Cologne

“ The more radicalism you can muster up, the better you will be appreciated in such cities as Cologne and Frankfort,—the former of which places, if I had my will, should be deliberately devoted without mercy to the infernal gods. Always a nest of rascality and filth, Cologne now presents an appearance which is absolutely revolting. Its streets are swarming with scores of miscreants in blouses, belching out their unholy hymns of revolution in your face, and execrating aristocracy with a gusto that would be refreshing to the soul of Cuffey. ”

“ C'est une petite perle!" said the admiring Frenchwoman, as the Cologne steamboat rounded the point below the town, and she caught the first fair view of its bustling landing-places, its old wall, its quaint gables, and its antique cathedral spires. A pearl among the smaller German cities it is,—with most irregular streets, always neat and cleanly, noble historic and literary associations, jovial student-life, pleasant walks to the neighboring hills, delightful excursions to the Siebengebirge and Ahrthal,—reposing peacefully upon the left bank of the "green and rushing Rhine." ”

“ All great cities contain a proportion of gross and undesirable people. Cologne is no exception to this rule, but the particular elements are not more conspicuous here than elsewhere. So far from hostility, I have received much courtesy and consideration from Germans with whom I came into casual touch. I am not denying the reality of other people’s contrary experiences. I can only state my own. Temperament is a mirror which deflects the passage of facts, and some of the English in Cologne have arrived at fixed judgments about Germany before setting foot in the country. ”

“ If the narrow streets of Cologne be famous, or rather infamous, for bad smells, it is to be recollected that the waters of that ancient city are more valuable than the wines of the neighbouring Rhine:—that they are carried to every corner of the earth—and prized for their delicious flavour, beyond the richest productions of Rudesheim or Johannisberg. ”

“ One of the real advantages of life in Cologne is the charm of the surrounding neighbourhood. Not that the neighbourhood to which I refer is near at hand or very accessible except by train or by motor car. Cologne lies in the centre of a great fertile plain, through which the Rhine flows nobly in that last stage of its career before entering the mud flats of Holland. At a distance varying from ten to fifteen miles the plain east and west is bounded by a chain of low hills broken up, especially on the eastern side, by delicious valleys. Here are woods and trout streams, meadows and flowers. ”

“ Neither Cologne nor Strasbourg is of the same quality of perfection as Bourges or Amiens or Reims; indeed, they both fall immeasurably short, and though later, across the Rhine, in Freibourg, Erfurt, even as far afield as Vienna, Teutonic blood was to begin a new coursing through veins already hardening, again there was to be no culmination and the Renaissance was accepted, ready-made, as it came from France and Italy.
Cologne is a magnificent essay in premeditated art, and it has certain qualities of almost over-powering grandeur that are wholly its own ”

“ Cologne." The missionary paused, unable to proceed, and then hurriedly
exclaimed, "Who is to be his successor? Who is to appoint him?—Gregory
VII or Henry of Austria!"
"He will not dare!" ejaculated the other, who not until this moment clearly understood his more keen-sighted friend.
"He who has dared to fill the sees of Liège and Milan may not scruple to dishonor the see of Cologne! But let us pray and hope; for suffer what we may, we cannot be conquered." ”

“ So the good goes with the bad. It is a pity we have not a moral flail; but, as of old, the tares and the wheat are too intricately intermingled for human art to separate them. I promised to spare you the churches of Cologne, but I cannot pass by the Cathedral. It would be as bad as the proverbial leaving out Hamlet from the enacting of his own tragedy. The Cologne Cathedral is not, and probably never will be, finished. It impressed me anew with a conviction of the immortality of the human mind. ”

“ I remember Cologne and its cathedral almost in the bland dawn, and our fresh start thence for Strasbourg, now clearly recognised, alas, as a start back to America, to which it had been of a sudden settled that we were, still with a fine inconsequence, to return. We had seen Cologne cathedral by excursion from Bonn, but we saw Strasbourg, to my sorrow until a far later occasion soothed it, only as a mild monster behind bars, that is above chimneys, housetops and fortifications ”

