Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/417

Rh was a free city of the German Empire, and had a university, founded in 1621. In the same century the town and the whole of Alsace were annexed to France by Louis XIV., and Alsace formed a part of France for two centuries, until in 1871 it was wrested from France and reannexed to Germany. The old and imposing Cathedral of Strassburg, dating from the twelfth century, still stands in this venerable old town,—surviving the Thirty Years' War and the French annexation, the French Revolution and the German annexation, like some venerable old Yogi rapt in contemplation, and far above all sublunar feuds, passions and dissensions. It was a Sunday when I was in Strassburg; I attended the Cathedral and witnessed the most solemn service and heard the most solemn music that I have seen or heard anywhere.

From Strassburg and Alsace, one naturally proceeds to Metz and Lorraine which have shared a similar fate after the war of 1871. Like Strassburg, Metz was a free town of the German Empire in the olden days, and boasts of a great Cathedral dating from the thirteenth century. The town was annexed to France in 1556, and formed a part of France for over three hundred years, and the population of Lorraine are Frenchmen to the backbone. To have wrested Alsace and Lorraine from France after the war of 1871, and changed the frontier line between France and Germany which had subsisted in spite of temporary