dethrone kings by its armies. Already the Crusades had broken the long
sleep of the Dark Ages, and stirred the people with that mighty
impulse which brought the culmination, in the thirteenth century, of
the great church-building epoch of Europe in the Middle Ages. No
great churches which they could not live to finish were begun by he
frugal burghers of Berlin; but they had a style of their own in the
brick Gothic, which is the most truly national architecture of North
Germany. The Nicolai Kirche is a representative of these early times
and of this national architecture, but its interior decorations show
every variety of adornment which prevailed during five centuries after
its founding. Not alone the history of art is represented on the inner
walls of this venerable and unique edifice, but the municipal history,
and the history of the "Mark of Brandenburg," and the Kingdom of
Prussia as well.

Almost as ancient as the Nicolai Kirche is the Heiliggeist Kirche,
behind the Boerse. Near this is the Marien Kirche, with its high spire,
its Abbot's Cross--the emblem of Old Berlin--before the entrance, and
on the inner walls its frescos of the Dance of Death, painted to
commemorate the plague which ravaged Berlin in 1460. Adjoining this
church, in the Neue Markt, Berlin's statue of Luther is to be erected.
Of the same old time, and in the same old heart of Berlin, is the fine
Kloster Kirche of the Franciscan monks, who had once a monastery
adjoining. A morning's stroll or two enables one to inspect all these
interesting old churches,--passing first to the Nicolai Kirche from
the end of the tramway in the Fisch Markt, and then, by a convenient
circuit, to each of the others, returning by the Museums and the
Lustgarten. The Jerusalems Kirche, about three quarters of a mile
south, is said to have been founded by a citizen at the end of the
Crusades as a memento of his journey to Palestine; but its present
ornamented architecture belongs to a modern reconstruction. An
effective architectural group is formed by the two churches in the
Schiller Platz, with the great _Schauspielhaus_, or Royal Theatre,
between them,--a view which soon becomes familiar to one passing often
through the central part of the city. The French Church, on the north
side of the Theatre, we did not enter, and of the "New Church"--a
hundred years old and recently rejuvenated--our most abiding memories
are of an exquisite sacred concert given there in aid of a