“ The great Cathedral tower may be seen for miles, reaching far above the surrounding buildings. Cologne is a city of 273 legends and relics: old and historic buildings dating back many centuries are scattered in all directions, and here the visionary, the lover of myth and legend, can find abundant food for his imagination. The great and valued possessions of the city are the bones of the eleven thousand virgins. ”

“ The road from Coblentz to Bonn is good; from Bonn to Cologne sandy and deep, country flat, but rich and well cultivated.
A mile or two before Cologne a bend of the river extremely beautiful. Wrote our names at the gates; one of the guard was a drunken Irishman, who with the rest of the vagrant scum of Europe composed the Polish legion. Cologne is a large, gloomy town, overrun with monks and beggars. ”

“ Few cities present a more imposing appearance than Cologne; a vast extent of buildings, a profusion of steeples, and a forest of masts, raise the expectations of the traveller. The deception cannot be more justly or more emphatically described than in the words of Dr.Johnson: "Remotely we see nothing but spires of temples, and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence ”

“ At Cologne we took the steamer and ran up the river. A far more sensible proceeding than that of these days, when tourists take the railway, and consequently can see only one side of the view. The river craft was comfortable, the meals were plentiful, the Piesporter was a sound and unadulterated wine, and married remarkably well with Knaster tobacco, smoked in long pipes with painted china bowls. ”

“ When in 1794 Cologne was occupied by the French, it was a poor and decayed city of some 40,000 inhabitants, of whom only 6000 possessed civic rights. When, in 1801, by the treaty of Lunéville, it was incorporated in France, it was not important enough to be more than the chief town of an arrondissement. On the death of the last elector in 1801 the archiepiscopal see was left vacant. With the assignment of the city to Prussia by the congress of Vienna in 1815 a new era of prosperity began. ”

“ Commercially, Cologne is one of the chief centres on the Rhine, and has a very important trade in corn, wine, mineral ores, coals, drugs, dyes, manufactured wares, groceries, leather and hides, timber, porcelain and many other commodities. A large new harbour, with spacious quays, has been constructed towards the south of the city. In 1903, the traffic of the port amounted to over one million tons. Industrially, also, Cologne is a place of high importance. ”

“ It has received a great impulse from the extension of railroads, of which it is a centre, being in the direct line of travel from England to the Rhine and Switzerland, and to the German watering-places, and indeed to every part of Central Europe. Hence it has grown rapidly, and become a large and prosperous city.
But to the traveller in search of sights, every object in Cologne "hides its diminished head" in presence of one, the cathedral, the most magnificent Gothic structure ever reared by human hands. ”

“ Cologne appeared an immense town, as we drove through street after street to arrive at our inn. Before we slept, we secured 6 Sept., 1814.places in the diligence, which was to depart next morning for Clêves.
Nothing in the world can be more wretched than travelling in this German diligence: the coach is clumsy and comfortless, and we proceeded so slowly, stopping so often, that it appeared as if we should never arrive at our journey's end. ”

“ The long bridge of boats opens; a steamer passes, followed by a crowd of boats; it closes, and the waiting crowd upon it hurry over. The Rhine at night here presents a most animated scene.
“The river seems alive, but the city looks dead. There is a faded glory on everything. There are steeples and steeples, towers and towers. Cologne is said to have had at one time as many churches as there are days in the year. But life has gone out of them; they are like deserted houses. ”

“ The following morning I woke happily; for I was really on my way to the long-anticipated pleasures of Baden-Baden. I was in Antwerp. London was behind me, and Cologne and Heidelberg in front. Courage, mon ami, “le diable est mort.”
Everybody has been at Cologne: most persons many times. No less than two-and-twenty churches open their portals for the gratification of your curiosity. ”

