The duties of customs and excise are imposed by the magistrates of the city, and these enable them to pay their contributions to the Germanic fund; for, though such cities are formally independent of the neighbouring princes and nobility, they are not so of the general laws or expences of the empire, in the Diet of which they have some small share, forty-nine cities being allowed to send two representatives, and thus to have two votes out of an hundred and thirty-six. These duties, of both sorts, are very high at Cologne; and the first form a considerable part of the interruptions, which all the States upon the Rhine give to the commerce of that river. Here also commodities, intended to be carried beyond the city by water, must be re-shipped; for, in order to provide cargoes for the boatmen of the place, vessels from the lower parts of the Rhine are not allowed to ascend beyond Cologne, and those from the higher parts cannot descend it farther. They may, indeed, reload with other cargoes for their return; and, as they constantly do so, the Cologne boatmen are not much benefited by the regulation; but the transfer of the goods employs some hands, subjects them better to the inspection of the customhouse officers, and makes it necessary for the merchants of places, on both sides, trading with each other, to have intermediate correspondents here. Yet, notwithstanding all this aggression upon the freedom of trade, Cologne is less considerable as a port, than some Dutch towns, never mentioned in a book, and is inferior, perhaps, to half the minor seaports in England. We could not find more than thirty vessels of burthen against the quay, all mean and ill-built, except the Dutch, which are very large, and, being constructed purposely for a tedious navigation, contain apartments upon the deck for the family of the skipper, well furnished, and so commodious as to have four or five sashed windows on each side, generally gay with flower-pots. Little flower-gardens, too, sometimes formed upon the roof of the cabin, increase the domestic comforts of the skipper; and the neatness of his vessel can, perhaps, be equalled only by that of a Dutch house. In a time of perfect peace, there is no doubt more traffic; but, from what we saw of the general means and occasions of commerce in Germany, we cannot suppose it to be much reduced by war. Wealthy and commercial countries may be injured immensely by making war either for Germany or against it; by too much friendship or too much enmity; but Germany itself cannot be proportionately injured with them, except when it is the scene of actual violence. Englishmen, who feel, as they always must, the love of their own country much increased by the view of others, should be induced, at every step, to wish, that there may be as little political intercourse as possible, either of friendship or enmity, between the blessings of their Island and the wretchedness of the Continent.
Our inn had formerly been a convent, and was in a part of the town where such societies are more numerous than elsewhere. At five o'clock, on the Sunday after our arrival, the bells of churches and convents began to sound on all sides, and there was scarcely any entire intermission of them till evening. The places of public amusement, chiefly a sort of tea-gardens, were then set open, and, in many streets, the sound of music and dancing was heard almost as plainly as that of the bells had been before; a disgusting excess of licentiousness, which appeared in other instances, for we heard, at the same time, the voices of a choir on one side of the street, and the noise of a billiard table on the other. Near the inn, this contrast was more observable. While the strains of revelry arose from an adjoining garden, into which our windows opened, a pause in the music allowed us to catch some notes of the vesper service, performing in a convent of the order of Clarisse, only three or four doors beyond. Of the severe rules of this society we had been told in the morning. The members take a vow, not only to renounce the world, but their dearest friends, and are never after permitted to see even their fathers or mothers, though they may sometimes converse with the latter from behind a curtain. And, lest some lingering remains of filial affection should tempt an unhappy nun to lift the veil of separation between herself and her mother, she is not allowed to speak even with her, but in the presence of the abbess. Accounts of such horrible perversions of human reason make the blood thrill and the teeth chatter. Their fathers they can never speak to, for no man is suffered to be in any part of the convent used by the sisterhood, nor, indeed, is admitted beyond the gate, except when there is a necessity for repairs, when all the votaries of the order are previously secluded. It is not easily, that a cautious mind becomes convinced of the existence of such severe orders; when it does, astonishment at the artificial miseries, which the ingenuity of human beings forms for themselves by seclusion, is as boundless as at the other miseries, with which the most trivial vanity and envy so frequently pollute the intercourses of social life. The poor nuns, thus nearly entombed during their lives, are, after death, tied upon a board, in the clothes they die in, and, with only their veils thrown over the face, are buried in the garden of the convent.
During this day, Trinity Sunday, processions were passing on all sides, most of them attended by some sort of martial music. Many of the parishes, of which there are nineteen, paraded with their officers; and the burgesses, who are distributed into eight corps, under a supposition that they could and would defend the city, if it was attacked, presented their captains at the churches. The host accompanied all these processions. A party of the city guards followed, and forty or fifty persons out of uniform, the representatives probably of the burgesses, who are about six thousand, succeeded. Besides the guards, there was only one man in uniform, who, in the burlesque dress of a drum-major, entertained the populace by a kind of extravagant marching dance, in the middle of the procession. Our companion would not tell us that this was the captain.
