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which would make him wince. The purchase of the church by the Prussian government, for the purpose of preserving this very singular building from destruction, was a most praiseworthy act; and the fabric is so sound, that plumber's work on the roof and glass in the windows, and perhaps a few iron clamps in the walls, would have been all that it asked or required. The_Bau-inspektor, Herr Nägler, unhappily thought otherwise, and glaring whitewash on the walls and coarse colouring on the capitals destroy the effect of the interior; and hammer and chisel, hicking and hacking the mouldings, inflict irreparable injury. Much here reminds us of Italy. The atrium is very like that of Sant' Ambrogio, and the tabernacle over the founder's tomb is, we should say, an evident adaptation of the plan of Nicolo Pisano; and how came it here, so far away?

Friend Murray's Handbook' hardly speaks with sufficient emphasis of the Marksburg; the only entire castle standing upon the banks of the Rhine, and which is now seen at the best possible era of its existence-neither petted nor neglected-neither vulgarized into a modern fortress, nor theatralized, like the Stolzenfels, into the Ritter-schloss of a novel published at Leipsig fair, the worst of all transformations which any ancient building can assume. Welcome cart-lodge or cow-house-welcome stable or pigsty-nay, even welcome muck-midden or dunghill, in a ruin, rather than the deckings of pseudo-chivalry. Marksburg seems now, as nearly as possible, to exhibit the state of those buildings during the time of the Thirty years' war. Much is of timber, and both picturesque and curious: the Burg is now garrisoned by half-a-dozen honest invalids. The worthy old sentinel will not touch your trink-geld; no persuasion will avail: but you may leave your groschen in the embrasure, and you are not bound to look behind you as you go away. Marksburg is the state-prison of the Grand Duchy of Nassau; but has long been untenanted. The last person confined here was a gentleman bearing a very noble name, a Lieutenant von Metternich, who has decorated the ancient chapel, which he used as his bed-room, with various frescoes not entirely analogous to the object of the structure. Many vestiges of what must truly be admitted to be the barbarity of the middle ages yet remain in this castle: particularly the horrible pit in which prisoners were confined, and into which they were let down by a windlass as in the shaft of a mine. Such a place of confinement was, in old German jail language, technically called the Hunde-loch-Anglicè, the dog-hole. The rack, which Mrs. Trollope saw here, has been removed to the museum at Baden, as an illustration of the history of jurisprudence.

prudence. For the same reason it might be advisable to place in the British Museum a series of historical monuments relating to our own humane prison discipline at various periods, chronologically arranged:-e. g. Scavinger's daughter from the Tower, which, after racking Anne Askew, performed the same duty upon Campion and Guy Fawkes; the Double-darbies of London Newgate, inclosing the limbs of the living man like the gibbet-irons which bound together the swinging, rotting carcase; the Mouthjoke of the Newgate of Dublin; the Screwed scull-cap of the Fleet; the Iron-mask of the Richmond Penitentiary; the Collar and bars, connecting neck and hands, of Norwich Castle, kept in use till the remonstrance of Dr. Rigby caused it to be discontinued not forty years ago *—and last, not least, the Foul cat of Sydney, so wired by gore, that each of its nine lashes, two hundred times repeated, cuts like the blade of a knife into the quivering flesh.

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Lorch, the subject of the nineteenth letter, furnishes our author with a capital scene, which he introduces with the motto of • Feuer !'

'J'écrivais dans ma chambre, lorsque tout à coup je m'aperçois que mon papier est devenu rouge sous ma plume. Je lève les yeux, je n'étais plus éclairé par ma lampe, mais par mes fenêtres. Mes deux fenêtres s'étaient changées en deux grandes tables d'opale rose à travers lesquelles se répandait autour de moi une réverbération étrange. Je les ouvre, je regarde. Une grosse voûte de flamme et de fumée se courbait à quelques toises au-dessus de ma tête avec un bruit effrayant. C'était tout simplement le gasthaus voisin du mien, qui avait pris feu et qui brûlait.

'En un instant l'auberge se réveille, tout le bourg est sur pied, le cri Feuer! feuer! emplit le quai et les rues, le tocsin éclate. Moi, je ferme mes croisées et j'ouvre ma porte. Autre spectacle. Le grand escalier de bois de mon gasthaus, touchant presque à la maison incendiée et éclairé par de larges fenêtres, semblait lui-même tout en feu ; et sur cet escalier, du haut en bas, se heurtait, se pressait et se foulait une cohue d'ombres surchargées de silhouettes bizarres.

