In the neighborhood of Nuremberg—­that is to say, scarcely more than an English mile from thence—­are the grave and tombstone of Albert Duerer.  The monument is simple and striking.  In the churchyard there is a representation of the Crucifixion, cut in stone.  It was on a fine, calm evening, just after sunset, that I first visited the tombstone of Albert Duerer; and I shall always remember the sensations, with which that visit was attended, as among the most pleasing and impressive of my life.  The silence of the spot—­its retirement from the city—­the falling shadows of night, and the increasing solemnity of every monument of the dead—­together with the mysterious, and even awful, effect produced by the colossal crucifix—­but yet, perhaps, more than either, the recollection of the extraordinary talents of the artist, so quietly sleeping beneath my feet—­all conspired to produce a train of reflections which may be readily conceived, but not so readily described.  If ever a man deserved to be considered as the glory of his age and nation, Albert Duerer was surely that man.  He was, in truth, the Shakespeare of his art—­for the period.

[Footnote A:  From “A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour.”  Dibdin’s tour was made in 1821.]

NUREMBERG TO-DAY[A]

BY CECIL HEADLAM

Nuremberg is set upon a series of small slopes in the midst of an undulating, sandy plain, some 900 feet above the sea.  Here and there on every side fringes and patches of the mighty forest which once covered it are still visible; but for the most part the plain is now freckled with picturesque villages, in which stand old turreted chateaux, with gabled fronts and latticed windows, or it is clothed with carefully cultivated crops or veiled from sight by the smoke which rises from the new-grown forest of factory chimneys.

The railway sets us down outside the walls of the city.  As we walk from the station toward the Frauen Thor, and stand beneath the crown of fortified walls three and a half miles in circumference, and gaze at the old gray towers and picturesque confusion of domes, pinnacles and spires, suddenly it seems as if our dream of a feudal city has been realized.  There, before us, is one of the main entrances, still between massive gates and beneath archways flanked by stately towers.  Still to reach it we must cross a moat fifty feet deep and a hundred feet wide.  True, the swords of old days have been turned into pruning-hooks; the crenelles and embrasures which once bristled and blazed with cannon are now curtained with brambles and wall-flowers, and festooned with Virginia creepers; the galleries are no longer crowded with archers and cross-bowmen; the moat itself has blossomed into a garden, luxuriant with limes and acacias, elders, planes, chestnuts, poplars, walnut, willow and birch trees, or divided into carefully tilled little garden plots.  True it is that outside the moat, beneath the smug grin of substantial modern houses, runs that mark of modernity, the electric tram.