The cathedral, though unfinished, is conspicuous, amongst a great number of churches, for the dignity of some detached features, that shew part of the vast design formed for the whole. It was begun, in 1248, by the Elector Conrad, who is related, in an hexameter inscription over a gate, to have laid the first stone himself. In 1320, the choir was finished, and the workmen continued to be employed upon the other parts in 1499, when of two towers, destined to be 580 feet above the roof, one had risen 21 feet, and the other 150 feet, according to the measurement mentioned in a printed description. We did not learn at what period the design of completing the edifice was abandoned; but the original founder lived to see all the treasures expended, which he had collected for the purpose. In its present state, the inequality of its vast towers renders it a striking object at a considerable distance; and, from the large unfilled area around it, the magnificence of its Gothic architecture, especially of some parts, which have not been joined to the rest, and appear to be the ruined remains, rather than the commencement of a work, is viewed with awful delight.
In the interior of the cathedral, a fine choir leads to an altar of black marble, raised above several steps, which, being free from the incongruous ornaments usual in Romish churches, is left to impress the mind by its majestic plainness. The tall painted windows above, of which there are six, are superior in richness of colouring and design to any we ever saw; beyond even those in the Chapter-house at York, and most resembling the very fine ones in the cathedral of Canterbury. The nave is deformed by a low wooden roof, which appears to have been intended only as a temporary covering, and should certainly be succeeded by one of equal dignity to the vast columns placed for its support, whether the other parts of the original design can ever be completed or not.
By some accident we did not see the tomb of the three kings of Jerusalem, whose bodies are affirmed to have been brought here from Milan in 1162, when the latter city was destroyed by the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa. Their boasted treasures of golden crowns and diamonds pass, of course, without our estimation.
A description of the churches in Cologne, set out with good antiquarian minuteness, would fill volumes. The whole number of churches, chapters and chapels, which last are by far the most numerous, is not less than eighty, and none are without an history of two or three centuries. They are all opened on Sundays; and we can believe, that the city may contain, as is asserted, 40,000 souls, for nearly all that we saw were well attended. In one, indeed, the congregation consisted only of two or three females, kneeling at a great distance from the altar, with an appearance of the utmost intentness upon the service, and abstraction from the noise of the processions, that could be easily heard within. They were entirely covered with a loose black drapery; whether for penance, or not, we did not hear. In the cathedral, a figure in the same attitude was rendered more interesting by her situation beneath the broken arches and shattered fret-work of a painted window, through which the rays of the sun scarcely penetrated to break the shade she had chosen.
Several of the chapels are not much larger than an ordinary apartment, but they are higher, that the nuns of some adjoining convent may have a gallery, where, veiled from observation by a lawn curtain, their voices often mingle sweetly with the choir. There are thirty-nine convents of women and nineteen of men, which are supposed to contain about fifteen hundred persons. The chapters, of which some are noble and extremely opulent, support nearly four hundred more; and there are said to be, upon the whole, between two and three thousand persons, under religious denominations, in Cologne. Walls of convents and their gardens appear in every street, but do not attract notice, unless, as frequently happens, their bell sounds while you are passing. Some of their female inhabitants may be seen in various parts of the city, for there is an order, the members of which are employed, by rotation, in teaching children and attending the sick. Those of the noble chapters are little more confined than if they were with their own families, being permitted to visit their friends, to appear at balls and promenades, to wear what dresses they please, except when they chaunt in the choir, and to quit the chapter, if the offer of an acceptable marriage induces their families to authorise it; but their own admission into the chapter proves them to be noble by sixteen quarterings, or four generations, and the offer must be from a person of equal rank, or their descendants could not be received into similar chapters; an important circumstance in the affairs of the German noblesse.
Some of these ladies we saw in the church of their convent. Their habits were remarkably graceful; robes of lawn and black silk flowed from the shoulder, whence a quilled ruff, somewhat resembling that of Queen Elizabeth's time, spread round the neck. The hair was in curls, without powder, and in the English fashion. Their voices were peculiarly sweet, and they sung the responses with a kind of plaintive tenderness, that was extremely interesting.
The Jesuits' church is one of the grandest in Cologne, and has the greatest display of paintings over its numerous altars, as well as of marble pillars. The churches of the chapters are, for the most part, very large, and endowed with the richest ornaments, which are, however, not shewn to the public, except upon days of fête. We do not remember to have seen that of the chapter of St. Ursula, where heads and other relics are said to be handed to you from shelves, like books in a library; nor that of the convent of Jacobins, where some MSS. and other effects of Albert the Great, bishop of Ratisbon, are among the treasures of the monks.