NUREMBERG. (Long fellow.) the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art: Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart; And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commission'd as apostles to our own. In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust; In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, Lived and labour'd Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art; Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with Like an emigrant he wander'd, seeking for the Better Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies; Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies. Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walk'd of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains. From remote and sunless suburbs, came they to the friendly guild, Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build. As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme, Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft, Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laugh'd. But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song, long. And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care, Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair. Vanish'd is the ancient splendour, and before my dreamy eye Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard; But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler-bard. Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, As he paced thy streets and courtyards, sang in thought his careless lay: Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, HE first look of Rome shakes one's preconceived notions. With an imagination inflamed by historical and poetic recollections, we have not fully realised the fact, that the Rome of the present day bears no resemblance whatever to the Rome of the Cæsars-that it can hardly be said to stand on the same spot of ground-that it is a comparatively modern city, built very much in the style of the older part of Paris, consisting, for the most part, of narrow and not over-clean thoroughfares, lined with tall but substantial edifices of a dull, yellowish-coloured stone. Except it be this stone-the inexhaustible travertine of the neighbourhood-also a few relics of antiquity-there is positively nothing shared in common between old and new Rome. Yet, with so little to satisfy cherished fancies on the subject, and so much to give pain as regards the social aspects of the place, there is I |