a well-planned tower distinctly Rhenish--if it
were not it would be thought heavy--and where the choir is supposed to
join the nave the roof is surmounted by a tiny spire, which, in truth,
is no addition of beauty.

The interior shows great height, and, if of no great architectural
splendour, has enough mural embellishment and attractive glass to stamp
it as a livable and lovable edifice for religious worship, which is a
good deal more than most modern church buildings ever acquire.

The six bays of the nave show pointed arches springing from rounded
columns. There is an arcaded triforium, and an elaborate series of
clerestory windows which show the geometrical and flamboyant Gothic in
its perfection.

The apse is lighted with five windows of great height. The glass is a
mixture of colour and monotone, but the effect is undeniably good.

The chancel is so shallow that the choir flows over, as it were, into
one bay of the nave, while the choir-stalls themselves are placed in the
aisles. Certainly a most unusual, and perhaps a unique, arrangement.

An altar fronts the west end of either range of stalls, and back, at the
easterly end of the aisles, is found another altar.

The high altar has a handsome modern screen in the form of a gilt
triptych, which is singularly effective and imposing.

Beneath the tower, at the westerly end, is the baptistery, entrance to
which from the body of the church is gained through a low, pointed arch.

[Illustration]

XXX

ESSEN AND DORTMUND

_Essen_

Lying just to the eastward of the Rhine are Essen and Dortmund.

The former was once the site of a powerful abbey of Benedictine nuns,
which was dissolved in 1803. The abbess of Essen was always a titled
person, and was a member of the Westphalian circle of the Imperial
Estates, in which capacity she held a governing right over a large tract
of country immediately surrounding the abbey.

There are the spires of five churches hidden away in the forest of
chimneys of the manufactories of Essen which rise skyward from the
Rhineland plain. It is not a very beautiful picture that one sees from
across the railway viaduct, but a remarkable one, and one that has
undeniable elements of the picturesque.

The cathedral at Essen is a conglomerate group of buildings of many
epochs. The church proper consists of a three-aisled nave, with the
usual choir appendage in what must pass for acceptable Gothic.

[Illustration: GENERAL VI