Passing through this street, therefore, you may turn to the right, and continue onward up a pretty smart ascent; when the entrance to the Citadel, by the side of a low wall—in front of an old tower—presents itself to your attention. It was before breakfast that my companion and self visited this interesting interior, over every part of which we were conducted by a most loquacious cicerone, who spoke the French language very fluently, and who was pleased to express his extreme gratification upon finding that his visitors were Englishmen. The tower and the adjoining chapel, may be each of the thirteenth century; but the tombstone of the founder of the monastery, upon the site of which the present Citadel was built, bears the date of 1296. This tombstone is very perfect; lying in a loose, unconnected manner, as you enter the chapel; the chapel itself having a crypt-like appearance. This latter is very small.

From the suite of apartments in the older parts of the Citadel, there is a most extensive and uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, which is rather flat. At the distance of about nine miles, the town of Fuerth (Furta) looks as if it were within an hour's walk; and I should think that the height of the chambers (from which we enjoyed this view) to the level ground of the adjacent meadows could be scarcely less than three hundred feet. In these chambers there is a little world of curiosity for the antiquary; and yet it was but too palpable that very many of its more precious treasures had been transported to Munich. In the time of Maximilian II., when Nuremberg may be supposed to have been in the very height of its glory, this Citadel must have been worth a pilgrimage of many score miles to have visited. The ornaments which remain are chiefly pictures; of which several are exceedingly precious....

In these curious old chambers, it was to be expected that I should see some Wohlegemuths—as usual, with backgrounds in a blaze of gold, and figures with tortuous limbs, pinched-in waists, and caricatured countenances. In a room, pretty plentifully encumbered with rubbish, I saw a charming Snyders; being a dead stag, suspended from a pole. There is here a portrait of Albert Duerer, by himself; but said to be a copy. If so, it is a very fine copy. The original is supposed to be at Munich. There was nothing else that my visit enabled me to see particularly deserving of being recorded; but, when I was told that it was in this Citadel that the ancient Emperors of Germany used oftentimes to reside, and make carousal, and when I saw, now, scarcely anything but dark passages, unfurnished galleries, naked halls, and untenanted chambers—I own that I could hardly refrain from uttering a sigh over the mutability of earthly fashions, and the transitoriness of worldly grandeur. With a rock for its base, and walls almost of adamant for its support—situated also upon an eminence which may be said to look frowningly down over a vast sweep of country—the Citadel of Nuremberg should seem to have bid defiance, in former times, to every assault of the most desperate and enterprising foe. It is now visited only by the casual traveler—who is frequently startled at the echo of his own footsteps.

While I am on the subject of ancient art—of which so many curious specimens are to be seen in this Citadel—it may not be irrelevant to conduct the reader at once to what is called the Town Hall—a very large structure—of which portions are devoted to the exhibition of old pictures. Many of these paintings are in a very suspicious state, from the operations of time and accident; but the great boast of the collection is the "Triumphs of Maximilian I.," executed by Albert Duerer—which, however, has by no means escaped injury. I was accompanied in my visit to this interesting collection by Mr. Boerner, and had particular reason to be pleased by the friendliness of his attentions, and by the intelligence of his observations. A great number of these pictures (as I understood) belonged to a house in which he was a partner; and among them a portrait, by Pens, struck me as being singularly admirable and exquisite. The countenance, the dress, the attitude, the drawing and coloring, were as perfect as they well might be. But this collection has also suffered from the transportation of many of its treasures to Munich. The rooms, halls, and corridors of this Hotel de Ville give you a good notion of municipal grandeur.

In the neighborhood of Nuremberg—that is to say, scarcely more than an English mile from thence—are the grave and tombstone of Albert Duerer. The monument is simple and striking. In the churchyard there is a representation of the Crucifixion, cut in stone. It was on a fine, calm evening, just after sunset, that I first visited the tombstone of Albert Duerer; and I shall always remember the sensations, with which that visit was attended, as among the most pleasing and impressive of my life. The silence of the spot—its retirement from the city—the falling shadows of night, and the increasing solemnity of every monument of the dead—together with the mysterious, and even awful, effect produced by the colossal crucifix—but yet, perhaps, more than either, the recollection of the extraordinary talents of the artist, so quietly sleeping beneath my feet—all conspired to produce a train of reflections which may be readily conceived, but not so readily described. If ever a man deserved to be considered as the glory of his age and nation, Albert Duerer was surely that man. He was, in truth, the Shakespeare of his art—for the period.

[Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour." Dibdin's tour was made in 1821.]



NUREMBERG TO-DAY[A]

BY CECIL HEADLAM

Nuremberg is set upon a series of small slopes in the midst of an undulating, sandy plain, some 900 feet above the sea. Here and there on every side fringes and patches of the mighty forest which once covered it are still visible; but for the most part the plain is now freckled with picturesque villages, in which stand old turreted chateaux, with gabled fronts and latticed windows, or it is clothed with carefully cultivated crops or veiled from sight by the smoke which rises from the new-grown forest of factory chimneys.

The railway sets us down outside the walls of the city. As we walk from the station toward the Frauen Thor, and stand beneath the crown of fortified walls three and a half miles in circumference, and gaze at the old gray towers and picturesque confusion of domes, pinnacles and spires, suddenly it seems as if our dream of a feudal city has been realized. There, before us, is one of the main entrances, still between massive gates and beneath archways flanked by stately towers. Still to reach it we must cross a moat fifty feet deep and a hundred feet wide. True, the swords of old days have been turned into pruning-hooks; the crenelles and embrasures which once bristled and blazed with cannon are now curtained with brambles and wall-flowers, and festooned with Virginia creepers; the galleries are no longer crowded with archers and cross-bowmen; the moat itself has blossomed into a garden, luxuriant with limes and acacias, elders, planes, chestnuts, poplars, walnut, willow and birch trees, or divided into carefully tilled little garden plots. True it is that outside the moat, beneath the smug grin of substantial modern houses, runs that mark of modernity, the electric tram.

But let us for the moment forget these gratifying signs of modern prosperity and, turning to the left ere we enter the Frauen Thor, walk with our eyes on the towers which, with their steep-pitched roofs and myriad shapes and richly colored tiles, mark the intervals in the red-bricked, stone-cased galleries and mighty bastions, till we come to the first beginnings of Nuremberg—the Castle. There, on the highest eminence of the town, stands that venerable fortress, crowning the red slope of tiles. Roofs piled on roofs, their pinnacles, turrets, points and angles heaped one above the other in a splendid confusion, climb the hill which culminates in the varied group of buildings on the Castle rock. We have passed the Spittler, Mohren, Haller and Neu Gates on our way, and we have crossed by the Hallerthorbruecke the Pegnitz where it flows into the town. Before us rise the bold scarps and salient angles of the bastions built by the Italian architect, Antonio Fazuni, called the Maltese (1538-43).

Crossing the moat by a wooden bridge which curls round to the right, we enter the town by the Thiergaertnerthor. The right-hand corner house opposite us now is Albert Duerer's house. We turn to the left and go along the Obere Schmiedgasse till we arrive at the top of a steep hill (Burgstrasse). Above, on the left, is the Castle.

We may now either go through the Himmels Thor to the left, or keeping straight up under the old trees and passing the "Mount of Olives" on the left, approach the large deep-roofed building between two towers. This is the Kaiserstallung, as it is called, the Imperial stables, built originally for a granary. The towers are the Luginsland (Look in the land) on the east, and the Fuenfeckiger Thurm, the Five-cornered tower, at the west end (on the left hand as we thus face it). The Luginsland was built by the townspeople in the hard winter of 1377. The mortar for building it, tradition says, had to be mixed with salt, so that it might be kept soft and be worked in spite of the severe cold. The chronicles state that one could see right into the Burggraf's Castle from this tower, and the town was therefore kept informed of any threatening movements on his part.

To some extent that was very likely the object in view when the tower was built, but chiefly it must have been intended, as its name indicates, to afford a far look-out into the surrounding country. The granary or Kaiserstallung, as it was called later, was erected in 1494, and is referred to by Hans Behaim as lying between the Five-cornered and the Luginsland Towers. Inside the former there is a museum of curiosities (Hans Sachs' harp) and the famous collection of instruments of torture and the Maiden (Eiserne Jungfrau). The open space adjoining it commands a splendid view to the north. There, too, on the parapet-wall, may be seen the hoof-marks of the horse of the robber-king, Ekkelein von Gailingen. Here for a moment let us pause, consider our position, and endeavor to make out from the conflicting theories of the archeologists something of the original arrangement of the castles and of the significance of the buildings and towers that yet remain.

