ove the houses,
the green spires of another church, and over the heads of some
market-women, who are chaffering over their fish and vegetables, the
profile of a little building with brick pillars, which must have been a
pillory in its day. This gives a last touch to the purely Gothic aspect
of the square which is interrupted by no modern edifice. The ingenious
idea occurred to me that this splendid Stadthaus must have another
facade; and so in fact it had; passing under an archway, I found myself
in a broad street, and my admiration began anew.

Five bell-towers, built half into the wall and separated by tall
ogive-windows now partly blocked up, repeated, with variations, the
facade I have just described. Brick rosettes exhibited their curious
designs, spreading with square stitches, so to speak, like patterns for
worsted work. At the base of the somber edifice a pretty little lodge,
of the Renaissance, built as an afterthought, gave entrance to an
exterior staircase going up along the wall diagonally to a sort of
mirador, or overhanging look-out, in exquisite taste. Graceful little
statues of Faith and Justice, elegantly draped, decorated the portico.

The staircase, resting on arches which widened as it rose higher, was
ornamented with grotesque masks and caryatides. The mirador, placed
above the arched doorway opening upon the market-place, was crowned with
a recessed and voluted pediment, where a figure of Themis held in one
hand balances, and in the other a sword, not forgetting to give her
drapery, at the same time, a coquettish puff. An odd order formed of
fluted pilasters fashioned like pedestals and supporting busts,
separated the windows of this aerial cage. Consoles with fantastic masks
completed the elegant ornamentation, over which Time had passed his
thumb just enough to give to the carved stone that bloom which nothing
can imitate....

The Marienkirche, which stands, as I have said, behind the Stadt-haus,
is well worth a visit. Its two towers are 408 feet in height; a very
elaborate belfry rises from the roof at the point of intersection of the
transept. The towers of Luebeck have the peculiarity, every one of them,
of being out of the perpendicular, leaning perceptibly to the right or
left, but without disquieting the eye, like the tower of Asinelli at
Bologna, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Seen two or three miles away,
these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to
nod at th