and to Nuernberg, as it was in his epoch, for an
acquaintance with the characteristics of the refined life of the German
people. It is no unprofitable labour to unveil these ancient and
forgotten times; much in man's history, great and good, is hidden in the
pages of old chronicles, and it is a worthy task to call back forgotten
glories that may induce modern emulation, or at least vindicate the true
position of the great departed.

"From the barred visor of antiquity,
Reflected, shines the eternal light of truth
As from a mirror."[191-*]

The modern traveller who visits Nuernberg will see an old city most
singularly unaltered. For the last two centuries it would seem to have
remained almost stationary; its inhabitants succeeding each other
without a wish for change, living in the old houses of their
progenitors, and quietly retaining a certain stolid position which has
neither lost nor won in the great battle of life around them. On
approaching its walls it is difficult at first to believe that a city so
quaint and peculiar still exists intact. It is precisely like looking at
a pictured town in an old missal, with its series of square towers, and
long curtain wall embracing its entire circumference; its old castle
perched on the rock, and its great massive round towers proudly
protecting its chief gates upon all sides. There is a strange
"old-world" look about everything within these walls also, and we
scarcely feel that we have arrived at the nineteenth century as we
indulge in the thoughts they call forth. It is a place to dream in over
the past, to carry one's mind away from the bustle of modern life to the
thoughtful contemplation of that once enjoyed here by generations long
departed. It seems no place for the actual realities of our railroad
days, and there is a sort of impertinence in bringing us by such means
close to its quiet old walls; you feel thrown, as it were, from the
go-a-head rapidities of modern times into the calm, heavy, slow-going
days of Kaiser Maximilian, without time to consider the change. It is a
place for a poet, one imbued with a love of old cities and their
denizens, like Longfellow,--and how admirably in a few lines has he
described the feeling it engenders, and the aspect of the city and its
suburbs!--

"In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow lands,
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuernberg, the ancient, stands.

Quaint old town of toil