doubtless some
occult signification, as Germans have the remarkable peculiarity of
meaning something in whatever they do.

In Gottschalk's _Handbook_ I had read much of the very ancient
cathedral, and of the far-famed imperial throne at Goslar. But when I
wished to see these curiosities, I was informed that the church had been
torn down, and that the throne had been carried to Berlin. We live in
deeply significant times, when millennial churches are destroyed and
imperial thrones are tumbled into the lumber-room.

A few memorials of the late cathedral of happy memory are still
preserved in the church of St. Stephen. These consist of stained glass
pictures of great beauty, a few indifferent paintings, including a Lucas
Cranach, a wooden Christ crucified, and a heathen altar of some unknown
metal. The latter resembles a long square coffer, and is upheld by
caryatides, which in a bowed position hold their hands above their heads
in support, and are making the most hideous grimaces. But far more
hideous is the adjacent large wooden crucifix of which I have just
spoken. This head of Christ, with its real hair and thorns and
blood-stained countenance, represents, in the most masterly manner, the
death of a _man_--but not of a divinely-born Savior. Nothing but physical
suffering is portrayed in this image--not the sublime poetry of pain.
Such a work would be more appropriately placed in a hall of anatomy than
in a house of the Lord.

The sacristan's wife--an artistic expert--who led me about, showed me a
special rarity. This was a many-cornered, well-planed blackboard covered
with white numerals, which hung like a lamp in the middle of the
building. Oh, how brilliantly does the spirit of invention manifest
itself in the Protestant Church! For who would think it! The numbers on
this board are those of the Psalms for the day, which are generally
chalked on a common black tablet, and have a very sobering effect on an
esthetic mind, but which, in the form above described, even ornament the
church and fully make up for the want of pictures by Raphael. Such
progress delights me infinitely, since I, as a Protestant and a
Lutheran, am ever deeply chagrined when Catholic opponents ridicule the
empty, God-forsaken appearance of Protestant churches.

* * * * *

The churchyard at Goslar did not appeal to me very strongly, but a
certain very pretty blonde-ringleted head which peeped smilingly from a
par