Stretching to the east of the rock on which the Castle stands is a wide plain, now the scene of busy industrial enterprise, but in old days no doubt a mere district of swamp and forest. Westward the rock rises by three shelves to the summit. The entrance to the Castle, it is surmised, was originally on the east side, at the foot of the lower plateau and through a tower which no longer exists.

Opposite this hypothetical gate-way stood the Five-cornered tower. The lower part dates, we have seen, from no earlier than the eleventh century. It is referred to as Alt-Nuernberg (old Nuremberg) in the Middle Ages. The title of "Five-cornered" is really somewhat a misnomer, for an examination of the interior of the lower portion of the tower reveals the fact that it is quadrangular. The pentagonal appearance of the exterior is due to the fragment of a smaller tower which once leaned against it, and probably formed the apex of a wing running out from the old castle of the Burggrafs. The Burggraefliche Burg stood below, according to Mummenhof, southwest and west of this point. It was burned down in 1420, and the ruined remains of it are supposed to be traceable in the eminence, now overgrown by turf and trees, through which a sort of ravine, closed in on either side by built-up walls, has just brought us from the town to the Vestner Thor.

The Burggraf's Castle would appear to have been so situated as to protect the approach to the Imperial Castle (Kaiserburg). The exact extent of the former we can not now determine. Meisterlin refers to it as a little fort. We may, however, be certain that it reached from the Five-cornered tower to the Walpurgiskapelle. For this little chapel, east of the open space called the Freiung, is repeatedly spoken of as being on the property of the Burggrafs. Besides their castle proper, which was held at first as a fief of the Empire, and afterward came to be regarded as their hereditary, independent property, the Burggrafs were also entrusted with the keeping of a tower which commanded the entrance to the Castle rock on the country side, perhaps near the site of the present Vestner Thor. The guard door may have been attached to the tower, the lower portion of which remains to this day, and is called the Bailiff's Dwelling (Burgamtmannswohnung). The exact relationship of the Burggraf to the town on the one hand, and to the Empire on the other, is somewhat obscure. Originally, it would appear, he was merely an Imperial officer, administering Imperial estates, and looking after Imperial interests. In later days he came to possess great power, but this was due not to his position as castellan or castle governor as such, but to the vast private property his position had enabled him to amass and to keep.

As the scope and ambitions of the Burggrafs increased, and as the smallness of their castle at Nuremberg, and the constant friction with the townspeople, who were able to annoy them in many ways, became more irksome, they gave up living at Nuremberg, and finally were content to sell their rights and possessions there to the town. Beside the guard door of the Burggrafs, which together with their castle passed by purchase into the hands of the town (1427), there were various other similar guard towers, such as the one which formerly occupied the present site of the Luginsland, or the Hasenburg at the so-called Himmels Thor, or a third which once stood near the Deep Well on the second plateau of the Castle rock. But we do not know how many of these there were, or where they stood, much less at what date they were built. All we do know is that they, as well as the Burggrafs' possessions, were purchased in succession by the town, into whose hands by degrees came the whole property of the Castle rock. Above the ruins of the "little fort" of the Burggrafs rises the first plateau of the Castle rock. It is surrounded by a wall, strengthened on the south side by a square tower against which leans the Walpurgiskapelle.

The path to the Kaiserburg leads under the wall of the plateau, and is entirely commanded by it and by the quadrangular tower, the lower part of which alone remains and is known by the name of Burgamtmannswohnung. The path goes straight to this tower, and at the foot of it is the entrance to the first plateau. Then along the edge of this plateau the way winds southward, entirely commanded again by the wall of the second plateau, at the foot of which there probably used to be a trench. Over this a bridge led to the gate of the second plateau. The trench has been long since filled in, but the huge round tower which guarded the gate still remains and is the Vestner Thurm. The Vestner Thurm of Sinwel Thurm (sinwel = round), or, as it is called in a charter of the year 1313, the "Middle Tower," is the only round tower of the Burg. It was built in the days of early Gothic, with a sloping base, and of roughly flattened stones with a smooth edge. It was partly restored and altered in 1561, when it was made a few feet higher and its round roof was added. It is worth paying the small gratuity required for ascending to the top. The view obtained of the city below is magnificent. The Vestner Thurm, like the whole Imperial castle, passed at length into the care of the town, which kept its Tower watch here as early as the fourteenth century.

The well which supplied the second plateau with water, the "Deep Well," as it is called, stands in the center, surrounded by a wall. It is 335 feet deep, hewn out of the solid rock, and is said to have been wrought by the hands of prisoners, and to have been the labor of thirty years. So much we can easily believe as we lean over and count the six seconds that elapse between the time when an object is dropt from the top to the time when it strikes the water beneath. Passages lead from the water's edge to the Rathaus, by which prisoners came formerly to draw water, and to St. John's Churchyard and other points outside the town. The system of underground passages here and in the Castle was an important part of the defenses, affording as it did a means of communication with the outer world and as a last extremity, in the case of a siege, a means of escape.

Meanwhile, leaving the Deep Well and passing some insignificant modern dwellings, and leaving beneath us on the left the Himmelsthor, let us approach the summit of the rock and the buildings of the Kaiserburg itself. As we advance to the gateway with the intention of ringing the bell for the castellan, we notice on the left the Double Chapel, attaching to the Heathen Tower, the lower part of which is encrusted with what were once supposed to be Pagan images. The Tower protrudes beyond the face of the third plateau, and its prominence may indicate the width of a trench, now filled in, which was once dug outside the enclosing wall of the summit of the rock. The whole of the south side of this plateau is taken up by the "Palast" (the vast hall, two stories high, which, tho it has been repeatedly rebuilt, may in its original structure be traced back as far as the twelfth century), and the "Kemnate" or dwelling-rooms which seem to have been without any means of defense. This plateau, like the second, is supplied with a well. But the first object that strikes the eye on entering the court-yard is the ruined limetree, the branches of which once spread their broad and verdant shelter over the whole extent of the quadrangle.

On leaving the Castle we find ourselves in the Burgstrasse, called in the old days Unter der Veste, which was probably the High Street of the old town. Off both sides of this street and of the Bergstrasse ran narrow crooked little alleys lined with wooden houses of which time and fire have left scarcely any trace. As you wander round the city tracing the line of the old walls, you are struck by the general air of splendor. Most of the houses are large and of a massive style of architecture, adorned with fanciful gables and bearing the impress of the period when every inhabitant was a merchant, and every merchant was lodged like a king. The houses of the merchant princes, richly carved both inside and out, tell of the wealth and splendor of Nuremberg in her proudest days. But you will also come upon a hundred crooked little streets and narrow alleys, which, tho entrancingly picturesque, tell of yet other days and other conditions.

They tell of those early medieval days when the houses were almost all of wood and roofed with straw-thatching or wooden tiles; when the chimneys and bridges alike were built of wood. Only here and there a stone house roofed with brick could then be seen. The streets were narrow and crooked, and even in the fifteenth century mostly unpaved. In wet weather they were filled with unfathomable mud, and even tho in the lower part of the town trenches were dug to drain the streets, they remained mere swamps and morasses. In dry weather the dust was even a worse plague than the mud. Pig-styes stood in front of the houses; and the streets were covered with heaps of filth and manure and with rotting corpses of animals, over which the pigs wandered at will. Street police in fact was practically non-existent. Medievalism is undoubtedly better when survived.

[Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]



WALLS AND OTHER FORTIFICATIONS[A]

BY CECIL HEADLAM

A glance at the map will show us that Nuremberg, as we know it, is divided into two almost equal divisions. They are called after the names of the principal churches, the St. Lorenz, and the St. Sebald quarter. The original wall included, it will be seen, only a small portion of the northern or St. Sebald division. With the growth of the town an extension of the walls and an increase of fortification followed as a matter of course. It became necessary to carry the wall over the Pegnitz in order to protect the Lorenzkirche and the suburb which was springing up around it. The precise date of this extension of the fortifications can not be fixt. The chronicles attribute it to the twelfth century, in the reign of the first Hohenstaufen, Konrad III. No trace of a twelfth-century wall remains; but the chroniclers may, for all that, have been not very wide of the mark. The mud and wood which supplied the material of the wall may have given place to stone in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However that may be, it will be remembered that the lower part of the White Tower, which is the oldest fragment of building we can certainly point to dates from the thirteenth century. All other portions of the second wall clearly indicate the fourteenth century, or later, as the time of their origin....

