Looking at Cologne in any light, no one can fail to perceive that its principal defect is its relative shortness. If this was unavoidable at least the transept should have been omitted altogether, as at Bourges, or kept within the line of the walls, as at Paris, Rheims, and elsewhere. It is true, our long low English cathedrals require bold projecting transepts to relieve their monotony; but at Cologne their projection detracts both internally and externally from the requisite appearance of length. Indeed, this seems to have been suspected at the time, as the façades of the transepts were the least finished parts of the building when it was left, and the modern restorers would have done well if they had profited by the hesitation of their predecessors, and omitted an expensive and detrimental addition. Another defect before alluded to is the double aisles of the nave. It is true these are found at Paris, but they were an early experiment. At Bourges the fault is avoided by the aisles being of different heights; but in none of the best examples, such as Rheims, Chartres, or Amiens, would the architects have been guilty of dispersing their effects or destroying their perspectives as is done at Cologne, and now that the whole of the interior is finished these defects of proportion are become more apparent than they were before. The clear width of the nave is 41 ft. 6 inches between the piers, its height 155 ft., or nearly four times the width—a proportion altogether intolerable in architecture. And this defect is made even more apparent here by the aisles being together equal in width to the nave, while they are only 60 ft. in height. Besides the defect of artistic disproportion, this exaggerated height of the interior has the further disadvantage of dwarfing to a painful extent the human beings who frequent it. Even the gorgeous ceremonial of the Catholic Church and their most crowded processions lose all their effect by comparison with the building in which they are performed. Were a regiment of Life Guards on horseback to ride down the central aisle at Cologne, they would be converted into pigmies by the 148 ft. of height above them. Lateral spaciousness has not the same dwarfing effect; when all are standing on the same floor, distance does not diminish in a building more than in the open air, and with that effect we are familiar, but great height in a room is unusual, and in proportion as it affects the mind with awe or astonishment does it diminish the appearance of those objects with which we are familiar. Perhaps, however, the most striking defect of the internal design is the want of repose or subordination of parts: 50 pillars practically identical in design, and spaced nearly equally over the floor, and beyond them everywhere a wall of glass. If the four central piers had been wider spaced, or of double the section they now are, or had there been any plain wall or any lateral chapels anywhere, it would have been better.