The Argosy — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

52 In the Black Forest. fond) and busy signs of the life of a large town, the train came to a tand at Cologne station. Were it not for its cathedral Cologne would be nothing in the world but a town on a very uninteresting part of the Rhine: a rallying point for those who are going up the river and have its beauties before them, or for those who have come down and left all behind. If the Rhine at Cologne has any grand feature, it lies in its breadth ; and gazing from the heights of the railway bridge, it is not with- out a certain noble attraction, to which is added all the romance of its history and reputation; a romance which casts its halo over it, even to the tame shores of Holland. But the cathedral is the one great attraction of Cologne. It throws its weird influence over the otherwise commonplace town, and draws its votaries from the very ends of the earth. Some of our favourite stories of childhood have been of the wondrous building which the Archfiend would never allow to be completed ; tales of the Seven Sins ; taking hold of the imagination as powerfully as any fairy tale, or the Arabian Nights. And amongst the child-dreams of many of us has been the hope that, in the far-distant future, we might live to gaze upon that wonderful structure that we fully believed was never the work of man alone. - The old guide conducted me to the Triforium gallery, and we made the circuit of the cathedral, looking down upon that amazing extent ‘of white stone, that multitude of arches and pillars. ‘Then, passing out to the exterior gallery, where you get so fine a view of the town, and the Rhine, and the far-off Seven Mountains that stand out so conspicuously on approaching Bonn, he pointed upwards to the figures of Faust and Mephistopheles, stretching out, like a couple of gurgoyles, gazing at each other—and for ever gazing—from opposite corners. Straightway we fall into a reverie of years ago, when the story was first familiar to us. As in a vision, there arose a quiet, far-off home, in a foreign land, where “the daily round, the common task,” was sweetened by all that makes home blest; where twilight evenings were consecrated to tales of wonder and marvel that influenced our child-minds with an undying power: legends in which this spot and building played no ill a part. ‘Then a grey mist blurred the scene, representing the chasm of intervening years; years that are to most so full of unfruitful hopes and aspirations, that, like our Spanish Castles, come to nought; a time when we thought so fondly our life’s barque would sail for ever in the smooth waters of a southern wind, but oh, the rough waves of a prevalent east! ‘Then all fell away to the realities of the present: the pain and mystery of life that is never absent from some minds: as the voice of the old guide — awoke the echoes, asking, with a touch of excusable impatience, “ If the Herr had done gazing at Faust and Mephistopheles, and was ready to proceed ?” CONMIELIOO_ KS. (E©) m