kable
groups being "The Wise and Foolish Virgins," "The Prophets," "The Last
Judgment," and "Christ and the Twelve Apostles."

[Illustration: STRASBURG CATHEDRAL]

A great rose window, a reminiscence of the masterpieces so frequently
seen in France, also decorates this elaborate facade.

The south portal is in the form of two round-arched doorways, and is a
survival, evidently, of one of the earliest epochs of this style of
construction. It is ornamented with bas-reliefs and statues symbolical
of the triumph of Christian religion. There has recently been erected
before this portal a statue of the great architect of the fabric, Ervin,
and another of his son.

The spire, one of the most elevated in Europe, is 440 feet, while that
of Cologne is 482 feet, Rouen is 458 feet, and Notre Dame at Paris but
200 feet in height.

Usually church edifices are grim and gray; but Strasburg presents, in
its sandstone of the Vosges, a beautiful tone, which in the westering
sun of a summer's day can only be described as a rose-pink, and is like
no other church edifice in Europe, unless it be the cathedral at Rodez
in Mid-France, which Henry James called mouse-coloured, but which in
reality is a sort of warm, deep rose.

A fine lacework of _colonnettes_ covers the entire facade, which six
centuries have turned to the colour of iridescent copper organ-pipes.

But the real grandeur and dignity of the architecture stands out boldly
in spite of the ornate turrets and the mass of sculptured detail, in a
way which stamps the fabric imperially as a giant among its kind.

Of the spire, Victor Hugo wrote thus (Strasburg was yet French, and not
German as it is to-day): "The truly adorable achievement of the builders
of this cathedral is its spire. It is a tiara of stone crowned with a
cross. It is prodigious, gigantic, but of great delicacy. I have seen
Chartres; I have seen Antwerp. Four _escaliers a jour_ ascend spirally
the four towerlets at the angles. The steps are very high and narrow....
To mount to the lantern one would have to follow the workmen, who appear
to be continually engaged on the fabric. The stairways are no more,
simply bars of iron set ladderlike in the masonry.

"From the spire one sees three mountain ranges: the group of the Black
Forest to the north; the Vosges to the west; and the Alps to the south.

"One stands so high that the country-side appears no longer as the
country-side; but, like the view from the castle