barbarians from Swabia drove off the workmen, and interrupted the work. The Giant Column is thirty-two feet long, and at top three and-a-half feet, and at bottom four and-a-half feet, in diameter.
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Porta Nigra, at Trêves.
Most of the treasures of the cathedral of Trêves were dispersed in the chaos of 1792, but the great relic of all, the Holy Coat without seam, is there still. This was said to have been brought from the east by the sainted empress Helena. It was found in an old altar at the end of the twelfth century, when Archbishop Johann was engaged in altering the church, and shut up in the newly erected altar of St. Peter. When the Emperor Maximilian I. came to Trêves to hold a diet in 1512, the coat was found, on opening St. Peter’s altar by Archbishop Richard, in an old wooden chest, with one of the dice which the Roman soldiers used, and a rusty knife. In 1514 the same archbishop and elector obtained leave from Pope Leo to exhibit the coat once in every seven years, with full absolution to all those who might undertake a pilgrimage to see it. This period, however, was not more accurately kept than the septennium of English parliaments, for favour was shown to visitors of unusual distinction. In the storm of the French revolution the coat was saved to Augsburg, then the residence of the last elector of Trêves, Clement Wenceslaus, and brought thence with great pomp in 1810, and exhibited in the cathedral to the sight of 250,000 people. Its last exhibition was, if we mistake not, in 1847. There is no seam, or sign of needlework, to be seen in the coat. Tradition says, it was woven by St. Mary for our Saviour in his childhood, and grew larger with his growth. It consists of a reddish-coloured stuff. One of the nails of the cross was said to have been with it at first, but has been lost or subtracted.
The Liebfrauenkirche clings to the side of the cathedral: it was begun somewhat earlier than the cathedral at Cologne—in the thirteenth century, the best period of early gothic. It is seventy-five paces long by sixty-two broad. The two churches together form a contrast; the round arches and general Romanesque style of the cathedral being joined to the gothic body of the lesser church, but there is a correspondence between the tower of the church and the lesser tower of the cathedral: both appear either to have at one time supported handsome spires, or to have been interrupted and plainly finished for want of leisure or money.
The spires, including the central one, which belongs to the cathedral, consist but of high gables carried to a point. From the cathedral with its satellite church (an arrangement also to be seen at Eurfurt in Thuringia), we pass on to the Basilica. This ancient hall is a fine specimen of the noble monotony of Roman architecture. It was probably older than Constantine, having been built for the same purposes for which town halls are used now. It has been made use of in different ways in the course of centuries, but Frederick William IV., of Prussia, restored it to its ancient form, and of late years it has been used as a Protestant Church. It is a simple hall 220 feet long by 98 broad, and 97 feet high, lighted by a double row of windows, and the roof and walls are painted internally. From the Basilica we have a large open space to cross which is now used as a parade-ground for the Prussian troops. This is called the Pallast-platz or palace-square. It was formerly
