The principal church, at the end of the Maximilian Street, is that which once formed the chief ornament of the famous Abbey of Sts. Ulric and Afra. I should think that there is no portion of the present building older than the fourteenth century; while it is evident that the upper part of the tower is of the middle of the sixteenth. It has a nearly globular or mosque-shaped termination--so common in the greater number of the Bavarian churches. It is frequented by congregations both of the Catholic and Protestant persuasion; and it was highly gratifying to see, as I saw, human beings assembled under the same roof, equally occupied in their different forms of adoration, in doing homage to their common Creator. Augsburg was once distinguished for great learning and piety, as well as for political consequence; and she boasts of a very splendid martyrological roll. At the present day, all is comparatively dull and quiet; but you can not fail to be struck with the magnificence of many of the houses, and the air of importance hence given to the streets; while the paintings upon the outer walls add much to the splendid effect of the whole. The population of Augsburg is supposed to amount to about thirty thousand. In the time of Maximilian and Charles V. it was, I make no doubt, twice as numerous.[B] [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Taur," published in 1821.] [Footnote B: Augsburg has now (1914) a population of 102,000. Woolen and cotton goods and machinery are its manufactured products.] RATISBON[A] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN It was dark when we entered Ratisbon, and, having been recommended to the Hotel of the Agneau Blanc, we drove thither, and alighted--close to the very banks of the Danube--and heard the roar of its rapid stream, turning several mills, close, as it were, to our very ears. The master of the hotel, whose name is Cramer, and who talked French very readily, received us with peculiar courtesy; and, on demanding the best situated room in the house, we were conducted on the second floor, to a chamber which had been occupied, only two or three days before, by the Emperor of Austria himself, on his way to Aix-la-Chapelle. The next morning was a morning of wonder to us. Our sitting-room, which was a very lantern, from the number of windows, gave us a view of the rushing stream of the Danube, of a portion of the bridge over it, of some beautifully undulating and vine-covered hills, in the distance, on the opposite side--and, lower down the stream, of the town walls and water-mills, of which latter we had heard the stunning sounds on our arrival. The whole had a singularly novel and pleasing appearance.