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shorter periods. Various occupants enlarged or modified the great stronghold, but "it has," says Whitling, "been handed down to our times undefaced by any very violent inconsistency of parts or character, and presents you with much that will recall the days of casque and corselet, when wardens paced its dark towers, and the flames of the great wood fires blazing in the wide chimneys of its hall were glinted back from axe, helmet, plate-jack, and the various other implements of war hung around its walls." The

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Castle was repaired in modern Gothic style for King Maximilian in 1858, and a few apartments fitted up for the royal family. Some ancient German pottery and paintings by early German masters adorn these rooms. In one of the towers is a collection of racks and other instruments of torture, from the city prisons.

From the ramparts on the south side of the Castle there is a splendid view of the city-a panorama of quaint roofed houses and dark towers, broad masses of ancient masonry, glorious old churches, pinnacles, and spires. Judging from old pictures of the scene, the general aspect of the city has undergone but little change. On one of the walls beside the moat are shown the hoof-prints of a horse belonging to one Count Eppelein

von Garlingen, who once leaped hence across the Castle ditch-a feat of which these marks have long been held as conclusive proof. The count was evidently a bold rider; but then, he was also an erudite magician, on speaking terms with the powers of darkness, and, indeed, was said to be a near relative of his Satanic Majesty, and to have received the above-mentioned horse as a token of regard from his kinsman.

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The Church of St. Sebald, which gives its name to the portion of the city north of the Pegnitz, is an ancient edifice, partly dating from the tenth and partly from the fourteenth century. St. Peter's Chapel, at the west end, with its low round arches and short heavy columns, is the oldest portion. The nave, of somewhat later date, shows the transitional style between the Round and the Pointed architecture. The east choir, with its slender clustered pillars, is in the best style of German. Gothic. Stained glass, designed by the celebrated Hirschvogel, fills the lofty windows, whose mullions are full forty feet in height. One window was presented by Maximilian I.; another is a memorial to the house of Brandenburg. Curious carvings in wood and stone adorn the altars, and there are escutcheons perpetuating the history of Nuremberg families for six centuries. Amongst the pictures is an "Entombment," by Albrecht Dürer, and in one of the chapels an altarpiece by Lucas Cranach. In 1326

ST. SEBALD'S CHURCH.

Bawn Tucker consecrated a lamp to burn perpetually before the Virgin's shrine. For 300 years the Virgin has not been worshipped in this church; but Nuremberg reveres her ancient customs, although she has changed her faith; the brazen lamp is still fed, and the flame burns steadily on.

In the centre of the choir stands the "tomb of sainted Sebald." Above the coffer containing the relics, delicate pillars uphold three canopies of bronze. Reliefs, representing

the charitable deeds and miracles of the saint, cover the coffer. About the canopy are figures of the twelve Apostles and the fathers of the Church. Above, an infant Christ holds in His hand a globe. Some seventy tiny figures, realistic and imaginary, are worked into the fretted borders and interlacings of the design. At the east end, in a niche facing the altar, is an admirable statue of the artist, Peter Vischer, who executed this wonderful and elaborate piece of workmanship. It represents him in his mason's apron, and with a chisel in his hand. He was miserably paid for his work, and the inscription records that he did it "for the praise of God Almighty alone, and the honour of St. Sebald, Prince of Heaven, by the aid of pious persons, paid by their voluntary contributions." Twelve snails and four dolphins at the corners form the curiously fantastic base of the shrine, on which Peter Vischer and his five sons worked for fifteen years in the golden days of Nuremberg art.

Legend affirms that Sebald was the son of a Danish king. He was educated at Paris, where he became deeply impressed with the uncertainty of all worldly things. He married the lovely daughter of Dagobert, the king; but left her, with her own consent, the day after their wedding, and withdrew to a wood, where he lived a hermit's life for fifteen years, and worked for his bread. One day he started off to Rome, obtained authority from the Pope to preach, wandered through the country, and at last settled down in a wood near Nuremberg, where he worked many miracles, some of which are recorded in the bronze carvings on his monument. Once at Christmas-time he came into a cartwright's house, and besought him to light a fire; but wood was scarce, and the cartwright refused. "Fetch me an icicle from the roof, and lay it on the hearth," he said to the wife. She did so, and the icicle burst into a blaze. "Now go buy me fish at the market," he said to the astonished cartwright. "I obey," he answered, "for all that the lord of Nuremberg has proclaimed that any one caught in the act of buying or selling fish this day shall have his eyes put out." So he went, and being taken, had his eyes put out by the tyrant. "It is Heaven's visitation on you for your inhospitality," said Sebald when he returned; and then he healed him with a touch, and added, "Now go back to the market." He went accordingly; so the people saw and believed, and glorified God and St. Sebald.