Beyond the White Tower the moat was long ago filled up, but the section of it opposite the Unschlittplatz remained open for a longer period than the rest, and was called the Klettengraben, because of the burdocks which took root there. Hereabouts, on a part of the moat, the Waizenbraeuhaus was built in 1671, which is now the famous Freiherrlich von Tuchersche Brewery. Here, too, the Unschlitthaus was built at the end of the fifteenth century as a granary. It has since been turned into a school.

We have now reached one of the most charming and picturesque bits of Nuremberg. Once more we have to cross the Pegnitz, whose banks are overhung by quaint old houses. Their projecting roofs and high gables, their varied chimneys and overhanging balconies from which trail rich masses of creepers, make an entrancing foreground to the towers and the arches of the Henkersteg. The wall was carried on arches over the southern arm of the Pegnitz to the point of the Saumarkt (or Troedelmarkt) island which here divides the river, and thence in like manner over the northern arm. The latter portion of it alone survives and comprises a large tower on the north bank called the Wasserthurm, which was intended to break the force of the stream; a bridge supported by two arches over the stream, which was the Henkersteg, the habitation of the hangman, and on the island itself a smaller tower, which formed the point of support for the original, southern pair of arches, which joined the Unschlitthaus, but were so badly damaged in 1595 by the high flood that they were demolished and replaced by a wooden, and later by an iron bridge.

Somewhere in the second half of the fourteenth century, then, in the reign of Karl IV., they began to build the outer enceinte, which, altho destroyed at many places and broken through by modern gates and entrances, is still fairly well preserved, and secures to Nuremberg the reputation of presenting most faithfully of all the larger German towns the characteristics of a medieval town. The fortifications seem to have been thrown up somewhat carelessly at first, but dread of the Hussites soon inspired the citizens to make themselves as secure as possible. In times of war and rumors of war all the peasants within a radius of two miles of the town were called upon to help in the construction of barriers and ramparts. The whole circle of walls, towers, and ditches was practically finished by 1452, when with pardonable pride Tucher wrote, "In this year was completed the ditch round the town. It took twenty-six years to build, and it will cost an enemy a good deal of trouble to cross it." Part of the ditch had been made and perhaps revetted as early as 1407, but it was not till twenty years later that it began to be dug to the enormous breadth and depth which it boasts to-day. The size of it was always a source of pride to Nurembergers, and it was perhaps due to this reason that up till as recently as 1869 it was left perfectly intact. On the average it is about 100 feet broad.

It was always intended to be a dry ditch, and, so far from there being any arrangements for flooding it, precautions were taken to carry the little Fischbach, which formerly entered the town near the modern Sternthor, across the ditch in a trough. The construction of the ditch was provided for by an order of the Council in 1427, to the effect that all householders, whether male or female, must work at the ditch one day in the year with their children of over twelve years of age, and with all their servants, male or female. Those who were not able to work had to pay a substitute. Subsequently this order was changed to the effect that every one who could or would not work must pay ten pfennige. There were no exemptions from this liturgy, whether in favor of councillor, official, or lady. The order remained ten years in force, tho the amount of the payment was gradually reduced....

At the time of the construction of these and the other lofty towers it was still thought that the raising of batteries as much as possible would increase their effect. In practise the plunging fire from platforms at the height of some eighty feet above the level of the parapets of the town wall can hardly have been capable of producing any great effect, more especially if the besieging force succeeded in establishing itself on the crest of the counterscarp of the ditches, since from that point the swell of the bastions masked the towers. But there was another use for these lofty towers. The fact is that the Nuremberg engineers, at the time that they were built, had not yet adopted a complete system of flank-works, and not having as yet applied with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external defenses from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round the walls of his castle, and send up his support to any point of attack. The great round towers of Nuremberg are more properly, in fact, detached keeps than portions of a combined system, rather observatories than effective defenses.

The round towers, however, were not the sole defenses of the gates. Outside each one of them was a kind of fence of pointed beams after the manner of a chevaux-de-frise, while outside the ditch and close to the bridge stood a barrier, by the side of which was a guard-house. Tho it was not till 1598 that all the main gates were fitted with drawbridges, the wooden bridges that served before that could doubtless easily be destroyed in cases of emergency. Double-folding doors and portcullises protected the gateways themselves. Once past there, the enemy was far from being in the town, for the road led through extensive advanced works, presenting, as in the case of the Laufer Thor outwork, a regular "place d'armes." Further, the road was so engineered as not to lead in a straight line from the outer main gates to the inner ones, but rather so as to pursue a circuitous course. Thus the enemy in passing through from the one to the other were exposed as long as possible to the shots and projectiles of the defenders, who were stationed all round the walls and towers flanking the advanced tambour. This arrangement may be traced very clearly at the Frauen Thor to-day. The position of the round tower, it will be observed, was an excellent one for commanding the road from the outer to the inner gate.

At intervals of every 120 or 150 feet the interior wall is broken by quadrilateral towers. Some eighty-three of these, including the gate towers, can still be traced. What the number was originally we do not know. It is the sort of subject on which chroniclers have no manner of conscience. The Hartmann Schedel Chronicle, for instance, gives Nuremberg 365 towers in all. The fact that there are 365 days in the year is of course sufficient proof of this assertion! The towers, which rise two or even three stories above the wall, communicated on both sides with the covered way. They are now used as dwelling-houses. On some of them there can still be seen, projecting near the roof, two little machicoulis turrets, which served as guard-rooms for observing the enemy, and also, by overhanging the base of the tower, enabled the garrison to hurl down on their assailants at the foot of the wall a hurricane of projectiles of every sort. Like the wall the towers are built almost entirely of sandstone, but on the side facing the town they are usually faced with brick. The shapes of the roofs vary from flat to pointed, but the towers themselves are simple and almost austere in form in comparison with those generally found in North Germany, where fantasy runs riot in red brick. The Nuremberg towers were obviously intended in the first place for use rather than for ornament.

At the end of our long perambulations of the walls it will be a grateful relief to sit for a while at one of the "Restaurations" or restaurants on the walls. There, beneath the shade of acacias in the daytime, or in the evening by the white light of incandescent gas, you may sit and watch the groups of men, women, and children all drinking from their tall glasses of beer, and you may listen to the whirr and ting-tang of the electric cars, where the challenge of sentinels or the cry of the night-watchman was once the most frequent sound. Or, if you have grown tired of the Horn- and the Schloss-zwinger, cross the ditch on the west side of the town and make your way to the Rosenau, in the Fuertherstrasse. The Rosenau is a garden of trees and roses not lacking in chairs and tables, in bowers, benches, and a band. There, too, you will see the good burgher with his family drinking beer, eating sausages, and smoking contentedly.

[Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]



ALBERT DUERER[A]

BY CECIL HEADLAM

Among the most treasured of Nuremberg's relics is the low-ceilinged, gabled house near the Thiergaertnerthor, in which Albert Duerer lived and died, in the street now called after his name. The works of art which he presented to the town, or with which he adorned its churches, have unfortunately, with but few exceptions, been sold to the stranger. It is in Vienna and Munich, in Dresden and Berlin, in Florence, in Prague, or the British Museum, that we find splendid collections of Duerer's works. Not at Nuremberg. But here at any rate we can see the house in which he toiled—no genius ever took more pains—and the surroundings which imprest his mind and influenced his inspiration.

If, in the past, Nuremberg has been only too anxious to turn his works into cash, to-day she guards Albert Duerer's house with a care and reverence little short of religious. She has sold, in the days of her poverty and foolishness, the master's pictures and drawings, which are his own best monument; but she has set up a noble monument to his memory (by Rauch, 1840) in the Duerer Platz, and his house is opened to the public between the hours of 8 A.M. and 1 P.M., and 2 and 6 P.M. on week days. The Albert-Duerer-Haus Society has done admirable work in restoring and preserving the house in its original state with the aid of Professor Wanderer's architectural and antiquarian skill. Reproductions of Duerer's works are also kept here.

