Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-09-05
Glance at Nuremberg,


rare, carved work is carefully preserved
and pointed out among the crowd of
modern buildings. Nuremberg stands
almost intact-a whole city of priceless
archaeological and architectural treas
ures. she is like a fairy tale; she
might have slept under a magic charm
for five hundred years, and only wax.
ened up to day to find everything within
just as it was when she went to sleep,
and the world outside gone OH in its
ever flowing current, leaving her
stranded on the shore of time" We
can fancy her wondering at herself that
her bright youth has grown so gray
aud hoary in her long sleep! An oriel
is thrown open over our heads, and
girl leans out. The plated hair and
linen collar strike US with a serse OF
incongruity. We had half expected to
see the wide white head drapery and
the folded kerchief of the old
pictures in st. Laurence's Church.
The chord once touched, we
begin t. realize that it is but q shell
after all-this city of the middle ages.
1t is like Tara's halls without the harp;
it is a corpse carefully dressed up in
the garments it used to wear, and set
up Ia O semblance OF life which strikes
us with q chill solemnity as We miss
the living animating spirit from it.
Here are the half-moons and bastions,
the ramparts and towers, and the wide,
deep ditch behind which Gustavus
Adolphus first tasted the bitterness Of
failure, and before which Wallenstein
sat himself down SO long. But where
are the heroes? where are the swarm.
ing men alarms, the resolute though
half-famished citizens? We miss them
I'LL.
Here is the dwelling of Hans Sachs,
the cobbler poet, but he and his trench
ant pen are gone. They both live in
the Museum-a curious collection of
the first totterings and hand-feelings
of baby science; where the first watches
and sketchy skeleton clocks are shown;
the first black-letter printing and paper
lin Germany, and the irst gunlocks,
enameled pottery and playing cards
whole harvest of first fruits. For
Nuremberg seems to have been the
cradle and birthplace of German me.
chanical art and science. 1t is curious
to mark her progress onward, from the
first rude primitive editions of Hans
Sachs poems in the Museum to the
elegant volumes in the booksellers
shops in the street; from the grotesque,
uncouth, stone figures of the sleeping
apostles grouped outside of Saint Sc
bald's Church to the exquisite carvings
of the Sacramentshausleln of Adam
Kraft and his apprentices in the Church
OF st. Laurence.
The iconoclasts spared the churches of
Nuremberg, as everything else seemed
to have been spared there. Saint Sc.
bald is a saint little known out of
Nuremberg, but his memory is pre-
served here in church and shrine of
triumphant beauty, architectural and
artistic. The Distinguishing grace of
the saint appears to have been charity,
judging from the nature of the mira
cles recorded on the shrine.
1t is pleasure in Nuremberg to
wander forth and lose ourselves in the
quaint old streets without the conven.
tional guide-book, and to come, all I'M
awares, upon queer old squares, splen-
didly carved .tdcades, delicious little
bits OF graceful antiquity, harmonious
Gothic buildings. with deep court.
yards and gabled fronts, and narrow
street corners narrowed still further by
jutting oriels, which come back to us
as something seen long ago-in dream
or picture. Perhaps we are turned
back by the hoary old walls, and we
find ourselves next standing on one of
the little bridges looking up and down
the Pegnitz River at the tumble of age
embrowned roofs and iutting walls.
The coup dell is q thought dilapidated
and shabby perhaps, but it is quaint
and picturesque enough.
We come out of the churches with
the fever-ht on us; we burn still as we
take our way past the Goose Fountain
and through the streets permeated by
the harmony of the glorious Gothic
like music in the air. Adam Kraft's
stations of the Cross help to sustain us
still on the road to the old cemetery,
outside the Thiergarten Gate, but we
fall very fiat at the cemetery itself
And yet we would not have missed see-
ing it for the world. Surely there is
nothing. not only in Germany, but in
all the world, like that cemetery. We
search through the gray Gods acre"
for the most obliterated graves Of Hans
Sachs and Albrecht Durer. Never has
the sermon of mortality been preached
to our hearts with such power as here,
where even the memorials of sacred
dust have resolved themselves into
kindred ashes.
Our hotel, the Baierischhof, was
once q citizens mansion, in the days
when Nuremberg's merchants were
princes. There is O fresco on the wall
of the courtyard, full-length figure,
supposed to be the likness of former
owner. There are not many guests
Nuremberg is little out of the stereo-
typed line of travel, and its attraction
is not tor the multitude but the party
is large enough to give cheerfulness to
the "low-browed" room, and small
enough to allow of pleasant int rchange
of thought and experience.
II is with little remorse for occa-
sional lapses of feeling that we tiually
strain our eyes for last look at the
quaint steeples and ancient towers of
Nuremberg, as we roll in the Baierisch-