'Un horrible flamboiement remplissait les intervalles de toutes les têtes.

'Quant à moi, car chacun pense à soi dans ces moments-là, j'ai fort peu de bagage, j'étais logé au premier, et je ne courais d'autre risque que d'être forcé de sortir de la maison par la fenêtre.

'Cependant un orage était survenu, il pleuvait à verse. Comme il arrive toujours lorsqu'on se hâte, l'hôtel se vidait lentement; et il y eut un instant d'affreuse confusion. Les uns voulaient entrer, les autres sortir; les gros meubles descendaient lourdement des fenêtres attachés

*This engine of torture was till very recently, and perhaps still is, in the entrance or ante-room of the jail. The chains, the fetters, the manacles which decorate its walls afford a humiliating exhibition.

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à des cordes; les matelas, les sacs de nuit et les paquets de linge tombaient du haut du toit sur le pavé; les femmes s'épouvantaient, les enfants pleuraient; les paysans, réveillés par le tocsin, accouraient de la montagne avec leurs grands chapeaux ruisselants d'eau et leurs seaux de cuir à la main.

'Bientôt les pompes sont arrivées, les chaines de travailleurs se sont formées, et je suis monté dans le grenier, énorme enchevêtrement, à plusieurs étages, de charpentes pittoresques comme en recouvrent tous ces grands toits d'ardoise des bords du Rhin. Toute la charpente de la maison voisine brûlait dans une seule flamme. Cette immense pyramide de braise, surmontée d'un vaste panache rouge que secouait le vent de l'orage, se penchait avec des craquements sourds sur notre toit, déjà allumé et pétillant çà et là.

'Des lucarnes du grenier je plongeais dans la fournaise et j'étais pour ainsi dire dans l'incendie même. C'est une effroyable et admirable chose qu'un incendie vu à brûle-pourpoint. Je n'avais jamais eu ce spectacle; puisque j'y étais, je l'ai accepté.

Au premier moment, quand on se voit comme enveloppé dans cette monstrueuse caverne de feu où tout flambe, reluit, pétille, crie, souffre, éclate et croule, on ne peut se défendre d'un mouvement d'anxiété, il semble que tout est perdu et que rien ne saura lutter contre cette force affreuse qu'on appelle le feu; mais dès que les pompes arrivent, on reprend courage.

On ne peut se figurer avec quelle rage l'eau attaque son ennemi. A peine la pompe, ce long serpent qu'on entend haleter en bas dans les ténébres, a-t-elle passé au-dessus du mur sombre son cou effilé et fait étinceler dans la flamme sa fine tête de cuivre, qu'elle crache avec fureur un jet d'acier liquide sur l'epouvantable chimère à mille têtes. Le brasier, attaqué à l'improviste, hurle, se dresse, bondit effroyablement, ouvre d'horribles gueules pleines de rubis et lèche de ses innombrables langues toutes les portes et toutes les fenêtres à la fois. La vapeur se mêle à la fumée; des tourbillons blancs et des tourbillons noirs s'en vont à tous les souffles du vent et se tordent et s'étreignent dans l'ombre sous les nuées. Le sifflement de l'eau répond au mugissement du feu. Rien n'est plus terrible et plus grand que cet ancien et éternel combat de l'hydre et du dragon.

La force de la colonne d'eau lancée par la pompe est prodigieuse. Les ardoises et les briques qu'elle touche se brisent et s'éparpillent comme des écailles. Quand la charpente enfin s'est écroulée, magnifique moment où le panache écarlate de l'incendie à été remplacé au milieu d'un bruit terrible par une immense et haute aigrette d'étincelles, une cheminée est restee debout sur la maison comme une espéce de petite tour de pierre. Un jet de pompe l'a jetée dans le gouffre.

'Le Rhin, les villages, les montagnes, les ruines, tous le spectre sanglant du paysage reparaissant à cette lueur, se mêlaient à la fumée, aux flammes, au glat continuel du tocsin, au fracas des pans du mur s'abattant tout entiers comme des ponts-levis, aux coups sourds de la hache, au tumulte de l'orage et à la rumeur de la ville. Vraiment c'était hideux, mais c'était beau.