The most superficial acquaintance with Duerer's drawings will have prepared us for the sight of his simple, unpretentious house and its contents. In his "Birth of the Virgin" he gives us a picture of the German home of his day, where there were few superfluous knick-knacks, but everything which served for daily use was well and strongly made and of good design. Ceilings, windows, doors and door-handles, chests, locks, candlesticks, banisters, waterpots, the very cooking utensils, all betray the fine taste and skilled labor, the personal interest of the man who made them. So in Duerer's house, as it is preserved to-day, we can still see and admire the careful simplicity of domestic furniture, which distinguishes that in the "Birth of the Virgin." The carved coffers, the solid tables, the spacious window-seats, the well-fitting cabinets let into the walls, the carefully wrought metal-work we see there are not luxurious; their merit is quite other than that. In workmanship as in design, how utterly do they put to shame the contents of the ordinary "luxuriously furnished apartments" of the present day!

And what manner of man was he who lived in this house that nestles beneath the ancient castle? In the first place a singularly loveable man, a man of sweet and gentle spirit, whose life was one of high ideals and noble endeavor. In the second place an artist who, both for his achievements and for his influence on art, stands in the very front rank of artists, and of German artists is "facile princeps." At whatever point we may study Duerer and his works we are never conscious of disappointment. As painter, as author, as engraver, or simple citizen, the more we know of him the more we are morally and intellectually satisfied. Fortunately, through his letters and writings, his journals and autobiographical memoirs we know a good deal about his personal history and education.

Duerer's grandfather came of a farmer race in the village of Eytas in Hungary. The grandfather turned goldsmith, and his eldest son, Albrecht Duerer the elder, came to Nuremberg in 1455 and settled in the Burgstrasse (No. 27). He became one of the leading goldsmiths of the town; married and had eighteen children, of whom only three, boys, grew up. Albrecht, or as we call him Albert Duerer, was the eldest of these. He was born May 21, 1471, in his father's house, and Anthoni Koberger, the printer and bookseller, the Stein of those days, stood godfather to him. The maintenance of so large a family involved the father, skilful artist as he was, in unremitting toil.

His father, who was delighted with Albert's industry, took him from school as soon as he had learned to read and write and apprenticed him to a goldsmith. "But my taste drew me toward painting rather than toward goldsmithry. I explained this to my father, but he was not satisfied, for he regretted the time I had lost." Benvenuto Cellini has told us how his father, in like fashion, was eager that he should practise the "accurst art" of music. Duerer's father, however, soon gave in and in 1486 apprenticed the boy to Michael Wolgemut. That extraordinary beautiful, and, for a boy of that age, marvelously executed portrait of himself at the age of thirteen (now at Vienna) must have shown the father something of the power that lay undeveloped in his son. So "it was arranged that I should serve him for three years. During that time God gave me great industry so that I learned many things; but I had to suffer much at the hands of the other apprentices."

When in 1490 his apprenticeship was completed Duerer set out on his Wanderjahre, to learn what he could of men and things, and, more especially, of his own trade. Martin Schongauer was dead, but under that master's brothers Duerer studied and helped to support himself by his art at Colmar and at Basle. Various wood-blocks executed by him at the latter place are preserved there. Whether he also visited Venice now or not is a moot point. Here or elsewhere, at any rate, he came under the influence of the Bellini, of Mantegna, and more particularly of Jacopo dei Barbari—the painter and engraver to whom he owed the incentive to study the proportions of the human body—a study which henceforth became the most absorbing interest of his life.

"I was four years absent from Nuremberg," he records, "and then my father recalled me. After my return Hans Frey came to an understanding with my father. He gave me his daughter Agnes and with her 200 florins, and we were married." Duerer, who writes so lovingly of his parents, never mentions his wife with any affection; a fact which to some extent confirms her reputation as a Xantippe. She, too, in her way, it is suggested, practised the art of cross-hatching. Pirkheimer, writing after the artist's death, says that by her avariciousness and quarreling nature she brought him to the grave before his day. She was probably a woman of a practical and prosaic turn, to whom the dreamy, poetic, imaginative nature of the artist-student, her husband, was intolerably irritating. Yet as we look at his portraits of himself—and no man except Rembrandt has painted himself so often—it is difficult to understand how any one could have been angry with Albert Duerer. Never did the face of man bear a more sweet, benign, and trustful expression. In those portraits we see something of the beauty, of the strength, of the weakness of the man so beloved in his generation. His fondness for fine clothes and his legitimate pride in his personal beauty reveal themselves in the rich vestments he wears and the wealth of silken curls, so carefully waved, so wondrously painted, falling proudly over his free neck.

[Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]



III

OTHER BAVARIAN CITIES



MUNICH[A]

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

Art has done everything for Munich. It lies on a large flat plain sixteen hundred feet above the sea and continually exposed to the cold winds from the Alps. At the beginning of the present century it was but a third-rate city, and was rarely visited by foreigners; since that time its population and limits have been doubled and magnificent edifices in every style of architecture erected, rendering it scarcely secondary in this respect to any capital in Europe.[B] Every art that wealth or taste could devise seems to have been spent in its decoration. Broad, spacious streets and squares have been laid out, churches, halls and colleges erected, and schools of painting and sculpture established which draw artists from all parts of the world. All this was principally brought about by the taste of the present king, Ludwig I., who began twenty or thirty years ago, when he was crown-prince, to collect the best German artists around him and form plans for the execution of his grand design. He can boast of having done more for the arts than any other living monarch; and if he had accomplished it all without oppressing his people, he would deserve an immortality of fame....

We went one morning to see the collection of paintings formerly belonging to Eugene Beauharnais, who was brother-in-law to the present King of Bavaria, in the palace of his son, the Duke of Leuchtenberg. The first hall contains works principally by French artists, among which are two by Gerard—a beautiful portrait of Josephine, and the blind Belisarius carrying his dead companion. The boy's head lies on the old man's shoulder; but for the livid paleness of his limbs, he would seem to be only asleep, while a deep and settled sorrow marks the venerable features of the unfortunate emperor. In the middle of the room are six pieces of statuary, among which Canova's world-renowned group of the Graces at once attracts the eye. There is also a kneeling Magdalen, lovely in her wo, by the same sculptor, and a very touching work of Schadow representing a shepherd-boy tenderly binding his sash around a lamb which he has accidentaly wounded with his arrow.

We have since seen in the St. Michael's Church the monument to Eugene Beauharnais from the chisel of Thorwaldsen. The noble, manly figure of the son of Josephine is represented in the Roman mantle, with his helmet and sword lying on the ground by him. On one side sits History writing on a tablet; on the other stand the two brother-angels Death and Immortality. They lean lovingly together, with arms around each other, but the sweet countenance of Death has a cast of sorrow as he stands with inverted torch and a wreath of poppies among his clustering locks. Immortality, crowned with never-fading flowers, looks upward with a smile of triumph, and holds in one hand his blazing torch. It is a beautiful idea, and Thorwaldsen has made the marble eloquent with feeling.

The inside of the square formed by the arcades and the New Residence is filled with noble old trees which in summer make a leafy roof over the pleasant walks. In the middle stands a grotto ornamented with rough pebbles and shells, and only needing a fountain to make it a perfect hall of Neptune. Passing through the northern arcade, one comes into the magnificent park called the English Garden, which extends more than four miles along the bank of the Isar, several branches of whose milky current wander through it and form one or two pretty cascades. It is a beautiful alteration of forest and meadow, and has all the richness and garden-like luxuriance of English scenery. Winding walks lead along the Isar or through the wood of venerable oaks, and sometimes a lawn of half a mile in length, with a picturesque temple at its farther end, comes in sight through the trees.

The New Residence is not only one of the wonders of Munich, but of the world. Altho commenced in 1826 and carried on constantly since that time by a number of architects, sculptors and painters, it is not yet finished; if art were not inexhaustible, it would be difficult to imagine what more could be added. The north side of the Max Joseph Platz is taken up by its front of four hundred and thirty feet, which was nine years in building, under the direction of the architect Klenze. The exterior is copied after the Palazzo Pitti, in Florence. The building is of light-brown sandstone, and combines an elegance, and even splendor, with the most chaste and classic style. The northern front, which faces the royal garden, is now nearly finished. It has the enormous length of eight hundred feet; in the middle is a portico of ten Ionic columns. Instead of supporting a triangular facade, each pillar stands separate and bears a marble statue from the chisel of Schwanthaler.

