We walked the rest of the
way here. Long before we arrived the moon shone down on us over the
mountains; and when we turned around the foot of the Heiligenberg, the
mist descending in the valley of the Neckar rested like a light cloud on
the church-spires.
[Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]
STRASSBURG[A]
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
I left the cars with my head full of the cathedral. The first thing I
saw, on lifting my eyes, was a brown spire. We climbed the spire; we
gained the roof. What a magnificent terrace! A world in itself; a
panoramic view sweeping the horizon. Here I saw the names of Goethe and
Herder. Here they have walked many a time, I suppose. But the inside--a
forest-like firmament, glorious in holiness; windows many-hued as the
Hebrew psalms; a gloom solemn and pathetic as man's mysterious
existence; a richness gorgeous and manifold as his wonderful nature. In
this Gothic architecture we see earnest northern races, whose nature was
a composite of influences from pine forest, mountain, and storm,
expressing in vast proportions and gigantic masonry those ideas of
infinite duration and existence which Christianity opened before them.
The ethereal eloquence of the Greeks could not express the rugged
earnestness of souls wrestling with those fearful mysteries of fate, of
suffering, of eternal existence, declared equally by nature and
revelation.
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