelfth century, going to be turned into a Salon de Danse, of three thousand five hundred people power; a Roman round tower, with herring-bone brickwork; the old city walls, as old as Agrippina; the wooden pair of horses looking out of a garret window, whereby hangs a tale; the house made famous alike by Rubens's birth, and Mary of Medici's death; and divers other memorables. However, for details, consult guidebooks, and all that sort of thing: a tourist must not attempt description; every one of his mems. might be diluted into a weary volume before exhaustion.

22nd.-Sunday seems very fairly kept at Cologne; most of the shops closed, churches full, and after Mass plenty of rational family promenading, especially about our thronged bridge of boats leading to the Duitz ramparts.

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We went to English service in the Consulate Chapel, an up-stairs room approached by a most awkward out-of-door corkscrew flight of steps, and served by a gigantic clergyman (I believe a stranger) of no great fervour. Some eighty were collected in that room, like the early Christians, every lay person desiring to be devout; but your average divines seldom improve such occasions: routine is the curse of all establishments, and our dull giant was a damper.

In the afternoon took a stroll, with all the following, over the bridge, to Roman Duitz, entering a fineish old church there, full of carving in white and gold: thence back, rain threatening, to St. Martin's, one of the most ancient churches here, Byzantine, or akin to it, apsed and round-arched, and full of interests: the pulpit is remarkable for enormous marble angels above, and a huge bronze dragon underneath some fine pictures here too.

After this to vespers at the Cathedral,—a magnificent organ service; but all the furniture thereof is miserably mean in the midst of noble architecture; the pulpit as shabby as that in any village church, and the high altar no great things; perhaps all is "provisoire" at present. Round home by way of that tit bit of Cologne, my favourite Rathhaus; looking

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also at its interior tapestries, and what is called the Roman court, where genuine oldRome tablets are tastelessly and ignorantly alternated by German heraldry, now a Cæsar, and then a burgomaster: the original of the gladiator and lion in modern marble on the front, is here; and several antique entablatured profiles. Service again at home.

It is very noticeable, how numerous in all these places are those unproductive classes, the military and the ecclesiastics; both swarm everywhere, and the rest of the community must keep them—no small tax. Prussia has, all know, a fine and numerous army: but who can tell whether it may not be destined to measure swords with us next year? at all events, Prussia is husbanding her strength, while we are obliged to use up ours. A few waif and estray notes out of place. This river Rhine is liable to terrible floods that inundate the whole country in our hotel there is a mark on the wall, near the ceiling, of the manger, to mark the rise of '84 Cathedral the Meuse similarly town to half way up the pulpit

lofty salle-a

and in Liege

drowned its

lesser inun

dations being frequent. What an amount of loss and misery this must cause, especially in winter.

High-churchism hereabouts would find itself

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in a fix; for short of going over to Rome there is no stopping ground for the ecclesiastical formalist: the only understandable position for the Protestant is spiritual worship, contempt of mere ceremonials, and the free right of private judgment: a Tractarian consular chaplain would be a very Brummagem priest, repudiated by all parties, and

could not stand an hour.

:

There is a regiment of horsemen here with very long swords, bright helmets, and a white uniform: one of our juveniles observed, they look like an army of men cooks, tin saucepan, spit and vest: true enough, little Walter. Remember the brace of foolish adventurers sculling on the Rhine: easy enough to shoot the bridge downstream, but useless toil to try to stem the torrent: "sed revocare gradum," &c. these two Cologne cockneys were swept away by the tide apparently to Rotterdam, or near it we watched their "facilis descensus rocket like, and vain tugging up again for an hour or two till daylight failed. Natural columns of basalt are frequent in the streets : the Duitz promenade, for instance, is lined with them. In the old days of my former visit, Cologne was also paved with this basalt, roughly enough in the uncut pentagonal blocks; but herein, as in all other things, time has brought improvement.

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