CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE.
The cathedral of Cologne is at once its ornament and its reproach. It was begun in 1248 by the elector Conrad, more than six hundred years ago, but it is not yet finished, although the present Prussian king is expending vast sums upon it. Since the city has passed under the Prussian dominion, and more especially since the accession of the present king, important aid has been obtained from the government. The unfinished towers are rising year by year; and if the annual supplies that have been granted are continued, another fifteen years may possibly see it completed. The estimated expense of finishing it is five million dollars. It is considered as a very fine specimen of the Gothic architecture. One tower, that on the front, is completed. This cathedral is exceedingly gorgeous in decorations, combining all the features that belong to that species of architecture. The choir is finished, and exceeds in splendid beauty almost everything of the kind which the traveler will meet with in Europe. It is very rich in stained glass, and this is true also of the body of the church. Much of the pictured glass is modern: it is set in the same window with the ancient, and is not inferior to it in splendor. The cathedral is paved with rude, common stones, doubtless intended to be temporary only, and to be in due time replaced by marble. It was originally intended that the towers of this cathedral should be five hundred feet high. The dimensions on the ground are four hundred feet by one hundred and eighty. The nave is supported by one hundred columns, of which the middle ones are forty feet in circumference.