monument now erected at Worms:—"Here I take my stand. I can do no otherwise. So help me God. Amen." The statue is of bronze, 11 feet high, and is surrounded by statues of other bold spirits who also fought the battle of freedom and reformation. At the corners of the chief pedestal are his four predecessors, Waldus (died 1197), Wycliffe (died 1387), Huss (died 1415), and Savonarola (died 1498.)
Worms, like Mayence, has an old and famous Cathedral dating from the twelfth century. Worms is also the centre of many ancient and romantic Cathedral.legends, preserved in the German national epic, Nibelungen Lied.
Leaving Worms, and going further up the Rhine, one comes to Manhiem where the tributary Neckar falls into the Rhine. Manhiem is not a place of much interest, but the university town of Heidelberg on the Neckar is replete with interest. The town is situated Heidelberg.just where the Neckar leaves the wild and mountainous country to the west and flows out into the open valley of the Rhine. It was the capital of the Palatinate for five hundred years, and its castle was built by Count Palatine Rudolph I. at the close of the thirteenth century. And the University of Heidelberg is the oldest in Germany being founded by Elector Rupert I. in the 14th century.
The castle has an eventful history, and is now in ruins. In the disastrous Thirty Years' War, Heidelberg Castle.and the whole of the Palatinate, like other parts of Germany,
