FKEIBUKG.

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older; wliilst tlic choir — which is far inferior in elegance —dates f'rom the year 1513.

The structure is of red-stone, but the name of the architectis lost, though it is supposed that Erwin of Steinbach (he whobuilt Strasburg Münster) may have been his pupil; and somefancy that the plans for the older portions of the FreiburgCathedral were based upon the design of Basel, which datesfrom the year 1013.

Assuredly, the open spire of the more primitive SwissDom may have suggested that of Freiburg, while Freiburgin its turn (especially as the village of Steinbach—Erwin'snative place—is not many miles from the ancient capital ofBreisgau) may have furnished the idea of that of Strasburg;though beyond the fact of each of the triad of Münstershaving an octagonal turret based on a Square tower, and beingsurmounted by a perforated steeple, there is no resemblancewhatever in the buildings.

The main beauty of Strasburg, to our mind, consists inthe elaborately sculptured and open cage, as it were, of stonetrellising over the western front: and the slender spiral tubesof stone breaking the octagonal form of the turret. The openand graduated spire itself, we must confess, has hardly thesame charm to our eye as it has to the generality of people,and we are inclined to believe that it is the difficulty of themere mason's work that makes persons mistake a fine bit ofeno-ineerina; for choice architectural taste.

Certainly the spire of Strasburg is by no means so openand elegant as that of Freiburg, whilst Basel, on the otherhand (were it not for its having been the original of thiscrowning grace to ecclesiastical architecture), would hardlybear cotnparison with the Breisgau Münster; for whilst thelight struggles with difficulty through the pin-hole-liko per-forations of the Swiss steeple, it streams in large dabs of blue