they rival each other in
modern amusements and gauds set out to lure the light-minded. Music-halls
and beer-gardens, theatres and cafes, illuminated promenades and stalls
full of tempting flagons labeled "genuine eau de Cologne," are cunningly
arrayed to turn away the mind from the stately antique churches and houses
of Cologne. Every one has heard of the cathedral, many have seen it, and
more have seen at least photographs of great accuracy, and pictures of it
which, if less strict in detail, give it a more lifelike look and include
some of its surroundings. The church of St. Gereon, a martyr of the Theban
Legion massacred at Cologne to a man for refusing to worship the imperial
ensigns, under which no one denied that they had fought like lions, is a
massive Romanesque building older than the cathedral, dating from the days
of Constantine and Saint Helena. The church of the Holy Apostles is a
basilica with rounded apse and four octagon towers, one at each corner of
the nave. St. Peter's church, the interior terribly modernized by the
Renaissance, has for an altar-piece Rubens's picture of the _Crucifixion
of Saint Peter_. The Guerzenich House, now used for public balls and
imperial receptions, is a magnificent fifteenth-century building, adorned
with dwarf towers at each corner, a high, carved and stone-roofed niche
with statue over the round-arched door, transom windows filled with
stained glass, and carvings of shields, animal heads, colonnettes and
other devices between and above these windows. The council-house or
town-hall has a beautiful colonnade supporting arches, and a quaint
nondescript creature whose abyss-like maw opens wide and gapes horribly at
the beholder each time the clock strikes. A bas-relief in the hall
represents a curious incident in the civic history of the town, the
successful struggle of Burgomaster Gryn with a lion, the show and pet of
some treacherous nobles who invited Gryn to dinner, and under pretence of
showing him their very unusual acquisition, pushed him into the stone
recess and closed the gate upon him. The burgomaster thrust his hand and
arm, wrapped in his thick cloak, down the animal's throat, while he
pierced him through and through with the sword in his other hand. The
struggles between Cologne and her archbishops were hot and incessant, much
as they were in other ecclesiastical sovereignties. Of these there is no
longer a trace in the present, though the might of the burghers ex