The
Solemn Realities Of Life Had Come To Her Unsought.
I left Paris and travelled through Belgium to Cologne.
The day I
arrived was some holiday; so there was grand mass in the cathedral,
and such music! - the immense building was filled with the sound. The
full organ was played, and some of the priest singers took part.
Never did music so overcome me. The sublime piece, - as I thought of
Beethoven's, surely of some great composer, - performed in this
glorious old cathedral, was beyond all that I had ever dreamt of. It
seems to me that I might think of it again in my dying hour with
delight. I felt as if it created a new soul in me. Such gushes of
sweet sound, such joyful fulness of melody, such tender breathings
of hope, and love, and peace, and then such floods of harmony
filling all those sublime arches, ascending to the far distant roof
and running along through the dim aisles - O, one must hear, to have
an idea of the effect of such music in such a place.
At Bonn we took the steamer; the day was perfect, and our pleasure
was full. You must see one of these fine old castles on the top of
the beautiful hills - you must yourself see the blue sky through its
ruined arches - you must see the vines covering every inch of the
mountain that is not solid rock, and witness the lovely effect of
the gray rock mingling with the tender green - you must hear the wild
legend of the owner of the castle in his day of power, and feel the
passage of time and civilization that has changed his fastness of
strength and rapine to a beautiful adornment of this scene of peace
and plenty, its glories all humbled, its terrors all passed away,
and its great and only value the part it plays in a picture, and the
lesson it preaches, in its decay, of the progress of justice and
humanity.
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