I Did Long To Look That Man Once Steadily
In The Eyes, To See If He Was Such A Fool As He Pretended; But The
Ridiculousness Of The Whole Scene Overcame Me So That I Could Not Look
Up, And I Marched Out In Silence.
The whole church is equally full of
virgins.
The altar piece is a vast picture of the slaughter, not badly
painted. Through various glass openings you perceive that the walls
are full of the bones and skulls. Did the worship of Egypt ever sink
lower in horrible and loathsome idolatry? I had heard of such things;
but it is one thing to hear of them, and another to see them by the
light of this nineteenth century, in a city whose streets look much
like the streets of any other, and where men and women appear much as
they do any where else. Here we saw, in one morning, the splendor and
the rottenness of the Romish system. From those majestic arches, that
triumphant chant, there is but a step down to the worship of dead
men's bones and all uncleanness.
We went also into the Jesuits' church. The effect, to my eye, was that
of a profusion of tawdry, dirty ornament; only the railing of the
choir, which was a splendid piece of carving, out from a single block
of Carrara marble.
The guide book prescribes, I think, no less than half a dozen churches
in Cologne as a dose for the faithful; but we were satisfied with
these three, and went back to our hotel.
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