Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/74

 towers. A tower is an idea, a dream. There are “half towers,” and turrets. The fanaticism which wanted to put towers to the edifices that were erected in honour of this or that saint, did not last long enough to finish them; and the spire, designed to point out heaven to believers, is generally supported by two or three low battlements on the huge base, which makes you think of the man without thighs at the fair. The towers of village churches only, with their spires, are finished.

It is not very flattering to Western civilisation, that the enthusiasm for an extensive work has very seldom prevailed long enough to see that work finished. I do not now speak of undertakings whose completion was necessary to defray the expenses: whoever wants to know exactly what I mean, must go and see the Cathedral at Cologne. Let him think of the grand conception of that building in the soul of the architect;—of the faith in the hearts of the people, which furnished him with the means to commence and continue that labour;—of the influence of the ideas, which required such a colossus to serve as a visible representation of unseen religious feeling—and let him compare that enthusiasm with the train of ideas, that some centuries afterwards stopped the labour.

There is a profound chasm between Erwin von Steinbach and our architects! I know, that for many years they have been occupied in filling up that chasm; at Cologne too they are again working at the Cathedral.