I AM just home, this is “home” for the present, from a week’s delight at Nuremberg. “Delight,” how feeble that sounds. Enchantment, fascination, the absorption that makes one lovingly linger and loth to come away. It is the quaintest, most charming old city, I verily believe, that the sun shines on. From its streets, sometimes wider, sometimes narrower, but always crookeder, to its curious houses with their high-peaked gables and red-tiled roofs, with regular rows of such funny hooded windows let into them, and the upper stories all cut up into the most lavishly ornate towers, balconies, and sculptures; from its ramparts with towers of various forms at intervals, and its dry moat, thirty-five yards wide and thirty-five feet deep, to the river running through and dividing the town into nearly equal parts, spanned by old and historic bridges; from the churches, museums and galleries filled with the masterpieces of Durer, Kraft, Stoss and Vischer, to the shops with their bewildering medley of carvings in wood and ivory, and castings in terra-cotta, bronze and brass, by the thousand nameless artists of to-day; from—oh! everything to everything. Just leave all the rest of Europe out if you can’t get it and Nuremberg in. Think how you’d feel to see a lime tree planted by Queen Kunigunde in the year 1002! or a lamp that has never been allowed to go out since it was first lighted in 1326! or a wedding in the Rathhaus! I saw them all. And saw besides, the Crown Princess and her daughter, and was not struck blind by the sight! And there was a great exposition in progress, and yesterday the anniversary celebration of the victory at Sedan. The exposition was a grand and most artistic spectacle; and all “United Germany” a spectacular display of multitudinous flags, and processions enlivened with human huzzas and band music! I wish I dare tell you the half I saw, or a tithe of the ravishment of mind and soul wrought by that picturesque, haunting, old ancestral city of mine. My great grandfather went to America from it. Did I ever tell you? Do you wonder I could not bear to tear myself away? I am going back some day if I have the ghost of a chance.
To-day I have been resting; too tired for church, for anything but this careless scamper over a sheet of paper. Had an interruption in a call from some Cape Colony English ladies, tourists as we are, whom we met at Inverness and went with to the battle-field of Culloden; and again at Dunkeld. My traveling companion, Miss S—— of Boston, struck them quite unexpectedly again yesterday on the “Old Bridge” that crosses the Neckar, which I think I called Maine in my last to you. They are very agreeable, and their party consists of the mother and five daughters. Well, I do think the sheets of paper of the present day have the most limited capacity. I am not half begun and this is used up! Pshaw!
L. G. C.
Heidelberg, September 3, 1882.
