of an hour after the other. The
furniture and fittings of the entire building are all equally curious,
and reproduce a faithful picture of old times, worthy of being copied
in National Museums elsewhere.

[Illustration: Fig. 255.--Apartment in the Garden of the Castle of
Nuernberg.]

Nuernberg being a "free city" was governed by its own appointed
magistrates, having independent courts of law. The executive council of
state consisted of eight members, chosen from the thirty patrician
families who, by the privilege granted to them from the thirteenth
century, ruled the city entirely. In process of time these privileges
assumed the form of a civic tyranny, which was felt to be intolerable by
the people, and occasionally opposed by them. The fierce religious wars
of the sixteenth century assisted in destroying this monopoly of power
still more; yet now that it is gone for ever, it has left fearful traces
of its irresponsible strength. All who sigh for "the good old times,"
should not moralise over the fallen greatness of the city, and its
almost deserted but noble town-hall; but descend below the building into
the dark vaults and corridors which form its basement; the terrible
substructure upon which the glorious municipal palace of a free imperial
self-ruled city was based in the Middle Ages, into whose secrets none
dared pry, and where friends, hope, life itself, were lost to those who
dared revolt against the rulers. There is no romance-writer who has
imagined more horrors than we have evidences were perpetrated under the
name of justice in these frightful vaults, unknown to the busy citizens
around them, within a few feet of the streets down which a gay wedding
procession might pass, while a true patriot was torn in every limb, and
racked to death by the refined cruelty of his fellow-men. The heart
sickens in these vaults, and an instinctive desire to quit them takes
possession of the mind, while remaining merely as a curious spectator
within them. The narrow steps leading to them are reached through a
decorated doorway, and the passage below receives light through a series
of gratings. You shortly reach the labyrinthine ways, totally excluded
from external light and air, and enter one after another confined
dungeons, little more than six feet square, cased with oak to deaden
sounds, and to increase the difficulty of attempted escape. To make
these narrow places even more horrible, strong wooden stocks are in
some, a