WE had made a sweep through Belgium and Holland, intending to return by way of the Rhine and Switzerland. Accordingly, in leaving Amsterdam, we struck across the country to Arnhem, where we found a pleasant hotel near the station, outside of the town. Here we spent the night in order to break the monotony of the ride to Cologne. After climbing stairs to gain our room, wide, but so perpendicular that we were really afraid to descend by them, we had, from a rickety, upper piazza, our first glimpse of the Rhine, winding through flat, green meadows, with hardly more than a suggestion of hills in the distance. There is nothing of interest to detain one at Arnhem. The guide-book informed us that it was the scene of Sir Philip Sidney's death; but no one in the hotel seemed ever to have heard of that gentle knight—sans peur et sans reproche.
We reached Cologne at noon the next day. The road makes a détour through the plain, so that, for some time before gaining it, we could see the city nestling under the wings of the great cathedral. How can I tell you anything about it? If I say that it is five times the length of any church you know, and that the towers, when completed, are to be the same height as the length, will my words bring to you any conception of its size? If I say that it was partially built a couple of centuries before the discovery of America; that it was worked upon for three hundred years, and then suffered to remain untouched until recently; that the architect who planned it has been forgotten for centuries, so that the idea embodied in its form is like some beautiful old tradition, whose origin is unknown,—will this give you any idea of its age? The new part, seen from our hotel, was so white and beautiful, that, when we had passed around to the farther side, it was like waking from a sleep of a thousand years. The blackened, broken Gothic front told its own story of age and decay. Ah, the interminable dusky length of its interior, when we had crept within the doors! It was a very world in itself, full of voices, and echoes, and shadows of its own. We followed the guide over the rough stone floor, giving no heed to the tiresome details that fell in broken words and monotonous tones from his lips. I recall nothing now but the fact (!) that behind the choir lie buried, in all their magnificence, the Three Wise Men of the East. As we came down one of the shadowy aisles, we paused before a fine, old, stained window. Our guide immediately became prolix again. "Dis," he said, pointing to one of the figures upon the glass, "is Shosef, in ter red coat; and dis is Shon ter Baptised; and dis, ter Holy Ghos' in ter form off a duff."
When the old woman at the door offered pictures of the cathedral, he assured us that they were quite correct, having been taken "from nature, outzide and inzide."
You must see the old Roman remains of towers and crumbling walls, sniff the vile odors of the streets, which have become proverbial, and be sprinkled with cologne—then your duty to the city is done. But almost everybody visits the Church of St. Ursula, which is lined with the skulls of that unfortunate young woman and her eleven thousand virgin followers.
The story is, that she was an English princess, who lived—nobody knows at what remote period of antiquity. For some reason equally obscure, she started with her lover and eleven thousand maidens to make a pilgrimage to Rome. Fancy this lover undertaking a continental tour with eleven thousand and one young women under his care! Even modern travel presents no analogy to the case. "And they staid over night at my aunt's," droned the sleepy guide, who was telling the story. The girls looked at each other. "Good gracious! what unbounded hospitality!" whispered one. "At his aunt's!" exclaimed a second, somewhat puzzled by the anachronism. "Don't interrupt," said a third interested listener; "he means Mayence;" and he proceeded with the narrative. They accomplished their pilgrimage in safety; but, upon their return, were "fetched up py ter parparians," as the guide expressed it, which means, in English, that they were murdered, here at Cologne. If you doubt the story, behold the skulls! We turned suddenly upon the guide.
"Do you believe this?"
"I mus; sinz I tells it to you," was his enigmatical reply, dropping his eyes.
The scenery along the Rhine from Cologne, for twenty miles, is uninteresting; just now, too, the weather was uncomfortably hot, and we were glad to leave the steamer for a few hours at Bonn. Upon the balcony of a hotel, looking out upon the river, we found a score of young men in bright-colored caps—students from the university here. When dinner was announced, they crowded in and filled the table, at which the ladies of our party were the only ones present. Such a noisy, loud-talking set as they were! When each one had dined, he coolly leaned back in his chair, and lighted his pipe! Before we had finished our almonds and raisins the room was quite beclouded. Then they adjourned with pipe and wine-glass to the balcony again, where we left them when we went out to see the town.
The university was formerly a palace, the guide-book had told us; but all our childish conceptions of palaces had been rudely destroyed before now, so that we were not surprised to find it without any especial beauty of architecture—only a pile of brown stone, three quarters of a mile long. I think we had left all the students drinking wine upon the balcony, for we saw none here,—though we went through the library, museum, and various halls,—except one party outside, who stared unblushingly at the girls remaining in the carriage.
Somewhere in the town we found a lovely old minster, through the aisles of which we wandered for a while, happy in having no guide and knowing nothing whatever about it. Outside, in a little park, was a statue of Beethoven, and in a quiet street near the water the musical girls of our party found the house where he was born. In the cool of the day we took another steamer, and went on towards the beckoning hills, at nightfall reaching Rolandseck. There was no town in sight, only a pier and three quiet hotels upon the bank, with a narrow road between their gardens and the water. We chose the one farthest away, and were rowed down to it, dabbling our hands in the water, and saying over and over again, "It is the Rhine!"