est aussi applicable aux ames du purgatoire. The following is a translation : "There is an indulgence of seven years and as many forty days, for all the members of the association, who, having confessed their sins, and communicated, shall visit the said chapel, and shall there pray, according to the intention of His Holiness the Pope. This indulgence is also applicable to the souls in purgatory."

How anti-scriptural and soul-destroying are the doctrines put forth in the above documents! But this is popery, and it is the same all the world over!

This day [Monday] has been devoted to city scenes. As the cathedral is the principal object of attraction to all strangers, we made it a second visit. It is considered one of the finest specimens of the architecture of the middle ages. It consists of a nave and choir, without a transept. The entire length of the interior is three hundred and fifty-five feet, and the breadth of the nave, one hundred and thirty-two feet; height, seventy-two feet. A screen separates the choir from Two rows of massive pillars, nine on each side, divide the nave from the side aisles. The windows are filled with stained glass. A rose window, forty-eight feet in diameter, adorns the east end, and is exquisitely beautiful. The walls of the choir are the most ancient, as they were built about the middle of the eighth century; the other parts, with the spire, are the workmanship of the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.

the nave.

From the year 1015 to 1028, it is stated, on historical authority, that upwards of one hundred thousand men were employed upon its walls, numbers of whom were foreigners; and that the wages of many of them, were paid in pardons and indulgences. St. Peter's at Rome, it would seem from hence, was not the only church built by such means, and that the nefarious

trade in indulgences had been practised by the popish priesthood, long before Luther was raised up to grapple with the horrible imposition.

When the Romans subdued this country, tradition says, a tree stood upon the site occupied by this cathedral, under the shade of which, the Celts worshipped their god, Esus. The Romans cut the tree down, and built a temple to one of their fabled Deity. The rapid progress of Christianity in the fifth century resulted in the overthrow of the Roman temple, and hastened the erection of a Christian church upon the same site; but the edifice had scarcely stood a century, when it was destroyed by Attila and his Huns. The entire town was then desolated by the devastations of these barbarians; and continued so till the sixth century, when Clovis, king of the Franks, renewed the place, rebuilt the church, and allowed the town to be called Strasburg, which signifies the town of a street. This church being of wood, perished; and during the eighth century, as I have before remarked, the present edifice was commenced.

Attractive as is the cathedral for the richness of its sculpture, its crowning ornament is the splendid spire, the elevation of which is, I believe, unsurpassed, as its beauty is unrivalled. It rises in a succession of truneated columns and pinnacles, exhibiting the openness of lace-work, and resting upon arches; tier growing out of tier, and springing and tapering upward with a support so fragile, as to destroy the idea of solidity. Strength, however, it must have, or it could not have weathered the storms of so many centuries; but it is so admirably constructed, and yet so combined with a certain airy lightness, that in some points of view, when its open-work is distinctly seen, it looks, as one has somewhere expressed it," More like a filmy painting upon the sky, than a solid edifice." When the entire outline of this far ascending column, is em

braced by the eye, it has all the charm of a picture of faultless beauty.

I met, the other day, with a few excellent remarks, by a French writer, on the perfection to which the ancients carried the architecture of spires; and as his critique is applied to that of this cathedral, I hope you will not consider the extract out of place. 66 The ancient architects excelled in the construction of spires. They seized in a marvellous manner the spirit of that sort of work, and carried to the utmost length, the artifices upon which it depends. They possessed the secret of uniting in their erections, lightness and delicacy of workmanship to elegance of form; and avoiding equally the over-attenuated and the over-massive, they attained the precise point in which consists the true beauty of this description of building. Nothing of this kind, is to be compared to the cathedral of Strasburg. This superb pyramid is a master-piece of skill, ravishing our senses at once by its prodigious elevation, the exactness of its gradual dimensions; its pleasing shape, the justness of its proportions, and the exquisite finish of its workmanship. I do not believe that any other architect ever produced a work so boldly imagined, so felicitously conceived, and so admirably executed. There is more art and genius in this one performance than in all else that we have most wonderful in architecture."

The height of this famous spire has been variously estimated, and by some extravagantly. The measurement allowed to be most accurate, makes it four hundred and ninety-four feet high, being thirty feet higher than the largest pyramid of Egypt, fourteen feet beyond that of St. Paul's, London, and exceeding the dome of St. Peter's, Rome, by about seven feet. It is ascended by a stair of six hundred and thirty-five steps.

After ascending two hundred and fifty feet, we were

introduced into a succession of truncated turrets, which rise tier above tier, and were told to "monter," with a significant elevation of the finger. Proceeding upward, it was really alarming to recognize our position; poised between heaven and earth, at such a fearful height, supported by slender stones put together five hundred years ago, and so slight the tracery between us and the thin atmosphere, that the whole appeared little better than "a bird-cage suspended in the air." We felt constantly annoyed with the idea, that the spring of our footsteps would deprive the frail fabric of its perpendicular, and then away we should have gone to the pavement, where men appeared as if reduced to the size of children.*

Our courage, however, increased as we mounted, and after ascending a few score of additional feet, and finding a convenient position to look around, we paused. Several foreigners were already there making their observations; and when we were all chattering away in our different languages, we thought of the tower of Babel (Gen. xi. 1, 9,) and quite seriously about a descent; not at all agreeing with the Italian proverb: E meglio sdrucciolar co' piedi che colla lingua, "It is better one's foot make a slip than one's tongue."

The view from the spire was very fine :-the city and its extensive fortifications; the various and far-away windings of the Rhine; together with an extensive sweep of country, embracing parts of Germany, and most of the province of Alsacia, with the Vosges Mountains.

Strasburg, you are aware, is a fortified city of France, and the strongest fortress of that country, on the German frontiers. Some of the streets are regular and spacious, but like most walled towns, the streets are

I see a notice, in one of the late papers, that this beautiful spire, the highest in the world, has lately given way six feet from the perpendicular, and that its immediate fall is anticipated. Huddersfield, Jan. 11th, 1845.

E

J.C.

generally narrow, and not at all cleanly. The houses are high and massy, and show their German origin in their architecture. They are built principally of a kind of red stone, dug from the quarries along the Rhine. The fortifications of the town, are after the manner of a regular pentagon, as a military man would express it, composed of five bastions and as many half moons. The citadel lies towards the east; and, with its outworks, covers a vast extent of ground. It is at present garrisoned by six thousand troops. The city contains, we were informed, a population of sixty-two thousand souls.

I have just time to say, farewell.

J. C.

EVER DEAR SIR,

LETTER VI.

Bâle, Switzerland, Oct., 1843.

HAVING gratified our curiosity at Strasburg, we left by railway for this city, and arrived here about dark, ninety miles from Strasburg. We had a very pleasant ride up the plains of Alsacia,-considered one of the most picturesque provinces of France. Here armies, large as Europe could muster, have met in mortal conflict.

These plains are said to have been the scene of thirty great battles, besides many skirmishes and sieges. The railway runs along the east side of the Vosges mountains. Old castles, some of them of considerable magnitude, frown down from many of their craggy peaks, and recal centuries gone by, when those strongholds held these fertile plains in terror; but they are now harmless as the dust of those who once occupied them.