Linz, though the capital of Upper Austria, is a very dull place for an ecclesiologist. We were there on the second Sunday after Easter. First to the Cathedral, a modern and utterly worthless building. There was a good congregation, and a very fair sermon on the orphanhood of the Disciples during the ten days of out LORD's departure. Then to All Angels, also a modern church, where we heard a very good military mass. I was much struck, in the offertory, with the soft and gentle strains in which the--A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, was given, compared with the jubilant expression of thankfulness in--"She remembereth no more her anguish for joy,--for joy,--FOR JOY,--that a man is born into the world;" so completely carrying out the mediaeval interpretation of the long travail of the Church; and then to thankfulness that, at the end of four thousand years,--The Man, the long-promised God Man, should be born into the world.
In the great square, on the northern side of the river, is a most profane juxtaposition of three pillars,--the Trinity Column in the centre, surmounted with the most offensive type of seventeenth century productions, and raised in consequence of the deliverance of Linz from cholera,--on one side a column bearing a statue of Neptune, on the other, a pillar surmounted with Jupiter. Crossing the long wooden bridge, 1700 feet in length, we visited a church in the southern quarter, as worthless as the others. I could obtain no information regarding the magnificent Gothic Cathedral about to be erected here.