It is also recorded, among many other legends, that when Sebald's last hour drew nigh he commanded that, after his death, his body should be laid on a cart drawn by wild oxen, and buried on the spot where they should halt. They halted in front of a little wooden chapel, said to have been founded by St. Boniface. There St. Sebald was buried, and there, not long afterwards, when the chapel was burnt down, the great church was erected, and dedicated to him.

Grotesque as these old stories are-and they are all favourite subjects with the old German artists-they clearly show that the man in whose honour such a memorial as that glorious church was built, must surely have been a hero in his way.

The parsonage of St. Sebald's Church contains the beautiful oriel window alluded to in Longfellow's well-known poem. The panels below the window are carved with sacred scenes, and beautiful fretted arches surmount the mullions and trefoils. In this parsonage once dwelt Canon Melchior Pfinzing, who in 1517 published a poem on the subject of the Emperor Maximilian's marriage with Mary of Burgundy. The poet was secretary to the Emperor, and the latter is believed to have had a hand himself in the composition.

The Gothic Chapel of St. Maurice, adjoining St. Sebald's Church, built in 1354, is now a picture gallery, containing numerous early Flemish and German works. We may here remark that there is also a Public Picture Gallery in the Rathhaus, from which, however, many of the best pictures have been removed.

Although not the oldest, the largest and finest of the churches of Nuremberg is the Gothic Church of St. Lawrence, on the south side of the river. It was commenced in 1275, in the reign of the Emperor Adolphus, but the choir was not completed till 1477. It accordingly dates from the best era of the

Pointed style. The west front is exceedingly beautiful. All about the porch, scenes from the life of Christ are sculptured. In the upper part of the great archway the "Last Judgment" is represented, including the vast array of angels and devils always associated with that event in mediæval minds. Above a light stone balcony appears the beautiful rose window, "bordered " (says one visitor) "by a screen of stone so elaborately and daintily carved as to suggest not only the oft-repeated simile of delicate lace, but, more aptly, the fairy work of the frost." Higher still, arch and quatrefoil, rising above each other to a slender pinnacle, adorn the pediment as it were with a veil of stone. On each side rises a tower, terminating in an elegant spire; the square portion of each tower in its highest storey shows wide openings divided by many mullions, intended to represent the gridiron upon which Valentinian martyred the saint to whom the church is dedicated.

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THE PARSONAGE OF ST. SEBALD'S CHURCH.

In the interior, eight lofty columns on each side support the roof. In the choir are some splendid painted glass windows, bearing the richly emblazoned coats-of-arms of old patrician families of Nuremberg. One of them, the Volkamer window, for brightness of colour and excellence of design is considered one of the finest specimens of glasspainting in Europe. Here also, as in St. Sebald's, nothing has been altered since the old Catholic days. Nuremberg went over unanimously to the Reformed Church, and took over the sacred edifices as they were. The altars, the pictures of miracles and martyrdoms, the Christ on the Cross, the sculptured apostles, the very confessionals, stand as they were when the priests of Rome ministered here and little dreamed of the times of change that were fast coming.

One of the principal ornaments of this church is the Ciborium, formerly the receptacle of the elements of the Eucharist previous to consecration. It is a piece of work so elaborate that it was at one time questioned whether the artist, Adam Krafft, who spent five years in its construction, had not moulded it by some secret process. The Ciborium rests upon a richly-carved base, supported by the kneeling figures of Adam Krafft and

his two assistants. Above rises the tall and graceful structure, over sixty feet in height, bending at the top to conform to the curve of the vaulted roof. The design is exceedingly elegant, and the execution marvellous. In the successive storeys are represented the scenes of the Passion, the Last Supper, the Agony, the Scourging, the Parting from the Mother, the Crown of Thorns, the Supreme Sacrifice, the Resurrection, the Peace of Heaven. The artist who accomplished this wonderful piece of work, in friendly rivalry

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of Vischer's master-piece in the Sebaldkirche already alluded to, died in deep distress at a great age, in a hospital in Schwalbach.

The Frauenkirche belongs to the Roman Catholics. Forty years ago there were not 3,000 in the town, but amongst the poorer class it is said that of late years they have increased in a greater ratio than the Protestants. For centuries they were not allowed to hold property in the town. The Frauenkirche was built by the Emperor Charles IV. in 1361, on the site of an ancient Jewish synagogue. It abounds with relievos, pictures, tombs, altars, fine glass windows, and sculptured niches. Porch and vestibule are richly decorated, and in the interior are many monuments from old Nuremberg churches that have been destroyed.

We must rass over St. Claire and St. Margaret, St. Martha and others. The

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