As I sat hearing vespers in
Notre Dame the first time, seeing these all too plainly, may I be
forgiven, but I could not help thinking of Lucifer's soliloquy in a
cathedral in the Golden Legend:--
"What a darksome and dismal place!
I wonder that any man has the face
To call such a hole the house of the Lord
And the gate of heaven--yet such is the word.
Ceiling, and walls, and windows old,
Covered with cobwebs, blackened with mould;
Dust on the pulpit, dust on the stairs,
Dust on the benches, and stalls, and chairs."
* * * * *
However, Notre Dame is a beautiful church; but I wish it was under as
good care as Cologne Cathedral, and that instead of building
Madeleines and Pantheons, France would restore and preserve her
cathedrals--those grand memorials of the past. I consider the King of
Prussia as not only a national benefactor, but the benefactor of the
world. Cologne, when finished, will be the great epic of architecture,
and belong, like all great epics, to all mankind.
Well, Madame M. and I wandered up and down the vast aisles, she with
her lively, fanciful remarks, to which there was never wanting a vein
both of shrewdness and good sense.
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