eight in the evening
Nor can we expect any grand work to be done in art or literature . When pictures are painted and books are written for money only , -- when laborers take no pleasure in labor save for the wage it brings , -- when no real enthusiasm is shown in anything except the accumulation of wealth , -- and when all the finer sentiments and nobler instincts of men are made subject to Mammon worship , is any one so mad and blind as to think that good can come of it ? Nothing but evil upon evil can accrue from such a system , -- and those who have prophetic eyes to see through the veil of events can perceive , even now , the not far distant end -- namely , the ruin of the country that has permitted itself to degenerate into a mere nation of shopkeepers , -- and something worse than ruin , -- degradation ! It was past eight in the evening when Alwyn , after having spent a couple of days in bright little Brussels , arrived at Cologne . Most travelers know to their cost how noisy , narrow , and unattractive are the streets of this ancient Colonia Agrippina of the Romans , -- how persistent and wearying is the rattle of the vehicles over the rough , cobbly stones -- how irritating to the nerves is the incessant shrieking whistle and clank of the Rhine steamboats as they glide in , or glide out , from the cheerless and dirty pier . But at night , when these unpleasant sounds have partially subsided , and the lights twinkle in the shop-windows , and the majestic mass of the Cathedral casts its broad shadow on the moonlit Dom-Platz , and a few soldiers , with clanking swords and glittering spurs , come marching out from some dark stone archway , and the green gleam of the river sparkles along in luminous ripples , -- then it is that a something weird and mystical creeps over the town , and the glamour of ancient historical memories begins to cling about its irregular buildings , -- one thinks of the legendary Three Kings , and believes in them , too , -- of St. Ursula and her company of virgins ; of Marie de Medicis dying alone in that tumbled-down house in the Stern-gasse , -- of Rubens , who , it is said , here first saw the light of this world , -- of an angry Satan flinging his Teufelstein from the Seven Mountains in an impotent attempt to destroy the Dom ; and gradually , the indestructible romantic spell of the Rhine steals into the spirit of common things that were unlovely by day , and makes the old city beautiful under the sacred glory of the stars . Alwyn dined at his hotel , and then , finding it still too early to retire to rest , strolled slowly across the Platz , looking up at the sublime God 's Temple above him , the stately Cathedral , with its wondrously delicate carvings and flying buttresses , on which the moonlight glittered like little points of pale flame .