rowns the heights. This is at the entrance of the
Roman-named Taunus Mountains, where there are bathing-places, ruined
castles, ancient bridges, plenty of legends, and, above all, dark solemn
old chestnut forests. But we have a long way to go, and must not linger
on our road to the free imperial city of Frankfort, with its past
history and present importance. Here too I have some personal
remembrances, though hurried ones. The hotel itself--what a relief such
hotels are from the modern ones with electric bells and elevators and
fifteen stories!--was an old patrician house ample, roomy, dignified,
and each room had some individuality, notwithstanding the needful amount
of transformation from its old self. It was a dull, wet day when we
arrived, and next morning we went to the cathedral, Pepin's foundation,
of which I remember, however, less than of the great hall in the Roemer
building where the Diets sat and where the "Golden Bull" is still
kept--a hall now magnificently and appropriately frescoed with subjects
from German history. Then the far-famed Judengasse, a street where the
first Rothschild's mother lived till within a score of years ago, and
where now, among the dark, crazy tenements, so delightful to the
artist's eye, there glitters one of the most gorgeously-adorned
synagogues in Europe. A change indeed from the times when Jews were
hunted and hooted at in these proud, fanatical cities, which were not
above robbing them and making use of them even while they jeered and
persecuted! The great place in front of the emperor's hall was the
appointed ground for tournaments, and as we lounge on we come to a queer
house, with its lowest corner cut away and the oriel window above
supported on one massive pillar: from that window tradition says that
Luther addressed the people just before starting for Worms to meet the
Diet. This other house has a more modern look: it is Goethe's
birthplace, the house where the noted housekeeper and accomplished
hostess, "_Frau Rath_"--or "Madam Councilor," as she was
called--gathered round her those stately parties that are special to the
great free cities of olden trade. Frankfort has not lost her reputation
in this line: her merchants and civic functionaries still form an
aristocracy, callings as well as fortunes are hereditary, and if some
modern elements have crept in, they have not yet superseded the old. The
regattas and boating-parties on the Main remind one of the stir on the
ba