In the evening, as the stars were shining, I took a walk upon the side of the river opposite to Cologne.  Before me was the whole town, with its innumerable steeples figuring in detail upon the pale western sky.  To my left rose, like the giant of Cologne, the high spire of St. Martin’s, with its two towers; and, almost in front, the somber apsed cathedral, with its many sharp-pointed spires, resembling a monstrous hedgehog, the crane forming the tail, and near the base two lights, which appeared like two eyes sparkling with fire.  Nothing disturbed the stillness of the night but the rustling of the waters at my feet, the heavy tramp of a horse’s hoofs upon the bridge, and the sound of a blacksmith’s hammer.  A long stream of fire that issued from the forge caused the adjoining windows to sparkle; then, as if hastening to its opposite element, disappeared in the water.

[Footnote A:  From “The Rhine.”  Translated by D.M.  Aird.]

[Footnote B:  One of the illustrations that accompany this volume shows the spires in their completed state.]

ROUND ABOUT COBLENZ[A]

BY LADY BLANCHE MURPHY

Coblenz is the place which many years ago gave me my first associations with the Rhine.  From a neighboring town we often drove to Coblenz, and the wide, calm flow of the river, the low, massive bridge of boats and the commonplace outskirts of a busy city contributed to make up a very different picture from that of the poetic “castled” Rhine of German song and English ballad.  The old town has, however, many beauties, tho its military character looks out through most of them, and reminds us that the Mosel city (for it originally stood only on that river, and then crept up to the Rhine), tho a point of union in Nature, has been for ages, so far as mankind was concerned, a point of defense and watching.  The great fortress, a German Gibraltar, hangs over the river and sets its teeth in the face of the opposite shore; all the foreign element in the town is due to the deposits made there by troubles in other countries, revolution and war sending their exiles, emigres and prisoners.  The history of the town is only a long military record, from the days of the archbishops of Treves, to whom it was subject....

There is the old “German house” by the bank of the Mosel, a building little altered outwardly since the fourteenth century, now used as a food-magazine for the troops.  The church of St. Castor commemorates a holy hermit who lived and preached to the heathen in the eighth century, and also covers the grave and monument of the founder of the “Mouse” at Wellmich, the warlike Kuno of Falkenstein, Archbishop of Treves.  The Exchange, once a court of justice, has changed less startlingly, and its proportions are much the same as of old; and besides these there are other buildings worth noticing, tho not so old, and rather distinguished by the men who lived and