seldorf School.

A remarkably good collection of pictures remains in its art gallery to
remind us of the fame of Duesseldorf as an art centre, but to-day its art
has become "old-fashioned," and the gay little metropolis has many, if
more worldly, counter attractions.

Duesseldorf takes its name from the little river Duessel which joins the
Rhine at this point.

The French guide-books call Duesseldorf the "_plus coquettes des bords du
Rhin_"; and so it really is, for few tourists go there for its churches
alone, though they are by no means squalid or inferior.

The city was the residence of the Counts, afterward the Dukes, of
Berg--for it was made a duchy by the Emperor Wenceslaus--from the end of
the thirteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth.

In 1806 Napoleon made it the capital of a new Grand Duchy of Berg in
favour of Joachim Murat. By the treaty of 1815 Duesseldorf fell to
Prussia, and became the chief town of the regency of Duesseldorf, and the
seat of a superior court of justice.

Occupying the site that it does, on the banks of a great waterway, the
city naturally became the centre of an important commerce.

Duesseldorf is the birthplace of many who have borne great names; of the
philosopher Jacobi and his poet brother; the Baron de Hompesch, the last
grand master of the Order of Malta; Von Ense, the eminent litterateur;
the poet Heinrich Heine (who died at Paris in 1855), and the painters
Cornelius, Lenzen, and Achenbach.

The principal church edifice is that dedicated to St. Lambert, the
Hofkirche. It has a strong and hardy tower, very tall, and surmounted by
a slate-covered spire. The ogival style predominates, and the fabric
dates mostly from the fourteenth century. Its chief feature is its
choir, which is far more ample and beautiful than the nave. The rest of
the edifice fails to express any very high ideals of church-building.

At the foot of the apside, behind the choir, is a mausoleum erected in
the seventeenth century for the elector, John Wilhelm, who died in 1690.

In the ambulatory of the choir is, on the left, a florid Gothic
tabernacle, and by the second pillar of the nave is a colossal statue of
St. Christopher. There are many tombs of Jacobeans, and of the Dukes of
Berg.

There are also a number of paintings by Duesseldorf artists scattered
about the church, but they have not the qualities exhibited by the old
Flemish masters, and are hardly worthy of remark.

On the ext