had been erected around the monument for ladies,
the singers and musicians. A company of soldiers was stationed to keep
an entrance for the procession, which at length arrived with music and
banners, and entered the enclosure. A song for the occasion was sung by
the choir; it swelled up gradually, and with such perfect harmony and
unity, that it seemed like some glorious instrument touched by a single
hand. Then a poetical address was delivered; after which four young men
took their stand at the corners of the monument; the drums and trumpets
gave a flourish, and the mantle fell. The noble figure seemed to rise
out of the earth, and thus amid shoutings and the triumphal peal of the
band, the form of Goethe greeted the city of his birth. He is
represented as leaning on the trunk of a tree, holding in his right hand
a roll of parchment, and in his left a wreath. The pedestal, which is
also of bronze, contains bas reliefs, representing scenes from Faust,
Wilhelm Meister and Egmont. In the evening Goethe's house, in a street
near, was illuminated by arches of lamps between the windows, and hung
with wreaths of flowers. Four pillars of colored lamps lighted the
statue. At nine o'clock the choir of singers came again in a procession,
with colored lanterns, on poles, and after singing two or three songs,
the statue was exhibited in the red glare of the Bengal light. The trees
and houses around the square were covered with the glow, which streamed
in broad sheets up against the dark sky.
Within the walls the greater part of Frankfort is built in the old
German style--the houses six or seven stones high, and every story
projecting out over the other, so that those living in the upper part
can nearly shake hands out of the windows. At the corners figures of men
are often seen, holding up the story above on their shoulders and making
horrible faces at the weight. When I state that in all these narrow
streets which constitute the greater part of the city, there are no
sidewalks, the windows of the lower stories with an iron grating
extending a foot or so into the street, which is only wide enough for
one cart to pass along, you can have some idea of the facility of
walking through them, to say nothing of the piles of wood, and
market-women with baskets of vegetables which one is continually
stumbling over. Even in the wider streets, I have always to look before
and behind to keep out of the way of the fiacres; the people here get
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