STATUE OF GUTTEMBERG.

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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 Eu

rope.

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."

THE RÖMER PLATZ.

207

The Dom Kirche, imposing enough in the general effect of its exterior, and at a distance, over the flat country, deriving every advantage from the proportions of its tall gables and commanding tower, within, is absolutely unmentionable.

The Zeil amazed me by its magnitude and the elegance (but that is common in Frankfurt) and cleanliness of its buildings, no less than by that air of hoar antiquity which its lofty and pinnacled mansions exhibit. There was one old Place half hidden by trees scarcely greener than the huge round tower and heavy range of gables that brooded over its court, which, breathing the splendid memories of a dilapidated Chateau, would now be rejected by the meanest artisan.

The Römer Platz is strikingly magnificent and pictorial. The stranger is almost confounded with those grandæval glories of Architecture and Sculpture, which, forming a massive phalanx of Temples, Palaces, and mighty Halls, deign to accept the aid of the most luxuriant carve-work, painting, and gilding, for the decoration of their sublime vastness.

The Church of Saint Nicholas, distinguished amidst all this grandeur, has an octagon steeple of two tiers, a perfect marvel of elegance, whose tall slender windows groan under the odious load of an Iron steeple. There is one lofty mansion, the most ancient in Frankfurt, in fact, said to be seven hundred years old, whose extensive

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THE RÖMER PLATZ.

façade, framed entirely of wood-work, is as delicately elaborate as a Chinese ivory carving.

But the paragon of the old Platz is the Römer, or Electoral Palace. You enter by a pillared and vaulted hall; and as your eye encounters that gothic gloom, and loses its gaze among the labyrinth of broad round columns, I defy you to avoid Visions of those lordly Almains and their Imperial Paramount, who, having received his diadem at their hands, was ushered to the coronation banquet less like an anointed Kaiser than a successful County Member. Oh! delicately nurse the gorgeous fancies, gentle stranger, for of a truth, their very embers will have expired ere thou shalt have traversed the heavy arches of the lesser chamber beyond! There, in place of this ermined pageantry, thou wilt begin to dream of Town - Councils and Corporation - Feasts :-for there behold a broad modern staircase balustraded in bronze, and hung with paltry paintings! This, together with a vast old antichamber, lighted by a cupola of withered fresco, is all that interposes between those venerable vestibules below and the most barbarous profanation that ever usurped the title of Revival. The Kaiser Saal, a mighty Gala Chamber, whose thirty six Gothic niches contained in fresco busts the entire succession of the Elective Emperors, and which shared the good Four Centuries claimed by its brother below, has suffered its grand vault of sable oak to be whitewashed and gilt.

THE JUDENGASSE.

"O guilt indeed! *

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Nor is this all; the crowned and helmetted Busts of its narrow alcoves have been erased to make room for that range of theatrical daubs at full length which I saw, waiting to usurp the Siege-Royal, in two dingy attics above. In those attics, if I had my will, they should remain for ever and a day.

The Judengasse exhibits a most melancholy spectacle of Decay; the more melancholy because her effacing fingers have left just enough of antique magnificence to demonstrate how much has been annihilated.

It is a narrow winding Street, sufficiently black with age, blacker with smoke and filth, and blackest of all in the crouching tiger-eyed Exiles who lurk within its carve-worked and sculptured Recesses. But not all this can efface the intense compassion one feels for these unhappy outcasts, eminent now as the distinguished objects of Jehovah's wrath, as they once were in the character of

"A Chosen Generation, a Royal Priesthood, an Holy Nation, a Peculiar People."

And if any thing can aggravate this sentiment, it is the contempt and disgust which their tyrannical exclusion inspires. It is not enough that

* Henry V.

+ 1 Peter, ii. 9.

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