I immediately confided the affair to Lerse; and we went the next morning to the young man, whom my friend in his dry way set laughing.  We agreed to bring about an accidental meeting, where a reconciliation should take place of itself.  The drollest thing about it was, that this time the captain, too, had slept off his rudeness, and found himself ready to apologize to the young man, to whom petty quarrels were of some consequence.  All was arranged in one morning; and, as the affair had not been kept quite secret, I did not escape the jokes of my friends, who might have foretold me, from their own experience, how troublesome the friendship of the captain could become upon occasion.

But now, while I am thinking what should be imparted next, there comes again into my thoughts, by a strange play of memory, that reverend minster-building, to which in those days I devoted particular attention, and which, in general, constantly presents itself to the eye, both in the city and in the country.

The more I considered the facade, the more was that first impression strengthened and developed, that here the sublime has entered into alliance with the pleasing.  If the vast, when it appears as a mass before us, is not to terrify; if it is not to confuse, when we seek to investigate its details,—­it must enter into an unnatural, apparently impossible, connection, it must associate to itself the pleasing.  But now, since it will be impossible for us to speak of the impression of the minster except by considering both these incompatible qualities as united, so do we already see, from this, in what high value we must hold this ancient monument; and we begin in earnest to describe how such contradictory elements could peaceably interpenetrate and unite themselves.

First of all, without thinking of the towers, we devote out considerations to the facade alone, which powerfully strikes the eye as an upright, oblong parallelogram.  If we approach it at twilight, in the moonshine, on a starlight night, when the parts appear more or less indistinct and at last disappear, we see only a colossal wall, the height of which bears an advantageous proportion to the breadth.  If we view it by day, and by the power of the mind abstract from the details, we recognize the front of a building which not only encloses the space within, but also covers much in its vicinity.  The openings of this monstrous surface point to internal necessities, and according to these we can at once divide it into nine compartments.  The great middle door, which opens into the nave of the church, first meets the eye.  On both sides of it lie two smaller ones, belonging to the cross-ways.  Over the chief door our glance falls upon the wheel-shaped window, which is to spread an awe-inspiring light within the church and its vaulted arches.  At its sides appear two large, perpendicular, oblong openings, which form a striking contrast with the middle one, and indicate that they belong to the base of the rising towers.  In the third story are three openings in a row, which are designed for belfries and other church necessities.  Above them one sees the whole horizontally closed by the balustrade of the gallery, instead of a cornice.  These nine spaces described are supported, enclosed, and separated into three great perpendicular divisions by four pillars rising up from the ground.