lived for some time. I inquired according to the direction he had sent
me to Frankfort, but he was not there; however, an old man, finding who
I was, said Herr Otto had directed him to go with me to Hesselhurst, a
village four or five miles off, where he would meet me. So we set off
immediately over the plain, and reached the village at dusk....

My friend arrived at three o'clock the next morning, and, after two or
three hours' talk about home and the friends whom he expected to see so
much sooner than I, a young farmer drove me in his wagon to Offenburg, a
small city at the foot of the Black Forest, where I took the cars for
Freiburg. The scenery between the two places is grand. The broad
mountains of the Black Forest rear their fronts on the east, and the
blue lines of the French Vosges meet the clouds on the west. The night
before, in walking over the plain, I saw distinctly the whole of the
Strassburg minster, whose spire is the highest in Europe, being four
hundred and ninety feet, or but twenty-five feet lower than the Pyramid
of Cheops.

I visited the minster of Freiburg yesterday morning. It is a grand,
gloomy old pile, dating back from the eleventh century--one of the few
Gothic churches in Germany that have ever been completed. The tower of
beautiful fretwork rises to the height of three hundred and ninety-five
feet, and the body of the church, including the choir, is of the same
length. The interior is solemn and majestic. Windows stained in colors
that burn let in a "dim religious light" which accords very well with
the dark old pillars and antique shrines. In two of the chapels there
are some fine altar-pieces by Holbein and one of his scholars, and a
very large crucifix of silver and ebony, kept with great care, which is
said to have been carried with the Crusaders to the Holy Land....