menced playing, and the finely trained choir sang the anthem, "O, go your way into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise!" They were practising for the evening service, and their united harmonies accorded well with the pomp and beauty of the building.

Westminster Abbey, so full as it is of the best efforts of the chisel, and the best memories of the histories of the land, is, in its architectural ornaments, the faded model of this chapel, and whoever is fond of the grand proportions, the long drawn aisles, and the once rich ornaments of the old Abbey, will find his taste highly gratified in this modern restoration of the splendor of the feudal style.

R. D.

From the Literary World, New York, January 22, 1848.

SKETCHES OF TRAVEL.

NUREMBERGH.

To any one wearied of the Frenchified monotony which pervades all other large Continental cities, and who admires the relics of the Old Age, quaint, quiet, old fashioned Nurembergh, will pleasantly detain him for many days. Every street there is a picture: they run in all imaginable angles and directions, apparently innocent of plan, in the fashion of a Chinese puzzle; and the lofty brown stone houses, carved up to their peaked roof, often with finely executed reliefs, sometimes covered with armorial bearings, surmounted with strange crests, such as Moors' heads, to show how the ancestor of that ancient burgher family fought under the Catholic Isabella, against the Infidel Moors; with richly carved balconies in front, form a fine study for the lover of the picturesque. And then, at every corner and platz is a fountain, generally of quaint device; as, for instance, the laughing peasant, with a goose under either arm, spouting water from their mouths as he squeezes them; the "Schone Brunnen," or the beautiful fountain, full of fine stone statuettes, and many others. Indeed, as I frequently walked about its old streets, every one forming so rare a scene of prim antiquity, and now so empty and still: with those old

scenes of war and chivalry yet living everywhere about me in the stone carvings; the innumerable peaked gables, church spires, old towers, old market-places, and those curious fountains; I could not fail of being reminded of the Illuminated Romances of the Middle Ages, where the skill and fancy of the Monkish Artist so often ran riot in the pictured story of the Illuminated Margin. Generally, these fine old houses may be considered several large dwellings under one roof. Around the central open court, which is generally very large, the covered corridor opens into numerous apartments, often vast and gloomy enough; and everywhere about are curiously carved, useless, crooked stairways, and passages that lead nowhere, and massive oak ceilings alike covered with carving, and oak furniture and huge rooms, and queer corners, like rabbit warrens, and every spare inch of surface covered with quaint and often beautiful carved devices. But they are, indeed, palatial in their extent and ornament and present as refreshing a contrast to the modern priggish monotony of a three or four story in New York or elsewhere, as the apparition of a gentleman of the old school attired in full dress of lace point, collar, ruffles, velvets, and bracelets, to the present tight-fitting costume imposed on all alike by the decrees of tailors and fashion of our times. In many instances, these old houses are occupied yet by the descendants of the same families who have lived here uninterruptedly since the days of the Crusades. Visiting one of them, in the Albrecht Durer Platz, still occupied

by the same family, whose ancestors are recorded among the burgher aristocracy in the fourteenth century, who possess an exquisite portrait by Durer of one of them, I turned over with much interest, their family record; a mammoth quarto, superbly bound with gold and velvet, preserved in its richly carved old wooden case, containing the arms and history of the family from the days of the Crusades, through the wars of Granada, with portraits of many notables in the early ages of the family, and pictures of the scenes of those chivalrous achievements, whereby they won many a rich and strange crest and quartering to their coat of arms. The paintings were admirably executed upon the vellum leaf, and the book, though now merely the record of a private family here, would furnish, no doubt, many an interesting episode to the history of Modern Europe.

The princes of Nurembergh were a burgher aristocracy; in their origin; wealthy merchants, who, either for a timely loan, or for some equally important ministry to the necessities of the great lord or neighboring kings, were raised to the rank of the noblesse; and the chronicles of the city are filled with records of numerous charters of freedoms and privileges of commerce granted to the city itself on similar considerations. The oldest of such charters still existing in the city archives, dated in twelve hundred and nineteen, the gift or concession of the Emperor, Frederick II., creates it a free city of the Empire, exempting it from taxes or service to other feudal lords, providing imperial courts of jus

tice, and endowing it with rights of markets, fairs, coinage, and many other commercial privileges. With this and many other similar and subsequent charters, the city grew rich and prosperous; its artisans were famous; its markets crowded with their own fabrics, and with the luxuries of the East; for, according to its chronicles, the north and west of Europe were supplied by the merchant princes of Nurembergh. Instead of being now a comparatively inferior city of some forty thousand inhabitants, its archives tell us of the days when a great portion of the commerce of Northern Europe and the Indian trade were in its hands; when there were more than one hundred thousand busy citizens here; when the merchants of northern and central Europe came in great numbers to its fairs and markets, and its burgher noblesse were the friends and equals of princes. All this has long since changed. The discovery of the passage of the Cape of Good Hope naturally diverted a large portion of its commerce, and it fell into a decline from which it has not yet fully recovered. So, when the stranger now walks its quiet streets, he must, in a great degree, content himself with the vestiges of its past greatness, and its departed commercial pre-eminence, though he must feel a certain sadness in seeing the immortal arts of Durer, Visscher, and Kraft, degenerated, in the hands of their modern successors, to the manufacture of Dutch toys! and to find the once northern Venice, nowadays famous mainly for bijouterie.

In such a town there is, of course, much to see and de