Those on the House of Fugger have been restored, and are very brave pictures.These frescoes give great animation and life to the appearance of a street, and I am glad to see a taste for them reviving.Augsburg must have been very gay with them two and three hundred years ago, when, also, it was the home of beautiful women of the middle class, who married princes.We went to see the house in which lived the beautiful Agnes Bernauer, daughter of a barber, who married Duke Albert III.of Bavaria.The house was nought, as old Samuel Pepys would say, only a high stone building, in a block of such; but it is enough to make a house attractive for centuries if a pretty woman once looks out of its latticed windows, as I have no doubt Agnes often did when the duke and his retinue rode by in clanking armor.
But there is no lack of reminders of old times.The cathedral, which was begun before the Christian era could express its age with four figures, has two fine portals, with quaint carving, and bronze doors of very old work, whereon the story of Eve and the serpent is literally given,--a representation of great theological, if of small artistic value.And there is the old clock and watch tower, which for eight hundred years has enabled the Augsburgers to keep the time of day and to look out over the plain for the approach of an enemy.
The city is full of fine bronze fountains some of them of very elaborate design, and adding a convenience and a beauty to the town which American cities wholly want.In one quarter of the town is the Fuggerei, a little city by itself, surrounded by its own wall, the gates of which are shut at night, with narrow streets and neat little houses.It was built by Hans Jacob Fugger the Rich, as long ago as 1519, and is still inhabited by indigent Roman-Catholic families, according to the intention of its founder.In the windows were lovely flowers.I saw in the street several of those mysterious, short, old women,--so old and yet so little, all body and hardly any legs, who appear to have grown down into the ground with advancing years.
It happened to be a rainy day, and cold, on the 30th of July, when we left Augsburg; and the flat fields through which we passed were uninviting under the gray light.Large flocks of geese were feeding on the windy plains, tended by boys and women, who are the living fences of this country.I no longer wonder at the number of feather-beds at the inns, under which we are apparently expected to sleep even in the warmest nights.Shepherds with the regulation crooks also were watching herds of sheep.Here and there a cluster of red-roofed houses were huddled together into a village, and in all directions rose tapering spires.Especially we marked the steeple of Blenheim, where Jack Churchill won the name for his magnificent country-seat, early in the eighteenth century.All this plain where the silly geese feed has been marched over and fought over by armies time and again.We effect the passage of, the Danube without difficulty, and on to Harburg, a little town of little red houses, inhabited principally by Jews, huddled under a rocky ridge, upon the summit of which is a picturesque medieval castle, with many towers and turrets, in as perfect preservation as when feudal flags floated over it.And so on, slowly, with long stops at many stations, to give opportunity, I suppose, for the honest passengers to take in supplies of beer and sausages, to Nuremberg.
A CITY LIVING ON THE PAST
Nuremberg, or Nurnberg, was built, I believe, about the beginning of time.At least, in an old black-letter history of the city which Ihave 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.