The interior of the building does not disappoint the promise of the outside. It is open every afternoon, in the absence of the king, for the inspection of visitors. We went early to the waiting-hall, where several travelers were already assembled, and at four o'clock were admitted into the newer part of the palace, containing the throne-hall, ball-room, etc. On entering the first hall, designed for the lackeys and royal servants, we were all obliged to thrust our feet into cloth slippers to walk over the polished mosaic floor. The walls are of scagliola marble and the ceilings ornamented brilliantly in fresco. The second hall, also for servants, gives tokens of increasing splendors in the richer decorations of the walls and the more elaborate mosaic of the floor. We next entered the audience chamber, in which the court-marshal receives the guests. The ceiling is of arabesque sculpture profusely painted and gilded....

Finally we entered the Hall of the Throne. Here the encaustic decoration so plentifully employed in the other rooms is dropt, and an effect even more brilliant obtained by the united use of marble and gold. Picture a long hall with a floor of polished marble, on each side twelve columns of white marble with gilded capitals, between which stand colossal statues of gold. At the other end is the throne of gold and crimson, with gorgeous hangings of crimson velvet. The twelve statues in the hall are called the "Wittelsbach Ancestors" and represent renowned members of the house of Wittelsbach from which the present family of Bavaria is descended. They were cast in bronze by Stiglmaier after the models of Schwanthaler, and then completely covered with a coating of gold; so that they resemble solid golden statues. The value of the precious metal on each one is about three thousand dollars, as they are nine feet in height. We visited yesterday morning the Glyptothek, the finest collection of ancient sculpture except that in the British Museum I have yet seen, and perhaps elsewhere unsurpassed north of the Alps. The building, which was finished by Klenze in 1830, has an Ionic portico of white marble, with a group of allegorical figures representing Sculpture and the kindred arts. On each side of the portico there are three niches in the front, containing on one side Pericles, Phidias and Vulcan; on the other, Hadrian, Prometheus and Daedalus. The whole building forms a hollow square and is lighted entirely from the inner side. There are in all twelve halls, each containing the remains of a particular era in the art, and arranged according to time; so that, beginning with the clumsy productions of the ancient Egyptians, one passes through the different stages of Grecian art, afterward that of Rome, and finally ends with the works of our own times—the almost Grecian perfection of Thorwaldsen and Canova. These halls are worthy to hold such treasures, and what more could be said of them? The floors are of marble mosaic, the sides of green or purple scagliola and the vaulted ceilings covered with raised ornaments on a ground of gold. No two are alike in color and decoration, and yet there is a unity of taste and design in the whole which renders the variety delightful.

From the Egyptian Hall we enter one containing the oldest remains of Grecian sculpture, before the artists won power to mold the marble to their conceptions. Then follow the celebrated Aegina marbles, from the temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, on the island of Aegina. They formerly stood in the two porticoes, the one group representing the fight for the body of Laomedon, the other the struggle for the dead Patroclus. The parts wanting have been admirably restored by Thorwaldsen. They form almost the only existing specimens of the Aeginetan school. Passing through the Apollo Hall, we enter the large Hall of Bacchus, in which the progress of the art is distinctly apparent. A satyr lying asleep on a goatskin which he has thrown over a rock is believed to be the work of Praxiteles. The relaxation of the figure and perfect repose of every limb is wonderful. The countenance has traits of individuality which led me to think it might have been a portrait, perhaps of some rude country swain.

In the Hall of Niobe, which follows, is one of the most perfect works that ever grew into life under a sculptor's chisel. Mutilated as it is, without head and arms, I never saw a more expressive figure. Ilioneus, the son of Niobe, is represented as kneeling, apparently in the moment in which Apollo raises his arrow, and there is an imploring supplication in his attitude which is touching in the highest degree. His beautiful young limbs seem to shrink involuntarily from the deadly shaft; there is an expression of prayer, almost of agony, in the position of his body. It should be left untouched. No head could be added which would equal that one pictures to himself while gazing upon it.

The Pinacothek is a magnificent building of yellow sandstone, five hundred and thirty feet long, containing thirteen hundred pictures selected with great care from the whole private collection of the king, which amounts to nine thousand. Above the cornice on the southern side stand twenty-five colossal statues of celebrated painters by Schwanthaler. As we approached, the tall bronze door was opened by a servant in the Bavarian livery, whose size harmonized so well with the giant proportions of the building that until I stood beside him and could mark the contrast I did not notice his enormous frame. I saw then that he must be near eight feet high and stout in proportion. He reminded me of the great "Baver of Trient," in Vienna. The Pinacothek contains the most complete collection of works by old German artists anywhere to be found. There are in the Hall of the Spanish Masters half a dozen of Murillo's inimitable beggar-groups.

It was a relief, after looking upon the distressingly stiff figures of the old German school, to view these fresh, natural countenances. One little black-eyed boy has just cut a slice out of a melon, and turns with a full mouth to his companion, who is busy eating a bunch of grapes. The simple, contented expression on the faces of the beggars is admirable. I thought I detected in a beautiful child with dark curly locks the original of his celebrated infant St. John. I was much interested in two small juvenile works of Raphael and his own portrait. The latter was taken, most probably, after he became known as a painter. The calm, serious smile which we see on his portrait as a boy had vanished, and the thin features and sunken eye told of intense mental labor.

[Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]

[Footnote B: This was written about 1848. The population of Munich is now (1914), 595,000. Munich is rated as third in importance among German cities.]



AUGSBURG[A]

BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN

In ancient times—that is to say, upward of three centuries ago—the city of Augsburg was probably the most populous and consequential in the kingdom of Bavaria. It was the principal residence of the noblesse, and the great mart of commerce. Dukes, barons, nobles of every rank and degree, became domiciled here. A thousand blue and white flags streamed from the tops of castellated mansions, and fluttered along the then almost impregnable ramparts. It was also not less remarkable for the number and splendor of its religious establishments. Here was a cathedral, containing twenty-four chapels; and an abbey or monastery (of Saints Ulric and Afra) which had no rival in Bavaria for the size of its structure and the wealth of its possessions. This latter contained a Library, both of MSS. and printed books, of which the recent work of Braun has luckily preserved a record; and which, but for such record, would have been unknown to after ages. The treasures of this library are now entirely dispersed; and Munich, the capital of Bavaria, is the grand repository of them. Augsburg, in the first instance, was enriched by the dilapidations of numerous monasteries; especially upon the suppression of the order of the Jesuits. The paintings, books, and relics, of every description, of such monasteries as were in the immediate vicinity of this city, were taken away to adorn the town hall, churches, capitals and libraries. Of this collection (of which no inconsiderable portion, both for number and intrinsic value, came from the neighboring monastery of Eichstadt), there has of course been a pruning; and many flowers have been transplanted to Munich.

The principal church, at the end of the Maximilian Street, is that which once formed the chief ornament of the famous Abbey of Sts. Ulric and Afra. I should think that there is no portion of the present building older than the fourteenth century; while it is evident that the upper part of the tower is of the middle of the sixteenth. It has a nearly globular or mosque-shaped termination—so common in the greater number of the Bavarian churches. It is frequented by congregations both of the Catholic and Protestant persuasion; and it was highly gratifying to see, as I saw, human beings assembled under the same roof, equally occupied in their different forms of adoration, in doing homage to their common Creator.

Augsburg was once distinguished for great learning and piety, as well as for political consequence; and she boasts of a very splendid martyrological roll. At the present day, all is comparatively dull and quiet; but you can not fail to be struck with the magnificence of many of the houses, and the air of importance hence given to the streets; while the paintings upon the outer walls add much to the splendid effect of the whole. The population of Augsburg is supposed to amount to about thirty thousand. In the time of Maximilian and Charles V. it was, I make no doubt, twice as numerous.[B]

[Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Taur," published in 1821.]

[Footnote B: Augsburg has now (1914) a population of 102,000. Woolen and cotton goods and machinery are its manufactured products.]



RATISBON[A]

BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN

It was dark when we entered Ratisbon, and, having been recommended to the Hotel of the Agneau Blanc, we drove thither, and alighted—close to the very banks of the Danube—and heard the roar of its rapid stream, turning several mills, close, as it were, to our very ears. The master of the hotel, whose name is Cramer, and who talked French very readily, received us with peculiar courtesy; and, on demanding the best situated room in the house, we were conducted on the second floor, to a chamber which had been occupied, only two or three days before, by the Emperor of Austria himself, on his way to Aix-la-Chapelle. The next morning was a morning of wonder to us. Our sitting-room, which was a very lantern, from the number of windows, gave us a view of the rushing stream of the Danube, of a portion of the bridge over it, of some beautifully undulating and vine-covered hills, in the distance, on the opposite side—and, lower down the stream, of the town walls and water-mills, of which latter we had heard the stunning sounds on our arrival. The whole had a singularly novel and pleasing appearance.

