tly figures, there are also sculptured
symbols which, in such a company, might well be thought profane: figures
representing Geometry, Music, Arithmetic, and the Arts.

In the tower, above the porch, is a chapel dedicated to St. Michael,
lighted by three ogival windows. It is now a bare, uninteresting
chamber, its altar and decorations having disappeared.

The third story of the tower forms the belfry, from which springs the
gently tapering and beautiful spire which rises to a height only forty
feet less than that of Strasburg.

The dwindling spire has a dozen facets which in some mysterious way
unite with the octagon of the belfry in a manner that leaves nothing to
criticize.

Within the cathedral there are some acceptable mural decorations in the
wall space above the western arch of the transept crossing. There are
also a number of funeral monuments, finely sculptured and quite
remarkable of their kind. One, a "Christ in the Sepulchre," is admirably
executed in the sixteenth-century style of Koempf, who is responsible
also for the elaborate pulpit.

There are two other churches in Freiburg of more than usual interest;
the parish church with a fine fourteenth-century cloister, and the
Protestant temple, a modern structure in the Byzantine style, which has
been built up on the remains of the church belonging to the ancient
Benedictine convent of Toennenbach, which existed in the twelfth century.

In the chapel of the university are a number of paintings by Holbein.

[Illustration]

IX

STRASBURG

The greatest curiosity of Strasburg is the Rhine; after that, its
cathedral.

Usually, on entering Strasburg, the first landmark that greets one's eye
is the slim, lone spire of the cathedral.

Years ago an itinerant showman travelled about with a model of the
celebrated Strasburg clock, and the writer got his first ideas of a
great Continental cathedral from the rather crude representation of the
Gothic beauties of that at Strasburg, which graced the canvas which hung
before the showman's tent.

The clock is still there, in all its mystical incongruity, but one's
interest centres in the grace and elegance of the dwindling spire and
its substructure of nave, transept, and choir, which dominates all else
round about.

Of many eras, the structure of this great Latin-cross cathedral is not
harmonious; but, for all that, it is a great Gothic triumph, and one
which might well lend most of its details of co