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 barberously 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,