The Town Hall was large and imposing; but the Cathedral, surrounded by booths—it being fair-time—was, of course, the great object of my attention. In short, I saw enough within an hour to convince me that I was visiting a large, curious, and well-peopled town; replete with antiquities, and including several of the time of the Romans, to whom it was necessarily a very important station. Ratisbon is said to contain a population of about 20,000 souls.[B]

The cathedral can boast of little antiquity. It is almost a building of yesterday; yet it is large, richly ornamented on the outside, especially on the west, between the towers—and is considered one of the noblest structures of the kind in Bavaria. The interior wants that decisive effect which simplicity produces. It is too much broken into parts, and covered with monuments of a very heterogeneous description. Near it I traced the cloisters of an old convent or monastery of some kind, now demolished, which could not be less than five hundred years old. The streets of Ratisbon are generally picturesque, as well from their undulating forms, as from the antiquity of a great number of the houses. The modern parts of the town are handsome, and there is a pleasant intermixture of trees and grass plats in some of these more recent portions. There are some pleasing public walks, after the English fashion; and a public garden, where a colossal sphinx, erected by the late philosopher Gleichen, has a very imposing appearance. Here is also an obelisk erected to the memory of Gleichen himself, the founder of these gardens; and a monument to the memory of Kepler, the astronomer; which latter was luckily spared in the assault of this town by the French in 1809.

But these are, comparatively, every-day objects. A much more interesting source of observation, to my mind, were the very few existing relics of the once celebrated monastery of St. Emmeram—and a great portion of the remains of another old monastery, called St. James—which latter may indeed be designated the College of the Jacobites; as the few members who inhabit it were the followers of the house and fortunes of the Pretender, James Stuart. The Monastery or Abbey of St. Emmeram was one of the most celebrated throughout Europe; and I suspect that its library, both of MSS. and printed books, was among the principal causes of its celebrity. Of all interesting objects of architectural antiquity in Ratisbon, none struck me so forcibly—and, indeed, none is in itself so curious and singular—as the Monastery of St. James. The front of that portion of it, connected with the church, should seem to be of an extremely remote antiquity. It is the ornaments, or style of architecture, which give it this character of antiquity. The ornaments, which are on each side of the doorway, or porch, are quite extraordinary.

[Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour," published in 1821.]

[Footnote B: Ratisbon has now (1914) a population of 53,000. Its manufactured products consist chiefly of pottery and lead pencils.]



IV

BERLIN AND ELSEWHERE



A LOOK AT THE GERMAN CAPITAL[A]

BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER

The train spins along across great plains gilded by the setting sun; soon night comes, and with it, sleep. At stations remote from one another, German voices shout German names; I do not recognize them by the sound, and look for them in vain upon the map. Magnificent great station buildings are shown up by gaslight in the midst of surrounding darkness, then disappear. We pass Hanover and Minden; the train keeps on its way; and morning dawns.

On either side stretched a peat-moss, upon which the mist was producing a singular mirage. We seemed to be upon a causeway traversing an immense lake whose waves crept up gently, dying in transparent folds along the edge of the embankment. Here and there a group of trees or a cottage, emerging like an island, completed the illusion, for such it was. A sheet of bluish mist, floating a little above the ground and curling up along its upper surface under the rays of the sun, caused this aqueous phantasmagoria, resembling the Fata Morgana of Sicily. In vain did my geographical knowledge protest, disconcerted, against this inland sea, which no map of Prussia indicates; my eyes would not give it up, and later in the day, when the sun, rising higher, had dried up this imaginary lake, they required the presence of a boat to make them admit that any body of water could be real.

Suddenly upon the left were massed the trees of a great park; Tritons and Nereids appeared, dabbling in the basin of a fountain; there was a dome and a circle of columns rising above extensive buildings; and this was Potsdam....

A few moments later we were in Berlin, and a fiacre set me down at the hotel. One of the keenest pleasures of a traveler is that first drive through a hitherto unknown city, destroying or confirming his preconceived idea of it. All that is peculiar and characteristic seizes upon the yet virgin eye, whose perceptive power is never more clear.

My idea of Berlin had been drawn in great measure from Hoffman's fantastic stories. In spite of myself, a Berlin, strange and grotesque, peopled with Aulic councillors, sandmen, Kreislers, archivist Lindursts, and student Anselms, had reared itself within my brain, amid a fog of tobacco-smoke; and there before me was a city regularly built, stately, with wide streets, extensive public grounds, and imposing edifices of a style half-English, half-German, and modern to the last degree.

As we drove along I glanced down into those cellars, with steps so polished, so slippery, so well-soaped, that one might slide in as into the den of an ant-lion—to see if I might not discover Hoffman himself seated on a tun, his feet crossed upon the bowl of his gigantic pipe, and surrounded by a tangle of grotesque chimeras, as he is represented in the vignette of the French translation of his stories; and, to tell the truth, there was nothing of the kind in these subterranean shops whose proprietors were just opening their doors! The cats, of benignant aspect, rolled no phosphorescent eyeballs, like the cat Murr in the story, and they seemed quite incapable of writing their memoirs, or of deciphering a score of Richard Wagner's.

These handsome stately houses, which are like palaces, with their columns and pediments and architraves, are built of brick for the most part, for stone seems rare in Berlin; but the brick is covered with cement or tinted stucco, to simulate hewn stone; deceitful seams indicate imaginary layers, and the illusion would be complete, were it not that in spots the winter frosts have detached the cement, revealing the red shades of the baked clay. The necessity of painting the whole facade, in order to mask the nature of the material, gives the effect of enormous architectural decorations seen in open air. The salient parts, moldings, cornices, entablatures, consoles, are of wood, bronze, or cast-iron, to which suitable forms have been given; when you do not look too closely the effect is satisfactory. Truth is the only thing lacking in all this splendor.

The palatial buildings which border Regent's Park in London present also these porticoes, and these columns with brick cores and plaster-fluting, which, by aid of a coating of oil paint, are expected to pass for stone or marble. Why not build in brick frankly, since its water-coloring and capacity for ingeniously varied arrangement furnish so many resources? Even in Berlin I have seen charming houses of this kind which had the advantage of being truthful. A fictitious material always inspires a certain uneasiness.

The hotel is very well located, and I propose to sketch the view seen from its steps. It will give a fair idea of the general character of the city. The foreground is a quay bordering the Spree. A few boats with slender masts are sleeping on the brown water. Vessels upon a canal or a river, in the heart of a city, have always a charming effect. Along the opposite quay stretches a line of houses; a few of them are ancient, and bear the stamp thereof; the king's palace makes the corner. A cupola upon an octagonal tower rises proudly above the other roofs, the square sides of the tower adding grace to the curve of the dome.

A bridge spans the river, reminding me, with its white marble groups, of the Ponte San Angelo at Rome. These groups—eight in number, if my memory does not deceive me—are each composed of two figures; one allegorical, winged, representing the country, or glory; the other, a young man, guided through many trials to victory or immortality. These groups, in purely classic taste, are not wanting in merit, and show in some parts good study of the nude; their pedestals are ornamented with medallions, whereon the Prussian eagle, half-real, half-heraldic, makes a fine appearance. Considered as a decoration, the whole is, in my opinion, somewhat too rich for the simplicity of the bridge, which opens midway to allow the passage of vessels.

Farther on, through the trees of a public garden of some kind, appears the old Museum, a great structure in the Greek style, with Doric columns relieved against a painted background. At the corners of the roof, bronze horses held by grooms are outlined upon the sky. Behind this building, and looking sideways, you perceive the triangular pediment of the new Museum.

On crossing the bridge, the dark facade of the palace comes in view, with its balustraded terrace; the carvings around the main entrance are in that old, exaggerated German rococo which I have seen before and have admired in the palace in Dresden. This kind of barbaric taste has something charming about it, and entertains the eye, satiated with chefs d'oeuvre. It has invention, fancy, originality; and tho I may be censured for the opinion, I confess I prefer this exuberance to the coldness of the Greek style imitated with more erudition than success in our modern public buildings. At each side stand great bronze horses pawing the ground, and held by naked grooms.

