202 THE MINSTER OF MAYENCE. Mayence, October 1, 1844. IN our long day's journey of three hundred miles, to-day we were destined to behold the Rhine under a new aspect, utterly divested of every feature of sublimity or romance. Who that has beheld him for the first time between Strasburg and Mayence,-his broad blank face pillowed between two banks, so flat and dull, that the very look of the two made you think of that bed which you had so reluctantly abandoned in the morning; would depicture the Traditionary Mountains, the Baronial Castles, and the wealthy vineyards, that region of Enchantment, of which the Rhine is the indisputable lord paramount, and into which if you will but have patience, he is hastening to usher you? Meantime the weather has undergone a most rigorous change. The cold has become intense, and my recollections of that Hyperborean region of Mayence would amount to something very like abhorrence were it not that the image of its old Cathedral somewhat mitigates my animosity. There is a vast deal of Barbaric grandeur about the exterior of that wild Teutonic pile. The THE CLOISTERS. 203 superb colour of its bloodred stone, the stupendous height of its two majestic Domes, together with their minarets (of which the roofless consorts at the east contrast with mutual advantage, their pinnacled and crocketed sisters at the West), are worthy that dignified fabric which in the Fatherland claims the lofty title of The Dom Kirch. The interior, not from its own fault, but from the fury of its Plunderers, and the fatuity of its Restorers, has suffered all that can unhallow Sanctity, make Vastness vulgar, and Decoration absurd. The Cloisters, navelled deep within a quadrangle, remain a most enchanting monument of what the Church might have been four or five hundred years ago. Piled with amazing majesty around a carpet of luxuriant turf, they are of the same murray coloured masonry with the rest of the Dom; and abound in large Gothic windows of variegated Mullions, and Wheelheads, whose tracery I never saw exceeded. Their walls, filled with curious monuments, coeval with themselves, and each embellished with its own Legend; the pavements, roughened with mitred, helmed, and coronetted Effigies, which once had doubtless been embossed with gorgeous brass, speedily withdrew our attention from the severe and unseasonable intensity of the cold. The gray sky, a dismal canopy to the warm red fabric above which it brooded, the hollow gusts 204 THE DECORATED DOORWAY. which waved the grove of the quadrangle, and moaned around the columns of its gloomy aisles, were in solemn accordance with that character of romantic magnitude which predominates over the whole. Leading from these Cloisters is a Doorway in the south side of the minster, which you discover to be a solitary exile from its Order of Architecture, delighting you as much by its excellent loveliness as it surprises you by its singularity. I say singularity, for you look in vain around the whole Cathedral for any trace of the Fourteenth Century which had the happiness to give this fair thing birth. I remembered Christabel and Geraldine under the leafless moonlight oak— I guess 'twas frightful there to see A Lady richly dressed as she, Close by its side a Portal, now filled up, reveals all that heaviness of contour and quaintness of ornament, which distinguishes the Saxon order; and yet here also the contrast is by no means disadvantageous to either. These gorgeous examples of ancestral munificence and monastic skill embellish the ancient Chapter House, further adorned by an admirably proportioned Oriel, and distinguished as the chamber of several Councils. The ponderous Doors of Bronze in the North STATUE OF GUTTEMBERG. 205 porch, with their historical inscription and those direful bruises, from the sacrilegious bombardment of the French; and a Font of the same material, more remarkable for its magnitude than even its antique workmanship, together with several antediluvian paintings of Emperors and Electoral Prelates, remarkable for nothing but the ecclesiastical arrogance of the period and the barbarism of its Art, form, perhaps, the most curious objects in the Dom Kirch; at least, the last that I shall mention. Perishing with cold and blinded by dust, we proceeded thence to the windy Platz, where grave, and I may add grandly Germanic, in his majestic brass, cumbrous only from its costume, stands that benevolent Magician who, five hundred years ago, produced upon society the same instantaneous influence, as permanent as it was glorious, which James Watt effected five hundred years afterwards the one upon the religious, the other more especially upon the commercial Economy of Europe. Two sides of his stately pedestal contains written eulogies upon his great discovery, and a chronicle of that Conclamation of all Europe, which at once declared him worthy of a statue, and established him on its pedestal. Upon the two other pannels there are bas reliefs, which pictorially illustrate the Latin legends. And, if indeed an additional chaplet had been necessary to the fame of Guttemberg, Thorwaldsen was the modeller of his monument. After a pleasant and even necessary repose of ten days at the secluded Spa of Soden in Nassau, we left it not without regret; and it was with admiration moderated by longing for a nearer approach, that I looked back upon the mighty Feldberg, the chieftain of the Taunus range, whose stormy purple blockaded the horizon that overshadowed the romantic spire and mansions of the peaceful village we had left behind. Frankfurt on the Maine, October 16, 1844. ALL hail to thee old glorious Frankfurt, with thy four Frontier Towers, which, protecting thee for many a league from Prince or Baron, be they potentates in the East, the West, the North, the South, aye, wherever the winds blow or the sun shines, graciously afforded us admission to thy territory by that gateway of the threatening title the WARTHURM, the Tower of Warning. I know a legend I should like to see sculptured upon its machicolated battlement: "Hic Turris aheneus esto, Nil conscire sibi; nullâ pallescere culpâ." |