Besides the fault of proportion for which the design of Erwin is clearly blamable, all his work betrays the want of artistic feeling which is characteristic of the German mason. Every detail of the lower part of the front is wire-drawn and attenuated. The defect of putting a second line of unsymmetrical tracery in front of windows, the first trace of which was remarked upon in speaking of Gelnhausen, is here carried to a painful extent. The long stone bars which protect and hide the windows are admirable specimens of masonry, but they are no more beauties than those which protect our kitchen windows in modern times. The spreading the tracery of the windows over the neighbouring walls, so as to make it look large and uniform, is another solecism found both here and at Cologne, utterly unworthy of the art, and not found in, I believe, a single instance in France and England, where the style was so much better understood than in Germany. Altogether the façade of the cathedral at Strasburg is imposing from its mass, and fascinating from its richness; but there is no building in either France or England where such great advantages have been thrown away in so reckless a manner and by so unintelligent a hand. The cathedral at Ratisbon is a far more satisfactory specimen of German art than that of Strasburg. It is a small building, only 272 ft. in length, and 114 in breadth internally, and covering about 32,000 sq. ft. It was commenced in the year 1275; the works were continued for more than two centuries, and at last abandoned before the completion of the church. As will be seen from the plan (Woodcut No. 751), it is much more German than French in its arrangements, having three apses instead of a chevet. The side-aisles are wide in proportion to the central one, the transept subdued, and altogether it is more like the old round-arched Gothic basilica than the French church. It has two storeys of windows in the apse, as at Marburg, where the arrangement is unmeaning and offensive, while here the nave has side-aisles and a clerestory: thus the upper windows of the apse are a continuation of the clerestory windows of the nave, and the effect is not unpleasing. The details of this church are singularly pleasing and elegant throughout, and produce on the whole a harmony not commonly met with in German churches of this age and style. [Illustration: 751. Plan of Ratisbon Cathedral. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.]