'Si l'on regarde les détails de cette grande chose, rien de plus singulier. Dans l'intervalle d'un tourbillon de feu et d'un tourbillon de fumée, des têtes d'hommes surgissent au bout d'une échelle. On voit ces hommes inonder, en quelque sorte à bout portant, la flamme acharnée qui lutte et voltige et s'obstine sous le jet même de l'eau. Au milieu de cet affreux chaos, il y a des espèces de réduits silencieux où des petits incendies tranquilles petillent doucement dans des coins comme un feu de veuve. Les croisées des chambres devenues inaccessibles s'ouvrent et se ferment au vent. De jolies flammes bleues frissonnent aux pointes des poutres. De lourdes charpentes se détachent du bord du toit et restent suspendues à un clou, balancées par l'ouragan au-dessus de la rue et enveloppées d'une longue flamme. D'autres tombent dans l'étroit entre-deux des maisons et établissent là un pont de braise.'— p. 264.

Mayence forms a prominent section. Most fully do we join with Hugo in deploring the exceeding devastation-the deterioration of picturesque and poetical character-which this once noble city has sustained, partly from war, but even more from the fever of demolition which appears epidemic throughout Europe. Certainly it is a great good fortune, that the gigantic Dom has been preserved. The massive vaulting resisted the tremendous bombardment of 1793; though it was rifted in parts, and the roofing entirely consumed. But afterwards, when the French took possession of the city, the commanding officer of the Génie, St. Far, used all his influence to cause the whole to be demolished. With the Lieb-Frauen Kirche he did as he chose. This was the Lady Chapel of the Dom, of the richest Gothic: the portal was sixty feet in height, the niches and mouldings filled with admirable sculptures. St. Far sold the materials for 1200 francs-the whole building was broken up as rubbish; and the same fate befell almost every other sacred edifice in the city. The Dom was only preserved because it happened to be useful as a storehouse for forage. During this period, however, the usual devastations were committed. Whatever was of metal was plucked up and sold, the graves opened for the purpose of rifling the leaden coffins, and the stone monuments battered, defaced, or destroyed out of mere wantonness. A small bounty was subsequently bestowed upon the cathedral by Napoleon, who allowed it a yearly grant, and even restored to the chapter a very small portion of the landed estates which anciently formed its endowment; but in 1813, after the battle of Leipzig, the cathedral was again occupied as a barrack, and again sustained profanation and devastation scarcely less in degree than before. Yet, in spite of all this mischief, the Dom is still one of the most impressive romanesque fabrics in Germany. The vast circular arches stand unshaken and we may still contemplate the magnificent monumental

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series of the tombs of the Archbishop-Electors, somewhat deteriorated by the necessary restorations which they have received, but which people, as it were, the sanctuary over which they once ruled.

These tombs usually exhibit the figure of the prelate in a most richly ornamented tabernacle, Gothic in the earlier specimens, passing on, through the style of the renaissance, to the gorgeous and corrupted Italian of the seventeenth century. The greater number are placed upright against the piers and pillars, and in a manner of which, we believe, no other example is found. We suspect that the earlier effigies were originally either inserted in the pavement or laid horizontally upon a tomb; and that, some individuals of the series having been removed into their present position, all the continuation was, as it were, made to match: hence originated this remarkable historical gallery. Let the stranger look at it attentively, for here he will read the progress and fall of the temporal grandeur of the German hierarchy; and lessons may be learned not entirely unprofitable. At the commencement of the series, you may look at such thorough out-and-out bishops as Siegfried III. (1249) or Adolph of Nassau (1390) :—grave, stern, and thoughtful Priests-Priests to the very marrow of their bones-Priests full of their sacerdotal dignity-Priests entirely impressed with their pre-eminence, which the sculptor has, in the case of Siegfried, expressed by a species of symbolical allegory, resulting from the size of his figures. This tomb consists of a group of three: on the right is Henry, the Landgrave of Thuringia; on the left William, Count of Holland, upon whose head the archbishop places the imperial crown; and the figure of the churchman being about twice as large as those of the princes, (who, compared to him, look like good little boys,) it thus conveys to the beholder the opinion which the sculptor entertained of the prelate's importance. As you proceed, you find these ecclesiastics softening and fattening down into very comfortable temporal sovereigns; the point-lace ruffles and frills of the courtier protruding through the rich embroidered waistcoat, which seems ashamed of the cope dropping off from the back of the wearer: incipient mustachios are also seen. Towards the conclusion of the series, the effects of good cheer become victorious over any other expression. The fattest of fat cheeks and chins, double chins, treble chins, are represented by the diligent sculptor with the most provoking fidelity. This was the period when all traces of the real spiritual functions of the sovereign prelates of the empire were wholly lost. All episcopal functions were exercised by a coadjutor, hard worked and ill paid; and the circumstance (which, as is recorded, happened once)

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