The west door at once fixes one’s attention. It is very lovely: the jamb perhaps too plain, and lacking mouldings between its shafts, but the arch absolutely perfect; it has two rows of the freshest and brightest stone foliage ever seen, and the tympanum--diapered over one half with a trailing rose, and on the other with a vine, both creeping naturally upwards with exquisite curve and undulation, regular in their irregularity,--is certainly of a degree of exquisite and simple beauty such as I have never seen surpassed. In the midst of this bower stands a fine figure of S. Mary with our Lord in her arms, and on either side an angel censing. As one looks at the carving, one thinks of the prettiest perhaps of all the legends of S. Elizabeth, and it may be that the sculptor, as he struck out the bold and beautiful work, which even now surprises by its beauty and its sharpness, thought of those roses of paradise with which S. Elizabeth in the legend surprised her doubting husband. Above this doorway a pierced parapet carries a passage in front of the fine and thoroughly geometrical west window of six lights. Another parapet, and then a row of traceries and canopies which mask the roof gable. On either side the great buttresses of the steeples give an air of solidity and plainness to the whole elevation, which I think very satisfactory. A two-light window on the same level as the great west window, and very long narrow belfry windows, also of two lights, are the only openings in the towers. The buttresses finish with pinnacles, and the towers with pierced parapets, above which, on the cardinal sides, are gables with windows, and at their summit an octangular open parapet, from which the spires then rise without further break or ornament. The composition is unusual and very good. Besides these western steeples there is a turret of poor and modern character over the intersection of the transept and other roofs. And now let us enter, and we shall find ourselves in what seems like a very lantern; windows everywhere, tier above tier, and admitting a flood of light which is bearable only when--as happily still in the choir--all the windows are filled with the richest stained glass. The architectural peculiarities of the exterior are as marked but not as intelligible in the interior; and one cannot cease to regret the effect of the reiteration of the same window everywhere: otherwise, however, the interior is full of beauty; the nave piers very simple--large circles with four engaged shafts--very lofty and with finely carved capitals. The transept piers are clustered, and the groining throughout is very simple, but of exquisite proportions. And now I must go on to describe the fittings and arrangements of this interior, which are so perfect as to make it, perhaps, the most interesting and complete church in Germany.