author and the artist well, for it presents much variety
of architectural form, and an abounding and appealing interest by reason
of the shadows of the past still lingering over these monuments in
stone._

_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_

I

INTRODUCTORY

There is no topographical division of Europe which more readily defines
itself and its limits than the Rhine valley from Schaffhausen to where
the river empties into the North Sea.

The region has given birth to history and legend of a most fascinating
character, and the manners and customs of the people who dwell along its
banks are varied and picturesque.

Under these circumstances it was but to be expected that architectural
development should have expressed itself in a decided and unmistakable
fashion.

One usually makes the Rhine tour as an interlude while on the way to
Switzerland or the Italian lakes, with little thought of its
geographical and historical importance in connection with the
development of modern Europe.

It was the onward march of civilization, furthered by the Romans,
through this greatest of natural highways to the north, that gave the
first political and historical significance to the country of the Rhine
watershed. And from that day to this the Rhenish provinces and the Low
Countries bordering upon the sea have occupied a prominent place in
history.

There is a distinct and notable architecture, confined almost, one may
say, to the borders of the Rhine, which the expert knows as Rhenish, if
it can be defined at all; and which is distinct from that variety of
pre-Gothic architecture known as Romanesque.

It has been developed mainly in the building of ecclesiastical edifices,
and the churches and cathedrals of the Rhine valley, through Germany and
the Netherlands, are a species which, if they have not the abounding
popular interest of the great Gothic churches of France, are quite as
lordly and imposing as any of their class elsewhere. The great
cathedral at Cologne stands out among its Gothic compeers as the
beau-ideal of our imagination, while the cathedral at Tournai, in
Belgium--which, while not exactly of the Rhine, is contiguous to it--is
the prototype of more than one of the lesser and primitive Gothic
cathedrals of France, and has even lent its quadruple elevation to Notre
Dame at Paris, and was possibly the precursor of the cathedral at
Limburg-on-Lahn.

From this it will be inferred that the bu