Agnes De Mansfelt A Historical Tale Author:Thomas Colley Grattan General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1836 Original Publisher: Ad. Wahlen Subjects: Netherlands History / Europe / Western Travel / Europe / Benelux Countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missi... more »ng text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. Within a couple of hours following the scene we have just described, the procession had trained its slow length through the principal streets, halted at the several stations, and finally reached the cathedral, that sublime abortion of architectural magnificence, which beginning to crumble ere it could be completed, stands a rare monument of the too ambitious fate of genius; for the name of him who planned the mighty structure is now as unknown as those of the ignoble artisans who raised its hundred columns, the clustered shafts and flower wreathed capitals of which look like the petrified section of some giant forest. Many another moral may be found by those who seek for such, in this vast emblem of sectarian power, stricken midway in its path of pride. And what lessons of taste does it not convey? not merely to the votary of art who lauds its light-sprung arches, its groined ceilings, its chiselled pillars, or its massive walls, but to the worshipper of nature, who sees even in the corruption of decay such exquisite traces of beauty. There is not a ruin of the Rhine -- and where do they abound so beautiful as on its banks ? -- that does not tell us, like this mightiest of them all, that time is the true master of the picturesque. He does not sweep in vulgar flight, the commonplace devourer of man's triumphs. Even where he destroys he defaces not. Every mark of his tooth leaves a trait of loveliness, every feather of his wing a tint of gr...« less