The Argosy — page 388: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

In the Black Forest. 367 sharply and romantically amidst all the effects of sunset and twilight. And the town itself, surrounded, guarded, by these wooded heights, seemed wonderfully favoured. Full of repose; abounding in lives that, in the midst of all these beauties of creation, ought to be good and blest above the common lot of mankind. But the next morning all had changed, simply because the clouds during the night had gathered and the rain was coming down like a second deluge. The few steps from the station to the Zahringer Hof in Freiburg were yet enough to drench one through and through, and make one feel that when it rains in the Black Forest it rains in earnest. It was taking the old town at a disadvantage. Happily the very sharpness of the rain—like all violent outbursts, whether in nature or mankind—was a promise of short duration. In effect, by the afternoon the waterspouts had ceased to empty themselves upon the earth. But the clouds remained; mists hung about the hills; a respite was granted, and that was all. Near the hotel were houses, large, white and cool, with lovely gardens in which grew graceful acacias, many-coloured ‘flowers and trailing creepers, vines and the delicate convolvulus. Opposite, in the busy life of the station, trains with their living freight were keeping up a constant rush and roar; not very romantic, but very necessary to the demands of the nineteenth century. Upwards, to the left, you presently came to the principal street, adorned with two quaint Gothic fountains, the one with an odour of sanctity about it in the form of statues of bishops, knights, and saints of the church; the other bearing the image of Berthold, Duke of Zahringen, who founded Freiburg about the end of the eleventh century. And above the sloping, gabled roofs of the houses, like a vision of fairy architecture, rose the exquisite fretted spire of the cathedral. Before the eleventh century Freiburg was a small village inhabited by miners. Since that time, like almost all these old continental towns, it has gone through many vicissitudes. Wars, the love of conquest, the rise and fall of empires, inevitably leave their mark upon the world. We would forgive this, if only they left us more traces of the past in these ancient towns. More of antiquity; monuments of a strong and powerful age inhabited by a race of men earnest in all they did; in their very wars and works, their failings and vices, as much as in their virtues. ) A great deal of Freiburg is modern and uninteresting from the antiquarian’s point of view. But there are a few quaint bits about it that stand out in contrast with the new. Houses that here and there remind one of the old-world streets of Holland, and seem to have been asleep for two or three centuries, the while a new world was springing up around them. ‘The gateways are ancient and curious, and certainly add much to the picturesque impression of the town; especially the St. Martin’s Thor with its half-obliterated fresco, repre- ting the legend of the saint sharing his cloak with a mendicant. Conniclooolks (SO)