This Architecture Was The First Flowering Of The Gothic Race; They Had No Homers; The Flame Found Vent Not By Imaged Words And Vitalized Alphabets; They Vitalized Stone, And Their Poets Were Minster Builders; Their Epics, Cathedrals.

This is why one cathedral - like Strasbourg, or Notre Dame - has a thousand fold the power of any number of Madeleines.

The Madeleine is simply a building; these are poems.

I never look at one of them without feeling that gravitation of soul towards its artist which poetry always excites. Often the artist is unknown; here we know him; Erwin von Steinbach, poet, prophet, priest, in architecture.

We visited his house - a house old and quaint, and to me _full_ of suggestions and emotions. Ah, if there be, as the apostle vividly suggests, houses not made with hands, strange splendors, of which these are but shadows, that vast religious spirit may have been finding scope for itself where all the forces of nature shall have been made tributary to the great conceptions of the soul.

Save this cathedral, Strasbourg has nothing except peaked-roofed houses, dotted with six or seven rows of gable windows.

LETTER XL.

HEIDELBERG.

MY DEAR: -

To-day we made our first essay on the Rhine. Switzerland is a poor preparation for admiring any common scenery; but the Rhine from Strasbourg to Manheim seemed only a muddy strip of water, with low banks, poplars, and willows. If there was any thing better, we passed it while I was asleep; for I did sleep, even on the classic Rhine.

Day before yesterday, at Basle, I went into the museum, and there saw some original fragments of the Dance of Death, and many other pictures by Holbein, with two miniature likenesses of Luther and his wife, by Lucas Cranach; they are in water colors. Catharine was no beauty at that time, if Lucas is to be trusted, and Luther looks rather savage. But I saw a book of autographs, and several original letters of Luther's. I saw the word "Jesus" at the top of one of them, thus, "J. U. S." The handwriting was fair, even, and delicate. I laid my hand on it, and thought his hand also had passed over the paper which he has made living with his thoughts. Melanchthon, of whom a far more delicate penmanship might have been expected, wrote a coarse, rugged hand, quite like Dr. Bishop's. It somehow touched my heart to see this writing of Luther's, so fair, and clean, and flowing; and to think of his _vive_ and ever-surging spirits, his conflicts and his victories.

We were awakened, about eight o'clock this morning, by the cathedral bell, which is near by, and by the chanting of the service. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, and I could hear them sing all the time I was dressing. I think, by the style of the singing, it was Protestant service: it brought to mind the elms of Andover - the dewy, exquisite beauty of the Sabbath mornings there; and I felt, more than ever, why am I seeking any thing more beautiful than home?

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