"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.
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