to give
a peculiar character to German Gothic. The simplest type of the gabled
spire was magnificently used in the spire of St. Peter's at Hamburg.
This was the finest in North Germany; it was four hundred and sixteen
feet high, and, if still standing, would be the third in height in the
world. But it was destroyed by the great fire of 1842. Many a traveller
can bear witness to the sweet melody of the chimes that used to sound
beneath it every half-hour.

In later times, between the Germans and the French, was invented the
_lantern_,--a feature so often and so superbly used, not only on the
Continent, but more lately in England, that we must needs glance at it.
This consisted in a tall, perpendicular, octangular structure, placed
upon the tower, quite light and open, and pierced with long windows.
Here they used to swing the bells, and the place was called the lantern
or _louvre_; thence the octangular spire arose easily and naturally.
Now, notwithstanding this device, those troublesome triangular spaces
still remained unoccupied at the top of the square tower. The manner
in which this difficulty was remedied was exceedingly ingenious and
beautiful. It was by building on them very delicate pinnacles or
turrets, peopled, perhaps, as at Freiburg, with a silent and serene
concourse of saints in rich niches, or inclosing, as at Strasburg,
spiral open-work stairs. These structures accompanied the tall lantern
through its whole height; thus rendering the entire group a memory,
as it were, of the square tower below, while, at the same time, it
beautifully foreshadowed the octangular character of the sky-seeking
spire above,--a significant symbolism.

Now, when the Belgians and their neighbors received the spire thus from
the fatherland, they at once began to express in it the joy of their
worship by all the embroidery and tender imagery and grotesque conceits
it was capable of receiving. They varied as many changes on it as they
did on their bells. They concealed the first springing of their spires
behind clustering pinnacles, flying-buttresses, canopied niches with
gigantic statues, galleries with battlements and parapets pierced and
mantled in lacework of flamboyant tracery, pointed gables alive with
crockets and finials, and long, quaint dormers,--all with a bewildering
intricacy of enrichment. And they inherited from the Germans a love for
the gargoyle, which haunted the springing of the spire at the corners
with vision