AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE. 41 



more than once have candidates for the vacant seat 

 called out their vassals, and asserted their clerical preten- 

 sions sword in hand. With the exception of the won- 

 derfully curious old church, the most curious in style and 

 form that we have met with, the town has now little that 

 attracts curiosity, but with its neighbourhood we enter 

 upon a different mode of landed tenure from all that pre- 

 vail upon the Lower Rhine. The powerful clerical foun- 

 dations of Westphalia and this neighbourhood were long 

 able to resist the touch of time that was incessantly 

 gnawing and leaving to moulder all the institutions that 

 suiTounded them. Had not the convulsion occasioned by 

 the French invasion at once dispelled their glories, it is 

 impossible to say what antiquated forms of feudal tenure 

 might still exist in this now promising tract of countr}'. 

 That the antiquated forms which the change made by the 

 French at once abolished, had lost all utility, was proved 

 by the fact that the feudal lords on that memorable 

 occasion were utterly unable to lend any vigour to the 

 tottering throne, and equally incapable of affording the 

 slightest protection to those whom they called their 

 subjects. 



The old Minster of Essen bounds an open place ad- 

 joining the town, two other sides of which are surrounded 

 by irregular buildings that bear tokens of modernising 

 in various epochs, and not in the best taste. One of the 

 largest of these is devoted to the residences and bureaux 

 of the government officials, the legitimate heirs of the 

 old proprietors. The change, it is true, was made in the 

 style of that glorious monarch Henry VIII., of pious me- 

 mory, by a vote passed at a European congress, by which 