I visited the apartments of the palace; they are rich and elegant, but present nothing interesting to the artist save their ancient recessed ceilings filled with curious figures and arabesques. In the concert-hall there is a musicians' gallery in grotesque carving, silvered; its effect is really charming. Silver is not used enough in decorations; it is a relief from the classic gold, and forms admirable combinations with colors. The chapel, whose dome rises above the rest of the building, is well planned and well lighted, comfortable, reasonably decorated.

Let us cross the square and take a look at the Museum, admiring, as we pass, an immense porphyry vase standing on cubes of the same material, in front of the steps which lead up to the portico. This portico is painted in fresco by various hands, under the direction of the celebrated Peter Cornelius. The paintings form a broad frieze, folding itself back at each end upon the side wall of the portico, and interrupted in the middle to give access to the Museum. The portion on the left contains a whole poem of mythologic cosmogony, treated with that philosophy and that erudition which the Germans carry into compositions of this kind; the right, purely anthropologie, represents the birth, development, and evolution of humanity.

If I were to describe in detail these two immense frescoes, you would certainly be charmed with the ingenious invention, the profound knowledge, and the excellent judgment of the artist. The mysteries of the early creation are penetrated, and everything is faultlessly scientific. Also, if I should show you them in the form of those fine German engravings, the lines heightened by delicate shadows, the execution as accurate as that of Albrecht Duerer, the tone light and harmonious, you would admire the ordering of the composition, balanced with so much art, the groups skilfully united one to another, the ingenious episodes, the wise selection of the attributes, the significance of each separate thing; you might even find grandeur of style, an air of magisterial dignity, fine effects of drapery, proud attitudes, well-marked types, muscular audacities a la Michel Angelo, and a certain Germanic savagery of fine flavor. You would be struck with this free handling of great subjects, this vast conceptive power, this carrying out of an idea, which French painters so often lack; and you would think of Cornelius almost as highly as the Germans do. But in the presence of the work itself, the impression is completely different.

I am well aware that fresco-painting, even in the hands of the Italian masters, skilful as they were in the technical details of their art, has not the charm of oil. The eye must become habituated to this rude, lustreless coloring, before we can discern its beauties. Many people who never say so—for nothing is more rare than the courage to avow a feeling or an opinion—find the frescoes of the Vatican and the Sistine frightful; but the great names of Michel Angelo and Raphael impose silence upon them; they murmur vague formulas of enthusiasm, and go off to rhapsodize—this time with sincerity—over some Magdalen of Guido, or some Madonna of Carlo Dolce. I make large allowance, therefore, for this unattractive aspect which belongs to fresco-painting; but in this case, the execution is by far too repulsive. The mind may be content, but the eye suffers. Painting, which is altogether a plastic art, can express its ideal only through forms and colors. To think is not enough; something must be done....



I shall not now give an inventory of the Museum in Berlin, which is rich in pictures and statues; to do this would require more space than is at my command. We find represented here, more or less favorably, all the great masters, the pride of royal galleries. But the most remarkable thing in this collection is the very numerous and very complete collection of the primitive painters of all countries and all schools, from the Byzantine down to those which immediately precede the Renaissance. The old German school, so little known in France, and on many accounts so curious, is to be studied to better advantage here than anywhere else. A rotunda contains tapestries after designs by Raphael, of which the original cartoons are now in Hampton Court.

The staircase of the new Museum is decorated with those remarkable frescoes by Kaulbach, which the art of engraving and the Universal Exposition have made so well known in France. We all remember the cartoon entitled "The Dispersion of Races," and all Paris has admired, in Goupil's window that poetic "Defeat of the Huns," where the strife begun between the living warriors is carried on amidst the disembodied souls that hover above that battlefield strewn with the dead. "The Destruction of Jerusalem" is a fine composition, tho somewhat too theatrical. It resembles a "close of the fifth act" much more than beseems the serious character of fresco painting. In the panel which represents Hellenic civilization, Homer is the central figure; this composition pleased me least of all. Other paintings as yet unfinished present the climacteric epochs of humanity. The last of these will be almost contemporary, for when a German begins to paint, universal history comes under review; the great Italian painters did not need so much in achieving their master-pieces. But each civilization has its peculiar tendencies, and this encyclopedic painting is a characteristic of the present time. It would seem that, before flinging itself into its new career, the world has felt the necessity of making a synthesis of its past....

This staircase, which is of colossal size, is ornamented with casts from the finest antiques. Copies of the metopes of the Pantheon and friezes from the temple of Theseus are set into its walls, and upon one of the landings stands the Pandrosion, with all the strong and tranquil beauty of its Caryatides. The effect of the whole is very grand. At the present day there is no longer any visible difference between the people of one country and of another. The uniform domino of civilization is worn everywhere, and no difference in color, no special cut of the garment, notifies you that you are away from home. The men and women whom I met in the street escape description; the flaneurs of the Unter den Linden are exactly like the flaneurs of the Boulevard des Italiens. This avenue, bordered by splendid houses, is planted, as its name indicates, with lindens; trees "whose leaf is shaped like a heart," as Heinrich Heine remarks—a peculiarity which makes Unter den Linden dear to lovers, and eminently suited for sentimental interviews. At its entrance stands the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great. Like the Champs-Elysees in Paris, this avenue terminates at a triumphal arch, surmounted by a chariot with four bronze horses. Passing under the arch, we come out into a park in some degrees resembling the Bois de Boulogne.

Along the edge of this park, which is shadowed by great trees having all the intensity of northern verdure, and freshened by a little winding stream, open flower-crowded gardens, in whose depths you can discern summer retreats, which are neither chalets, nor cottages, nor villas, but Pompeiian houses with their tetrastylic porticos and panels of antique red. The Greek taste is held in high esteem in Berlin. On the other hand, they seem to disdain the style of the Renaissance, so much in vogue in Paris; I saw no edifice of this kind in Berlin.

Night came; and after paying a hasty visit to the zoological garden, where all the animals were asleep, except a dozen long-tailed paroquets and cockatoos, who were screaming from their perches, pluming themselves, and raising their crests, I returned to my hotel to strap my trunk and betake myself to the Hamburg railway station, as the train would leave at ten, a circumstance which prevented me from going, as I had intended, to the opera to hear Cherubini's "Deux Journees," and to see Louise Taglioni dance the Sevillana....

For the traveler there are but two ways: the instantaneous proof, or the prolonged study. Time failed me for the latter. Deign to accept this simple and rapid impression.

[Footnote A: From "A Winter in Russia." By permission of, and by arrangement with, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874. Since Gautier wrote, Berlin has greatly increased in population and in general importance. What is known as "Greater Berlin" now embraces about 3,250,000 souls. Many of the quaint two-story houses, which formerly were characteristic of the city, have given way to palatial houses and business blocks. Berlin is a thoroughly modern commercial city. It ranks among European cities immediately after London and Paris.]



CHARLOTTENBURG[A]

BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Then we drove to Charlottenburg to see the Mausoleum. I know not when I have been more deeply affected than there; and yet, not so much by the sweet, lifelike statue of the queen as by that of the king, her husband, executed by the same hand.[B] Such an expression of long-desired rest, after suffering the toil, is shed over the face—so sweet, so heavenly! There, where he has prayed year after year—hoping, yearning, longing—there, at last, he rests, life's long anguish over! My heart melted as I looked at these two, so long divided—he so long a mourner, she so long mourned—now calmly resting side by side in a sleep so tranquil.

We went through the palace. We saw the present king's writing desk and table in his study, just as he left them. His writing establishment is about as plain as yours. Men who really mean to do anything do not use fancy tools. His bedroom, also, is in a style of severe simplicity. There were several engravings fastened against the wall; and in the anteroom a bust and medallion of the Empress Eugenie—a thing which I should not exactly have expected in a born king's palace; but beauty is sacred, and kings can not call it parvenu. Then we went into the queen's bed-room, finished in green, and then through the rooms of Queen Louisa. Those marks of her presence, which you saw during the old king's lifetime, are now removed; we saw no traces of her dresses, gloves, or books. In one room, draped in white muslin over pink, we were informed the Empress of Russia was born.

