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 CHAPTER XI.

the 21st August 1893, I revisited Cologne after 22 years. Europe has passed through a revolution within these 22 years, the new German Empire has been built up and consolidated, and the Cathedral of Cologne, commenced six centuries ago, has been completed by the first ruler of the new German Empire. It is the most magnificent Gothic edifice in the world, as the church of St. Peter is the finest edifice in the Roman style.

The town of Cologne traces back its history to the first century of the Christian era when Agrippina the mother of Nero founded here a colony of Roman veterans to keep the German barbarians in check. But Rome decayed in time, the German barbarians rose to be the most powerful nations in Europe, and in the eighth century the great Charlemagne raised the bishopric of Cologne into an archbishopric.

Five centuries then rolled away, centuries of Feudalism and of Crusades, and archbishop Conrad laid the foundation stone of the present noble cathedral in 1248. In two hundred years the work was sufficiently advanced to