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The Upper Rhine : Mayence to the Lake of Constance
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STRASBURG.

159

mere tangle of sl ender spars of stone, is quite sufficient toassure one that the adventurer raust feel liimself when up thereto be suspended in a mere cage over the city. Nor do weneed the guide-books to inform us, as we behold the patchesof light shimmering through the interstices, " that if the footwere to slip the body might possibly drop through the openfret-work."

Within the Cathedral itself, a fme effect is produced by thelight, or rather the darkness, pervading the place, the wlioleof the nave being veiled in an exquisitely rieh clair-obscur.On entering the aisle, you literally cannot see two paces beforeyou ; for so little light leaks through the stained-glass windows(and there are none others), that you involuntarily Stretch outyour hands to grope your way.

At the far end, however, you pereeive the choir, as if youwere looking at it in a black mirror, with the communion-tableand the tall candelabra, and the priest in his embroidered" messe-gewand " bowing before it, with the incense-boys be-side him, as if modelled out of red sealing-wax; while thewalls resound with the deep sepulchral chanting of the mass,and the wdiole place seems to tremble with the melodiousthunder of the organ above.

After a time, however, the darkness seems to fade likea fog from before the eyes, and then you begin to make out,bit after bit, of the sculpture about the exquisite stone pulpit,that projeets like a little battlement from one of the pillars,and is embossed all over with figures, as if it were an ivory" hanap " carved by Cellini himself.

The stained windows here, too, are the very glory of colour.Indeed, no gems ever shone with such vivid tints—no flower-bed was ever so gorgeous in its hues; nor did the kaleidoscopeever arrange such exquisite chromatic forms. Richer than any