rected my steps toward the cathedral.
Rather than ask my way, I wandered up and down the narrow streets, which
night had all but obscured. At last I entered a gateway leading to a
court, and came out on an open square--dark and deserted. A magnificent
spectacle now presented itself. Before me, in the fantastic light of a
twilight sky, rose, in the midst of a group of low houses, an enormous
black mass, studded with pinnacles and belfries. A little farther was
another, not quite so broad as the first, but higher; a kind of square
fortress, flanked at its angles with four long detached towers, having
on its summit something resembling a huge feather. On approaching, I
discovered that it was the cathedral of Cologne.

What appeared like a large feather was a crane, to which sheets of lead
were appended, and which, from its workable appearance, indicated to
passers-by that this unfinished temple may one day be completed; and
that the dream of Engelbert de Berg, which was realized under Conrad de
Hochsteden, may, in an age or two, be the greatest cathedral in the
world. This incomplete Iliad sees Homers in futurity. The church was
shut. I surveyed the steeples, and was startled at their dimensions.
What I had taken for towers are the projections of the buttresses. Tho
only the first story is completed, the building is already nearly as
high as the towers of Notre Dame at Paris. Should the spire, according
to the plan, be placed upon this monstrous trunk, Strasburg would be,
comparatively speaking, small by its side.[B] It has always struck me
that nothing resembles ruin more than an unfinished edifice. Briars,
saxifrages, and pellitories--indeed, all weeds that root themselves in
the crevices and at the base of old buildings--have besieged these
venerable walls. Man only constructs what Nature in time destroys.

All was quiet; there was no one near to break the prevailing silence. I
approached the facade, as near as the gate would permit me, and heard
the countless shrubs gently rustling in the night breeze. A light which
appeared at a neighboring window, cast its rays upon a group of
exquisite statues--angels and saints, reading or preaching, with a large
open book before them. Admirable prologue for a church, which is nothing
else than the Word made marble, brass or stone! Swallows have fearlessly
taken up their abode here, and their simple yet curious masonry
contrasts strangely with the architecture of the building. This