In going out to Charlottenburg, we rode through the Thiergarten, the Tuileries of Berlin. In one of the most quiet and sequestered spots is the monument erected by the people of Berlin to their old king. The pedestal is Carrara marble, sculptured with beautiful scenes called garden pleasures—children in all manner of outdoor sports, and parents fondly looking on. It is graceful, and peculiarly appropriate to those grounds where parents and children are constantly congregating. The whole is surmounted by a statue of the king, in white marble—the finest representation of him I have ever seen. Thoughtful, yet benign, the old king seems like a good father keeping a grave and affectionate watch over the pleasures of his children in their garden frolics. There was something about these moss-grown gardens that seemed so rural and pastoral, that I at once preferred them to all I had seen in Europe. Choice flowers are planted in knots, here and there, in sheltered nooks, as if they had grown by accident: and an air of sweet, natural wildness is left amid the most careful cultivation. The people seemed to be enjoying themselves less demonstratively and with less vivacity than in France, but with a calm inwardness. Each nation has its own way of being happy, and the style of life in each bears a certain relation of appropriateness to character. The trim, dressy, animated air of the Tuileries suits admirably with the mobile, sprightly vivacity of society there. Both, in their way, are beautiful; but this seems less formal, and more according to nature.

[Footnote A: From "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands."]

[Footnote B: King Frederick William III. and Queen Louise are here referred to. Since Mrs. Stowe's visit (1854) the Emperor William I. and the Empress Augusta have been buried in this mausoleum.]



LEIPSIC AND DRESDEN[A]

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

I have now been nearly two days in wide-famed Leipsic, and the more I see of it, the better I like it. It is a pleasant, friendly town, old enough to be interesting and new enough to be comfortable. There is much active business-life, through which it is fast increasing in size and beauty. Its publishing establishments are the largest in the world, and its annual fairs attended by people from all parts of Europe. This is much for a city to accomplish situated alone in the middle of a great plain, with no natural charms of scenery or treasures of art to attract strangers. The energy and enterprise of its merchants have accomplished all this, and it now stands in importance among the first cities of Europe.

On my first walk around the city, yesterday morning, I passed the Augustus Platz—a broad green lawn on which front the university and several other public buildings. A chain of beautiful promenades encircles the city on the site of its old fortifications. Following their course through walks shaded by large trees and bordered with flowering shrubs, I passed a small but chaste monument to Sebastian Bach, the composer, which was erected almost entirely at the private cost of Mendelssohn, and stands opposite the building in which Bach once directed the choirs. As I was standing beside it a glorious choral swelled by a hundred voices came through the open windows like a tribute to the genius of the great master.

Having found my friend, we went together to the Sternwarte, or observatory, which gives a fine view of the country around the city, and in particular the battlefield. The castellan who is stationed there is well acquainted with the localities, and pointed out the position of the hostile armies. It was one of the most bloody and hard-fought battles which history records. The army of Napoleon stretched like a semicircle around the southern and eastern sides of the city, and the plain beyond was occupied by the allies, whose forces met together here. Schwarzenberg, with his Austrians, came from Dresden; Bluecher, from Halle, with the Emperor Alexander. Their forces amounted to three hundred thousand, while those of Napoleon ranked at one hundred and ninety-two thousand men. It must have been a terrific scene. Four days raged the battle, and the meeting of half a million of men in deadly conflict was accompanied by the thunder of sixteen hundred cannon. The small rivers which flow through Leipsic were swollen with blood, and the vast plain was strewed with more than fifty thousand dead.

It is difficult to conceive of such slaughter while looking at the quiet and tranquil landscape below. It seemed more like a legend of past ages, when ignorance and passion led men to murder and destroy, than an event which the last half century witnessed. For the sake of humanity it is to be hoped that the world will never see such another.

There are some lovely walks around Leipsic. We went yesterday afternoon with a few friends to the Rosenthal, a beautiful meadow, bordered by forests of the German oak, very few of whose Druid trunks have been left standing. There are Swiss cottages embowered in the foliage where every afternoon the social citizens assemble to drink their coffee and enjoy a few hours' escape from the noisy and dusty streets. One can walk for miles along these lovely paths by the side of the velvet meadows or the banks of some shaded stream. We visited the little village of Golis, a short distance off, where, in the second story of a little white house, hangs the sign, "Schiller's Room." Some of the Leipsic "literati" have built a stone arch over the entrance, with the inscription above: "Here dwelt Schiller in 1795, and wrote his Hymn to Joy." Everywhere through Germany the remembrances of Schiller are sacred. In every city where he lived they show his dwelling. They know and reverence the mighty spirit who has been among them. The little room where he conceived that sublime poem is hallowed as if by the presence of unseen spirits.

I was anxious to see the spot where Poniatowsky fell. We returned over the plain to the city, and passed in at the gate by which the Cossacks entered, pursuing the flying French. Crossing the lower part, we came to the little river Elster, in whose waves the gallant prince sank. The stone bridge by which we crossed was blown up by the French to cut off pursuit. Napoleon had given orders that it should not be blown up till the Poles had all passed over as the river, tho narrow, is quite deep and the banks are steep. Nevertheless, his officers did not wait, and the Poles, thus exposed to the fire of the enemy, were obliged to plunge into the stream to join the French army, which had begun retreat toward Frankfort. Poniatowsky, severely wounded, made his way through a garden near, and escaped on horseback into the water. He became entangled among the fugitives, and sank. By walking a little distance along the road toward Frankfort we could see the spot where his body was taken out of the river; it is now marked by a square stone covered with the names of his countrymen who have visited it. We returned through the narrow arched way by which Napoleon fled when the battle was lost.

Another interesting place in Leipsic is Auerbach's Cellar, which, it is said, contains an old manuscript history of Faust from which Goethe derived the first idea of his poem. He used to frequent this cellar, and one of his scenes in "Faust" is laid in it. We looked down the arched passage; not wishing to purchase any wine, we could find no pretense for entering. The streets are full of book-stores, and one-half the business of the inhabitants appears to consist in printing, paper-making and binding. The publishers have a handsome exchange of their own, and during the fairs the amount of business transacted is enormous.

At last in this "Florence of the Elbe," as the Saxons have christened it! Exclusive of its glorious galleries of art, which are scarcely surpassed by any in Europe, Dresden charms one by the natural beauty of its environs. It stands in a curve of the Elbe, in the midst of green meadows, gardens and fine old woods, with the hills of Saxony sweeping around like an amphitheater and the craggy peaks of the highlands looking at it from afar. The domes and spires at a distance give it a rich Italian look, which is heightened by the white villas embowered in trees gleaming on the hills around. In the streets there is no bustle of business—nothing of the din and confusion of traffic which mark most cities; it seems like a place for study and quiet enjoyment.

The railroad brought us in three hours from Leipsic over the eighty miles of plain that intervene. We came from the station through the Neustadt, passing the Japanese palace and the equestrian statue of Augustus the Strong. The magnificent bridge over the Elbe was so much injured by the late inundation as to be impassable; we were obliged to go some distance up the river-bank and cross on a bridge of boats. Next morning my first search was for the picture-gallery. We set off at random, and after passing the church of Our Lady, with its lofty dome of solid stone, which withstood the heaviest bombs during the war with Frederick the Great, came to an open square one side of which was occupied by an old brown, red-roofed building which I at once recognized from pictures as the object of our search.

I have just taken a last look at the gallery this morning, and left it with real regret; for during the two visits Raphael's heavenly picture of the Madonna and Child had so grown into my love and admiration that it was painful to think I should never see it again. There are many mere which clung so strongly to my imagination, gratifying in the highest degree the love for the beautiful, that I left them with sadness and the thought that I would now only have the memory. I can see the inspired eye and godlike brow of the Jesus-child as if I were still standing before the picture, and the sweet, holy countenance of the Madonna still looks upon me. Yet, tho this picture is a miracle of art, the first glance filled me with disappointment. It has somewhat faded during the three hundred years that have rolled away since the hand of Raphael worked on the canvas, and the glass with which it is covered for better preservation injures the effect. After I had gazed on it a while, every thought of this vanished.

The figure of the Virgin seemed to soar in the air, and it was difficult to think the clouds were not in motion. An aerial lightness clothes her form, and it is perfectly natural for such a figure to stand among the clouds. Two divine cherubs look up from below, and in her arms sits the sacred Child. Those two faces beam from the picture like those of angels. The mild, prophetic eye and lofty brow of the young Jesus chain one like a spell. There is something more than mortal in its expression—something in the infant face which indicates a power mightier than the proudest manhood. There is no glory around the head, but the spirit which shines from those features marks its divinity. In the sweet face of the mother there speaks a sorrowful foreboding mixed with its tenderness, as if she knew the world into which the Savior was born and foresaw the path in which he was to tread. It is a picture which one can scarce look upon without tears.