Turning back toward the square again, I notice, rising above the houses, the green spires of another church, and over the heads of some market-women, who are chaffering over their fish and vegetables, the profile of a little building with brick pillars, which must have been a pillory in its day.  This gives a last touch to the purely Gothic aspect of the square which is interrupted by no modern edifice.  The ingenious idea occurred to me that this splendid Stadthaus must have another facade; and so in fact it had; passing under an archway, I found myself in a broad street, and my admiration began anew.

Five bell-towers, built half into the wall and separated by tall ogive-windows now partly blocked up, repeated, with variations, the facade I have just described.  Brick rosettes exhibited their curious designs, spreading with square stitches, so to speak, like patterns for worsted work.  At the base of the somber edifice a pretty little lodge, of the Renaissance, built as an afterthought, gave entrance to an exterior staircase going up along the wall diagonally to a sort of mirador, or overhanging look-out, in exquisite taste.  Graceful little statues of Faith and Justice, elegantly draped, decorated the portico.

The staircase, resting on arches which widened as it rose higher, was ornamented with grotesque masks and caryatides.  The mirador, placed above the arched doorway opening upon the market-place, was crowned with a recessed and voluted pediment, where a figure of Themis held in one hand balances, and in the other a sword, not forgetting to give her drapery, at the same time, a coquettish puff.  An odd order formed of fluted pilasters fashioned like pedestals and supporting busts, separated the windows of this aerial cage.  Consoles with fantastic masks completed the elegant ornamentation, over which Time had passed his thumb just enough to give to the carved stone that bloom which nothing can imitate....

The Marienkirche, which stands, as I have said, behind the Stadt-haus, is well worth a visit.  Its two towers are 408 feet in height; a very elaborate belfry rises from the roof at the point of intersection of the transept.  The towers of Luebeck have the peculiarity, every one of them, of being out of the perpendicular, leaning perceptibly to the right or left, but without disquieting the eye, like the tower of Asinelli at Bologna, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Seen two or three miles away, these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to nod at the horizon, present a droll and hilarious silhouette.

On entering the church, the first curious object that meets the eye is a copy of the Todtentanz, or Dance of Death, of the cemetery at Basle.  I do not need to describe it in detail.  The Middle Ages were never tired of composing variations upon this dismal theme.  The most conspicuous of them are brought together in this lugubrious painting, which covers all the walls of one chapel.  From the