foundations. But in vain. "The Golden
Legend" tells us how Lucifer and the Powers of the Air stormed about the
spire, and how he cried,--

"Hasten! hasten!
O ye spirits!
From its station drag the ponderous
Cross of iron that to mock us
Is uplifted high in air!"

and how the voices replied,--

"Oh, we cannot!
For around it
All the Saints and Guardian Angels
Throng in legions to protect it;
They defeat us everywhere!"

At one point, however, the evil spirits were successful; the colossal
statue of the Virgin, which crowned the dizzy summit, and was familiar
with the secrets of the upper air, and which, like its dread Enemy,

"above the rest,
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower,"--

after having for fifty years borne the insults of these airy powers,
till it had lost all its original brightness, and its face

"Deep scars of thunder had intrenched,"--

was taken down, and the present cross put in its place. And there it
stands to this day, high up in the silence of midair, where the voices
of the city below are rendered small and thin by the distance,--four
hundred and seventy-four feet above the heads of the populace, who, in
their littleness, crawl about and traffic at its base. This amazing
summit, "moulded in colossal calm," in its unapproachable grandeur,
seems to forget the city from which it rises, and to hold communion only
with that vast circle of "crowded farms and lessening towers" which
it surveys. It is a worthy companionship; on the one hand, the great
Vosgian chain, the closed gates of France,--on the other, afar off, the
hills of the Black Forest, and, more near, Father Rhine, winding his
silver thread among the villages and vineyards of Germany.

There is (or was) an enormous key suspended just beneath the cross of
Strasburg Cathedral, its use, and why it was placed there, having passed
away from the memory of man. If it were not to open the gates of heaven
for those who built this ladder of light and those who worship in
its shadow, it remains a riddle and a blank. Let us accept the
interpretation, and, made mild-eyed by the lens of tender memories, we
shall behold in every spire a means of grace and a hope of glory.

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.

PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE.

THE PUBLISHERS TO THE AUTHOR.

_Queerangle Building, Nov. '59._

Dr. SR,--

Will you contract to do us a tale or a novel, at the rate of say 10 pp.
per mon