agency of decay arrested. Time looks kindly on this dry Venice, and the shadow of his hand pauses on the dial of Ahaz. Venice has changed much in the last twenty years from the decay of buildings, the erection of new houses, and the introduction of railways. If, unhappily, it should be her fate to undergo a siege or bombardment in the approaching struggle, how will her remaining glories be quickly dispersed!
“Death seems to have forgotten us,” said the younger of the two French octogenarians. “Kings have forgotten me,” Nuremberg whispers. And truly the iconoclast has made a strange omission, and with an unwonted tenderness has spared both public and domestic architecture, and left them to their own calm decay.
It greatly redounds to the honour of the late King of Bavaria, that he did so much to prevent the inroads of modern Vandalism in this ancient city.
The same care is continued at the present moment in the conservation of this great memorial of past ages. The railway station is placed out of sight from the town, and, whilst it is excellently adapted to its proper purpose, it is made to harmonise and almost to sympathise in its careful architecture with the city to which it conducts. The journey hither from Frankfort, passing Würzberg and Bamberg, occupies nearly eight hours. There is a delay at the latter place of almost an hour—a stoppage too long for mere purposes of refreshment, whilst it does not afford time for the tourist to go up to the town and see its cathedral. The first part of the route produces a very agreeable impression of Bavaria, the old Hercynian forest clothing hill and dale for many miles, and pleasant villages and sun-inviting vineyards giving a changing interest to the journey. The scenery from Aschaffenberg to the tunnel at Laufach is particularly fine. The wide plain through which the Maine runs being reached, the beauty of the country is lost, only, however, to give place to pleasant anticipation, as the venerable spires of churches and the towers of the castle of Nuremberg begin to appear on the horizon. Then we ask ourselves whether we shall feel the usual disappointment which the first sight of a real object produces in displacing the image of it previously formed in the mind, and long cherished there. Will the houses be high enough, the streets sufficiently close, the stones properly crumbled, to identify the reality with our picture? In fact, will the peculiarities and beauties which we have heard for years to exist, be sufficiently compact and without interval to allow us to say at once, “Yes! this is the Nuremberg of our fancy’s limning.” With the majority of visitors, the response to such questions will be in the affirmative, as they drive through the gates into the town, and are immediately presented with gables and tourelles, oriels, and roofs rough with dormer-windows, sufficiently crowded together in this locality and unmixed with any modern buildings.
It is quite clear that the patrician and inferior burghers of this once proud and powerful free city had their dwellings built with a direct view to beauty; and used ornament, not as the humble handmaid of utility, but as an equal or a sister, walking with her hand-in-hand. What, for example, led to the erection of such an oriel as that belonging to the house opposite St. Sebald’s church, except an abstract love of the beautiful in art? It was the residence of the Nuremberg poet Pfinzing, author of the “Theuerdank,” and is now occupied by the pastor of the parish. His two fair daughters were sitting in their bower—“not unseen,”—as we scanned its outward enrichment of bas-relief and its interior vaulting; and they formed by no means an unpleasing feature in the picture. Ornament, indeed, appears to constitute a part of all the houses. Enrichment of form had become endemic in the city, and could not be omitted in the construction of public and private buildings. In the courts and galleries of the Rath-haus are many interesting specimens of carved wood, and we found almost the same patterns, having certainly the same date, in a second staircase of the antiquated but comfortable hotel, the Red Horse (Rother Ross). The house is indeed a good instance of a domestic building of the 15th century. Its corridors are decorated with numerous large pairs of deer’s antlers. Its front is very plain and unattractive, but the house has the advantage of commanding a view of St. Sebald’s church.
The river Regnitz, running through the city, divides it into two pretty equal parts or quarters; and these take their names respectively from the two great churches, St. Sebald’s and St. Laurenz. The stream is spanned by numerous bridges, and is parted into two channels by an island, occupied by the Trödel market, a sort of permanent fair, the stalls and booths of which seem innumerable. The market has existed there from ancient times; and, no doubt, the fluttering of its cheap ribbons, its toys, and comestibles, have from age to age drawn thither the same crowd of purchasers which frequents its rows and alleys at this day. Whether the wares were good we cannot say, but the prices of commodities struck us as decidedly moderate, and as if those inland chapmen had been universally seized with the determination “to meet the times.” At other parts of the river’s course high wooden houses overhang the water, and their picturesque fronts, reflected in the stream, show double, house and shadow.
Nuremberg has long possessed the distinction of being the great toy manufactory of Europe.[1] One feels surprised, therefore, at the small number of toys visible in the town. A single London street would make a greater display than the whole city. But thus it is with most things in which huge London comes into competition with other capitals; its proportions are so gigantic that it eclipses its competitors even in their own specialities. But Nuremberg has not confined its inventive reputation to toys. Its eggs, as the first watches were named, made it famous for ingenuity. Here was erected the first chain bridge. Playing-cards were invented, or at any rate made, here, in 1380. The first European paper-mill was set up here in 1390, perhaps to facilitate the card manufacture. The first canons were cast in Nuremberg in 1356; the first wire-drawing machine set up in 1360; the first gunlocks made in 1517;