“ In German Towns Cologne, Germany, August 9.
This is the big town of the lower Rhine country in Germany, though it has rivals which may sometime take the title away. It is also the old town, and there have been many hot times in its history. It was started in the first century of the Christian era as a colony by Aggripina, the mother of Nero, and a lot of Roman soldiers were given extra rights for settling in the new town. A couple of hundred years later a bridge was built across the Rhine, and Cologne became of commercial importance. ”

“ They are awaited at Cologne by the cruel Huns, who shoot them down without mercy, and, last of all, the saintly princess suffers martyrdom.
This story is told in panels only one foot in width. The little pictures are crowded with figures dressed in the sumptuous costumes of the Court of Burgundy. Genuine landscapes are introduced in the backgrounds—the city of Cologne and the scenery along the Rhine are pictured from [189] sketches which the artist made himself. These tiny paintings have the brilliant colouring of the van Eycks and the finish of detail of the old illuminators. ”

“ The Town House is a very ancient edifice, and contains the only specimen of Grecian architecture in the city. There were three ecclesiastical electorates in Germany, viz. Cologne, Mayence, and Treves, which have been abolished by Napoleon. The revenues of the elector of Cologne amounted to upwards of two hundred thousand pounds. Cologne must have been declining for some centuries, for in the year 1200 it was capable of furnishing thirty thousand men for the field, a number which its present population is said not to exceed. ”

“ A handsome central railway station (high level) , on the site of the old station, and close to the cathedral, was built in 1889–1894. The railway to Bonn and the Upper Rhine now follows the line of the ceinture of the new inner fortifications, and on this section there are three city stations in addition to the central. Like all important German towns, Cologne contains many fine monuments. The most conspicuous is the colossal equestrian statue (221/2 ft. high) of Frederick William III. of Prussia in the Heumarkt. ”

“ The men, the women, everything, improve—except the cottages. The people look cleaner, though everything else is dirty; contrary to the Belgians, they seem to collect their cleanliness upon themselves, instead of throwing it upon their cots, tins, trees, and shrubs.
We arrived at Cologne after much bad, sandy, heavy road, at 11. The pavement begins to be interrupted after Aix, but ends almost entirely after St. Juliers. Cologne is upon a flat on the Rhine. We were groaning at having no sight of far-famed Cologne, when we came suddenly under its battlements and towers. ”

“ The middle steeple is yet to be ascended. This is strongly built of iron, and ninety-four steps more carry us up to the highest point of ascent—three hundred and twenty-nine steps in all. The star which surmounts the steeple above us is three hundred and fifty feet from the pavement. A glance below at the cathedral shows the form of its ground plan, and the landscape view extends as far as the eye can reach.
Cologne is not an over-clean city, and we were not sorry to embark on the dampschift, as they call the little Rhine steamboat, for our trip to Mayence. ”

“ Cologne (282) , in German Köln, capital of Rhenish Prussia, and a fortress of first rank, on the left bank of the Rhine, 175 m. SE. of Rotterdam; is a busy commercial city, and is engaged in eau-de-Cologne, sugar, tobacco, and other manufactures. It has some fine old buildings, and a picture gallery; but its glory is its great cathedral, founded in the 9th century, burnt in 1248, since which time the rebuilding was carried on at intervals, and only completed in 1880; it is one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture. ”

“ Cologne also suffered decline through the closing of the Rhine as a navigable waterway{230} by the Dutch, and it was not until 1837 that the river was re-opened to trading vessels plying to foreign ports. To-day the city is an important commercial and industrial centre. ”

“ I did not leave Aix-la-Chapelle until I had bathed in the waters, which are warm like those at Baiæ. It [Pg 301] is from them that the town is said to derive its name. [3] I then proceeded to Cologne, which lies on the left bank of the Rhine, and is noted for its situation, its river, and its inhabitants. I was astonished to find such a degree of culture in a barbarous land. The appearance of the city, the dignity of the men, the attractiveness of the women, all surprised me. ”