Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/181

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158
AN EPISTLE TO POSTERITY

blematical bas-reliefs and statues and carvings of which the old workers in stone were so fond. Here we have John the Baptists and saints, our Saviour and the angels at the dreadful day of judgment, and an allegorical relief of the "Works of Charity," very beautiful, with women's and children's faces. Then we have over the doorway the significant parable of the wise and foolish virgins, all the foolish virgins handsome and all the wise ones plain. The west front illustrates the fourteenth century. There the Virgin and Child are represented, St. George and the dragon, and the benefactors of the church, the Emperor Henry and his Empress.

This church was excommunicated by Pope Eugenius IV.; it was one of the first to bathe in the advancing wave of the Reformation, and is said to be the "finest Protestant church in existence." It dates back to 1010, which is a long time ago. Many vicissitudes have passed over it. It has been partly destroyed by fire, and rebuilt. It of course suffered in the iconoclasm of the sixteenth century, but it has been so judiciously restored that not a particle of its charm is gone; the restorer has borrowed the tooth of time, and has used it with his other tools. How immensely old are those reliefs of the eleventh century, and the old episcopal chair! The pulpit and font are considered modern, as they only date to 1424. There are monuments to the wife and mother of Rudolph of Hapsburg, who seems himself in the twilight of history.

It has a charm for the student, for here is the tomb of Erasmus of Rotterdam, the gentler genius of the Reformation, and the learned, delightful scholar.

In its old, dusty council-hall are the famed frescoes of the "Dance of Death," erroneously attributed to Holbein. They are gloomy and fantastic, like the age