GLIMPSES OF WESTEEN EUROPE. 
125 
vine-clad heights beyond, and the more than thirty towns and villages in the 
plain below! Few places in the world aiford such a view. * # * 
Bonn 1—another large town of Roman origin—famous for many remarkable 
events; famous also for its great University, and as being the birth place of 
the immortal Beethoven, one of the world’s greatest musical masters. Here 
likewsse I stop for an hour; viewing the ancient wonders, the University, 
the Agricultural School, the splendid gardens, and taking my bread and beer 
in the Rheingastse, just opposite the house where Beethoven was born—a plain 
two-story dwelling, with stucco finish outside, not looking a bit as though it 
had given so great a genius to the world. But, then, is this not the history 
of nearly all the remarkable men who have ever lived? Genius is oftenest 
born in obscurity. It is thus that nature renews her intellectual forces. 
At last, my feet tread the streets of Cologne. And here I may look back¬ 
ward, for I have already seen the best portion of this, the king of West 
European rivers. Taking its source in the grand old Alps—strengthened in 
its progress by the gathered waters of Switzerland—embracing the icy flow 
from 370 glaciers snd 350 smaller rivers—now flowing .slowly and wide 
through the broad valley of the upper Black Forest and encircling its thou¬ 
sands of little islands, now again narrowed down to a deep and strong cur¬ 
rent, dashing its way through^the rocky ramparts of Bingen and Andernach 
and bearing its majestic course through dark defiles in the historic mountains 
of Rhenish Prussia—and hence more quietly, as if with assured greatness, 
through the rich garden lands of Holland to the Northern Sea—it is truly a 
glorious river, even to a native American, born in the valley of the Ohio and 
finally settled on the banks of the great Father of Waters. No wonder every 
German heart is proud of the Rhine. The Yankee must make a thousand 
years more of history, before his noble Hudson will outrival it. 
Cologne is a town of 100,000 inhabitants and has greatly interested me by 
its Roman antiquities, its numerous old churches, its grand cathedral, and 
much else. JFounded more than fifteen hundred years ago, what wonderful 
changes have occurred in its history. First an intrenched Roman camp, then 
the abode of the ancient Ubiaus, it afterwards witnessed the coronation of 
the Emperor Vitelius, and then of Clovis, King of the Franks, was united by 
Otho the Great to Germany in the 10th century, exerted a powerful influence 
in, and was the chieT support of, the famous Hanseatic League, in the 14th 
century, was conquered by the P’rench in 1794, by the Russians in 1814, and 
finally fell into the hands of Prussia, by whom it is still held. 
The people show their origin by a peculiar physiognomy, different from that 
of Germans of pure blood, but are industrious and prosperous 
The cathedral is most worthy of notice. It was begun in 1248, slowly pro¬ 
gressed for two or three hundred years, remaining in statu quo for about three 
hundred more, and is now again going forward. Its foundation is in the form 
of a cross, and when completed it will be one of the grandest temples in the 
whole world—length 500 feet, width 230, two towers, each 500 feet high, the 
arches supported by a quadruple row of columns sixty-four in number. Its 
architecture is pure Gothic and it is designed to follow, in every particular, 
the ancient German model. Though, as yet, but little more than the choir, 
■with surrounding chapels, and one tower of the height of 160 feet, are finish¬ 
ed, I have thus far seen no work of man on the continent which has so 
stirred within me emotions of the sublime. ’Twas at twilight I first saw it, 
and the vision is still before me—the great temple standing in solemn maj¬ 
esty ; the old, by its moss-covered walls appealing to the dead Past, the new, 
by its lately chisseled columns, its scaffolding and mighty construction en¬ 
gines, looking bravely forward to the 500 years hence, when it may have been 
finished, and—in a new spirit, possibly by another race of people—finally con¬ 
secrated to the worship of the true God. I, also, did myself the pleasure of 
paying a moonlight visit to the house where my favorite artist, Peter Paul 
Rubens, was] born, and where the unfortunate Marie de Medecis, Queen of 
Henry IV of France, ended her eventful life. A plain, two-story and a half 
dwelling, with a beautiful head and bust of the great artist, carved in wood, 
in the transem over the door. 
Notwithstanding its sixty cologne factories, the city of Cologne is, by no 
