allow of its being
consecrated; which ceremony took place at seven o'clock in the morning
of August 14th, six hundred years after the commencement of the choir.
High mass was celebrated by the archbishop, in the presence of Archduke
John, King Frederick William of Prussia, and a host of other notables.

Within the next twenty years much progress was made in the work of
completing the southern nave, the west front--with those enormous
pretentious towers--the transepts, and the triforium and clerestory of
the nave and transepts.

In 1863 the wall between the fragmentary nave and the choir was removed
and the structure opened from end to end.

Before 1870 the western towers were spired, though the final touches
were not given to them until quite 1880. Now that they are finished,
there is an undeniable elegance and symmetry which cannot be gainsaid,
though they were certainly heavily massed in the early views one sees of
the cathedral in its unfinished state. One still remarks the
apparent--and real--stubbiness of the edifice which, as Fergusson said,
would have been alleviated if the overhanging transepts had been
omitted. Why they should have been omitted it is hard to conceive, and
the criticism does not seem a reasonable one, in spite of the fact that
a certain sense of length is wanting.

The nave is undoubtedly very broad, but it has double aisles which
satisfactorily accounts for this.

Professor Freeman draws a significant contrast between the outline of
the cathedrals at Cologne and Amiens.

"Amiens has no outline," says he; meaning that there is a paucity of the
picturesqueness of irregularity in its sky-line. "Only at Cologne," he
continues, "is this outline seen in its perfect state, and Cologne is a
French church on German soil, just as Westminster is a French church on
English soil."

Indeed, among all the great cathedrals it is only at Cologne that we
find a pair of western towers with any kind of dignity and proportion.

The west front of Cologne is pretty much all tower, with the nave rather
rudely crowded between the two. These towers are in reality of such vast
bulk that they outflank the nave considerably, as do their smaller
counterparts at Wells, though here at Cologne the great transepts
overflow the width even of these great towers of the facade.

There is a noble simplicity and yet a wealth of warmth and feeling in
this church, which runs the whole gamut of Gothic, from the thirteenth
to