Feb. 28, 1863.]
ONCE A WEEK.
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tectural glories but the rocks of his forests, might be overawed by the aspect of such a symbol of power. To the fact that he was so for a time the prosperity of Trêves in the Roman times is owing; but when Rome became weak in the centre, her boundaries were broken in upon, the wild spirits outside rushed through the magic circle which she had drawn round her conquests, and very soon tore her to pieces. Her monuments were left to attest her ambitious aspirations and their vanity, like the remains of that tower of Shinaar with which the mighty masons of old thought to scale heaven. The Porta Nigra is a double gateway with two towers on each side, one of which possesses still its entire four storeys, while the other is shorter by one storey. There are two storeys above the archways containing halls, which were doubtless in former times used for municipal purposes, but have now become repositories for antiquities. On the right side from the Simeon’s Strasse is to be seen what remains of a mediæval addition, dating from the time when the Black Gate was turned into the church of St. Simeon. This adaptation, which probably, as in so many cases of the antiquities of Rome, tended to the preservation of the ancient monument, though by a parasitical addition, was made by Archbishop Poppo in the eleventh century. Napoleon in 1804 ordered all later additions to the Porta Nigra to be destroyed, but the work was neglected till carried out by Prussia in 1816. Still a portion of the Christian building remains on the right of the gate as we look at it from the town. Some believe the Porta Nigra to have been older than the Romans, but it appears without sufficient data. Those who have seen the aqueduct at Jouy aux Arcs near Metz, and the Pont du Gard in Provence, must be struck by the similarity of the conception. There is a stern, simple grandeur about the Black Gate of Trêves which tells of the most palmy and secure days of the Roman dominion. We should rather be inclined to ascribe it to the age of Hadrian than that of Constantine, when the taste of the day would probably have treated the subject with more adventitious ornamentation. As it stands it is a model of sublime symmetry: arches on arches, pillars on pillars. The capitals of the pillars have no curling ears like those of the Ionic order, no leafy elegance like the Corinthian. They are simply bevilled blocks or dice, and the neatly adapted stones rest in their places by their own weight, in scorn of mortar, as the Roman legionaries kept their ranks by weight of armament and martial will. Time has beautified the dark red sandstone here and there with shrubs and flowers, and married ancient art to ever-young nature. Vegetation gives to ruins the venerable character that grey hair gives to man.
If we return from the Porta Nigra to the market-place, we shall see in front of our head-quarters at the Red House an ancient cross, resting on a pillar, with steps at the base. It is some 800 years old, and bears this inscription, in Latin:
In memory of signs of the cross which came down from heaven upon men, in the year of our Lord’s incarnation, DCCCCVIII., and in the second year of his bishopric, Heinrich the archbishop set me up.
It is more than doubtful whether the cross itself is the original one, while the pillar on which it stands is apparently Roman. This prodigy of bloody signs of the cross falling from heaven on people’s clothes, suggests the prodigies we read of in Livy; to avert the consequences portended the cross was erected as a
piaculum. It is not unlikely that some natural phenomenon such as a peculiar sort of red blight-rain was at the bottom of this story, as of all others of the same kind. In heathen times it would have been said to have rained blood. It is but a step from the market-place to the cathedral, which constitutes with the Liebfrauenkirche a single block of buildings. The whole structure is more historically curious from the varieties of styles, than beautiful. The original building of the cathedral was a palace of the empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, resting on four great granite pillars; a fragment of one of these, seven feet in diameter, lies before the north door of the church. It was found in 1614, when the Elector Lothar von Metternich had a vault prepared in the church. The building was restored in the eleventh century by Archbishop Poppo, who surrounded with pilasters the old pillars, whose Corinthian capitals are still to be seen, and supported the original arches with new ones. This restoration enlarged the church by one-third, and so zealous was he in the work, that he was killed by a sunstroke while contemplating its progress. Archbishop Hillin, in the latter half of the twelfth century, was also surprised by death when building the part to the east. The cathedral was burnt a second time in 1717, having suffered previously in the same way towards the end of the Roman dominion. It was restored in 1723 by the Elector Franz Ludwig, and received its present cruciform shape. It is 132 paces long by 52 broad. It has three naves and a double choir, and no less than sixteen altars. The chief dome, which rested on the four great granite pillars, is still ninety feet high. What is the history of these pillars? It is impossible to say precisely. But there are some facts which might tend to solve the problem of their origin. In a wood not far from the station of Bensheim on the Bergstrasse, situated on the side of the Felsberg, in the Odenwald, is a round basin in the midst of the forest, bare of vegetation, and filled with huge boulders of different shapes, more or less rounded, which may be easily traversed by stepping from one to the other. A hidden stream gurgles below them. How they came there is a question. They might have been dropt from some huge eddy, or have sunk together from the subsidence of some primæval glacier. The whole phenomenon is called now the Sea of rocks, which from its limited extent is a misnomer. A little way above this are some rocks hewn by human hands, amongst them one called the Altar-stone, and another near it called the Giant Column. This is an unfinished pillar of granite, lying along in the wood. It is possible that the Romans, finding here such blocks as suited their vast works at Trêves, may have used this hill as a quarry, and that this very column was being shaped with the intention of sending it down the Rhine, and up the Moselle to Trêves, when the
