The breeze of morning stole in and kissed our cheeks and whispered, “You have a day and a half to spend in dear, delicious old Nuremberg,—be up and doing!” Only a day and a half, and yet how infinitely better than no day at all there! We came, we saw, and were conquered, even by the huge knockers with bronze wreaths of Cupids and dragons' heads, the ornate, intricate locks, the massive doors, before we were within the portals of those proud patrician palaces with their stately inner courts and galleries, their frescos, painted windows and faded tapestries, time-stained grandeur, and all their relics of mediÆval magnificence.

O, we stretched our day and a half well, and filled it full of treasures, and our hearts with lovely thoughts and pictures of the unique old town, its high quaint gables, stone balconies, beautiful fountains, double line of walls, and seventy sentinel towers; its castle and wide moat, where now great trees grow and prim little gardens; its arched bridges and streams, with shadows of the drooping foliage on the banks; its oriel windows; its narrow, shady ways and odd corners; its memories of Albrecht DÜrer and Hans Sachs, of Kaiser and knight and Meistersinger,—its Nurembergishness!

The St. Lorenz Church was our first halting-place. The whole world knows that its portal and painted windows are beautiful, and that it retains all the rich old objects of the Roman ritual; that being the condition under which Nuremberg pranced over in a twinkling to Protestantism, and people were ordered by the municipal authorities to believe to-day what they had disbelieved yesterday; and most of the world, perhaps, has seen the tabernacle for the vessels of the sacrament, but they who have not can never know from words how it rests on the bowed forms of its sculptor, Adam Kraft, and his two pupils and assistants, and rises like frozen spray sixty-four feet in the choir, with the warm light from the painted windows coloring its exquisite traceries and carvings. It looks like a holy thought or a hymn of praise caught in stone, aspiring heavenwards.

We saw there heavy gold chalices from old, old times, and some Gobelin tapestry only recently discovered hidden away; one scene represented the weighing of the soul of St. Lawrence to see if it were too light for heaven. The saint's soul had a shape, in fact was an infant's body, and the Devil was crouching near by, and St. Lawrence, full-grown, stood waiting, anxious to know his fate.

Then came a few hours in the German Museum, where, as usual in such places, the weary lagged behind, the elegant looked blasÉ, the contrary-minded saw the wrong thing first, the energetic pushed valiantly on, striving to see all and remember all, from earliest forms of sculpture down through the ages,—all the gold and silver and carvings and costumes, the immense square green stoves, with the warm, cosy seat for the old grandmother in the corner; to glance at rare old lace without neglecting the ancient caps and combs and gewgaws; to look long at a few of the pictures,—the great one of DÜrer's, “Otto at the Grave of Charlemagne,” is here, you know,—and so our straggling party wandered on through corridor and chamber and staircase, past knights in effigy, some of whom looked like such jolly old souls, with gallons of wine beneath their breastplates, past a memorial tablet to a baby prince who died dim ages ago, to whom a small death-angel is offering an apple; and then, after seeing the bear, who guards a glass case of precious things in gold and silver, lowered down to his domain every night, and after sprinkling beer on his nose to see if he were of German parentage, we gathered ourselves together and wondered if we quite liked museums. You see so much more than you can comprehend; you see so much more than you want to see; you feel so astoundingly ignorant; you have information thrust upon you so ruthlessly. One wilful maiden says, “I'll go and live on a desert island, provided no one will show me an object of interest.” Then in the shady cloisters we drank foaming beer with our German friends, and gathered strength for our next onslaught; and I beg no one to be captious about the length and out-of-breath character of this paragraph, for it is quite in keeping with our Nuremberg visit, with worlds to see in a little day and a half.

There was the old Rath Haus with the DÜrer frescos and the DÜrer house and pictures, which everybody mentions; and the rude, dark little den of a kitchen, which nobody to my knowledge has ever deigned to mention, where Mrs. Xantippe DÜrer used to rattle her sauce-pans and scold her Mann. There was the Fraumkirche and St. Sebald, rich in painted windows and sculpture. In one room, so rich and dark with its oak wainscoting and Gobelin tapestry, we involuntarily searched behind the arras for Polonius, and then stared silently and felt quite flippant before the antique candelabra and Persian rugs and hopelessly indescribable ever-to-be-coveted furniture within those memory-laden walls. An antique, impressive writing-table was a model of rich, quaint beauty. Poems and romances would feel proud and pleased to simply write themselves under its Ægis, and what a delicious aroma of the past would cling to them!

We visited the castle, of course, and streams of information about the Hohenzollerns were poured upon us. We were wicked enough to enjoy ourselves particularly among the instruments of torture,—exhibited by the jolliest, fattest, most debonair Mrs. Jarley in the world. She regaled us with awful tales, that sounded worse than the “Book of Martyrs,” and we were not disgusted, neither did we faint or scream. There was a lamentable want of feeling, and a marked inclination to laugh prevailed in our party. Indeed, we saw some sweet things there,—a hideous dragon's head, worn by women who beat their husbands; a kind of yoke in which two quarrelsome women were harnessed; a huge collar, with a bell attached, for gossips; and an openwork iron mask, with a great protruding, rattling tongue, for inveterate slanderers. We made liberal proposals to our jolly show-woman for a few of these articles, thinking we might be able to send them where they were needed, and strongly inclined to favor their readoption. An iron nose a foot long was worn by thieves, and the article stolen hung on the end of it.

It is grievous to think there will come a time when people who visit Nuremberg will see no walls and towers and moats. They are pulling down the walls at present, for they are as inconvenient as they are picturesque. Heavy teams and people on foot seeking egress and ingress at one time through the narrow passages in the massive structure, the city cramped, its growth retarded, dangerous accidents, as well as the most reasonable grounds in a commercial point of view, lead the wise to destroy something selfish tourists would fain preserve intact. But “if I were king of France, or, still better, pope of Rome,” or emperor of Germany, I'd let the commerce go elsewhere where there is room for it, and guard old Nuremberg jealously as a precious, beautiful memorial and heirloom from ancestors who have slept for centuries.

The Johannes Cemetery here is the only lovely one I have yet seen in Germany. It is not beautiful in itself, as our cemeteries are; but the solemnity, the dignity of death is here, and no gaudy colors and tinsel wreaths jar upon your mood and pain you. Only great flat, gray stones, tablets with the arms in bronze of the old Nuremberg patricians, tell us wanderers who lies beneath. It was like a solemn poem to be there deciphering the proud armorial bearings on the great blocks placed there centuries ago, and the sweet-brier blooming all around with such an unconscious air on its pale pink blossoms, like fair young faces. One of Columbus's crew lies there. So many old names and dates!

We plucked a few leaves from DÜrer's grave:—

“Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies,

Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies;

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,

That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air.”

[pg!91]