for which indignity Luther is said to have remarked: "There are
at Worms as many devils as there are tiles on the roof of its
cathedral."

The city suffered much in the Thirty Years' War, and in 1689 was reduced
to ashes by the armies of Louis XIV.

The cathedral of Worms was begun in 996 by Bishop Bouchard, and
completed twenty years later by the Emperor Henry II. With its four fine
towers and its two noble domes or cupolas, it ranks as one of the really
great monuments of Christianity in Germany.

To-day, with its later additions, it is purely Romanesque, though built
entirely after 1185, when Gothic was already making great strides
elsewhere. Even here there is a decided ogival development to be noted
in the vaulting of the nave.

Like the cathedrals at Mayence and Bonn, that at Worms offers the
peculiarity of a double apside. The eastern termination is demi-round in
the interior and square outside, while the westerly apse is polygonal
both inside and out.

The cathedral was the only structure of note left standing in the city
after the memorable siege of 1689.

The outline of this cathedral is most involved, with its high, narrow
transepts, its two choirs crowned with cupolas and flanked with four
lance-like towers. It is a suggestion, in a small way, of the more
grandiose cathedral at Mayence, but it is by no means so picturesquely
situated.

The portal of the facade shows some fine sculptures of the fourteenth
century. One figure has given rise to much comment on the part of
antiquaries and archeologists who have viewed it. It is a female figure
mounted on a strange quadruped of most singular form, and like no manner
of beast that ever walked the earth in the flesh.

It has been thought to be a symbolical allusion to the Queen Brunhilda,
and again of the Church triumphant. It may be the former, but hardly the
latter, at least such symbolism is not to be seen elsewhere.

The interior is of no special architectural value, if we except the
contrast of the ogival vaulting with the Romanesque treatment otherwise
to be observed.

There are numerous tombs and monuments, the chief being of three
princesses of Burgundy who are buried here.

The church of St. Martin dates from the twelfth century, and Notre Dame
from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They are in every way
quite as interesting as the cathedral, though their walls and vaults
have been built up anew since the sacking of the city by the Fr