Nuremberg, or Nurnberg, was built, I believe, about the beginning of
time. At least, in an old black-letter history of the city which I have
seen, illustrated with powerful wood-cuts, the first representation
is that of the creation of the world, which is immediately followed
by another of Nuremberg. No one who visits it is likely to dispute its
antiquity. “Nobody ever goes to Nuremberg but Americans,” said a cynical
British officer at Chamouny; “but they always go there. I never saw
an American who had n't been or was not going to Nuremberg.” Well, I
suppose they wish to see the oldest-looking, and, next to a true Briton
on his travels, the oddest thing on the Continent. The city lives in the
past still, and on its memories, keeping its old walls and moat entire,
and nearly fourscore wall-towers, in stern array. But grass grows in
the moat, fruit trees thrive there, and vines clamber on the walls. One
wanders about in the queer streets with the feeling of being transported
back to the Middle Ages; but it is difficult to reproduce the impression
on paper. Who can describe the narrow and intricate ways; the odd
houses with many little gables; great roofs breaking out from eaves to
ridgepole, with dozens of dormer-windows; hanging balconies of stone,
carved and figure-beset, ornamented and frescoed fronts; the archways,
leading into queer courts and alleys, and out again into broad streets;
the towers and fantastic steeples; and the many old bridges, with
obelisks and memorials of triumphal entries of conquerors and princes?
The city, as I said, lives upon the memory of what it has been, and
trades upon relics of its former fame. What it would have been without
Albrecht Durer, and Adam Kraft the stone-mason, and Peter Vischer the
bronze-worker, and Viet Stoss who carved in wood, and Hans Sachs the
shoemaker and poet-minstrel, it is difficult to say. Their statues are
set up in the streets; their works still live in the churches and city
buildings,--pictures, and groups in stone and wood; and their statues,
in all sorts of carving, are reproduced, big and little, in all the
shop-windows, for sale. So, literally, the city is full of the memory
of them; and the business of the city, aside from its manufactory of
endless, curious toys, seems to consist in reproducing them and their
immortal works to sell to strangers.
Other cities project new things, and grow with a modern impetus:
Nuremberg lives in the past, and traffics on its ancient reputation. Of
course, we went to see the houses where these old worthies lived, and
the works of art they have left behind them,--things seen and described
by everybody. The stone carving about the church portals and on side
buttresses is inexpressibly quaint and naive. The subjects are sacred;
and with the sacred is mingled the comic, here as at Augsburg, where
over one portal of the cathedral, with saints and angels, monkeys
climb and gibber. A favorite subject is that of our Lord praying in the
Garden, while the apostles, who could not watch one hour, are sleeping
in various attitudes of stony comicality. All the stone-cutters seem to
have tried their chisels on this group, and there are dozens of
them. The wise and foolish virgins also stand at the church doors in
time-stained stone,--the one with a perked-up air of conscious virtue,
and the other with a penitent dejection that seems to merit better
treatment. Over the great portal of St. Lawrence--a magnificent
structure, with lofty twin spires and glorious rosewindow is carved “The
Last Judgment.” Underneath, the dead are climbing out of their stone
coffins; above sits the Judge, with the attending angels. On the right
hand go away the stiff, prim saints, in flowing robes, and with palms
and harps, up steps into heaven, through a narrow door which St. Peter
opens for them; while on the left depart the wicked, with wry faces and
distorted forms, down into the stone flames, towards which the Devil is
dragging them by their stony hair.
The interior of the Church of St. Lawrence is richer than any other I
remember, with its magnificent pillars of dark red stone, rising and
foliating out to form the roof; its splendid windows of stained glass,
glowing with sacred story; a high gallery of stone entirely round the
choir, and beautiful statuary on every column. Here, too, is the famous
Sacrament House of honest old Adam Kraft, the most exquisite thing I
ever saw in stone. The color is light gray; and it rises beside one of
the dark, massive pillars, sixty-four feet, growing to a point, which
then strikes the arch of the roof, and there curls up like a vine to
avoid it. The base is supported by the kneeling figures of Adam Kraft
and two fellow-workmen, who labored on it for four years. Above is
the Last Supper, Christ blessing little children, and other beautiful
tableaux in stone. The Gothic spire grows up and around these, now and
then throwing out graceful tendrils, like a vine, and seeming to
be rather a living plant than inanimate stone. The faithful artist
evidently had this feeling for it; for, as it grew under his hands, he
found that it would strike the roof, or he must sacrifice something of
its graceful proportion. So his loving and daring genius suggested the
happy design of letting it grow to its curving, graceful completeness.
He who travels by a German railway needs patience and a full haversack.
Time is of no value. The rate of speed of the trains is so slow, that
one sometimes has a desire to get out and walk, and the stoppages at
the stations seem eternal; but then we must remember that it is a long
distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer. We left Lindau on one of
the usual trains at half-past five in the morning, and reached Augsburg
at one o'clock in the afternoon: the distance cannot be more than a
hundred miles. That is quicker than by diligence, and one has leisure
to see the country as he jogs along. There is nothing more sedate than
a German train in motion; nothing can stand so dead still as a German
train at a station. But there are express trains.
We were on one from Augsburg to Nuremberg, and I think must have run
twenty miles an hour. The fare on the express trains is one fifth higher
than on the others. The cars are all comfortable; and the officials,
who wear a good deal of uniform, are much more civil and obliging than
officials in a country where they do not wear uniforms. So, not swiftly,
but safely and in good-humor, we rode to the capital of Bavaria.