ion 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 s