Pope and the Emperor to the infant in his cradle, each human being in his turn enters upon the dance with the inevitable terror.  But death is not depicted as a skeleton, white, polished, cleaned, articulated with copper wire like the skeleton of an anatomical cabinet:  that would be too ornamental for the vulgar crowd.  He appears as a dead body in a more or less advanced state of decomposition, with all the horrid secrets of the tomb carefully revealed....

The cathedral, which is called in German the Dom, is quite remarkable in its interior.  In the middle of the nave, filling one whole arch, is a colossal Christ of Gothic style, nailed to a cross carved in open-work, and ornamented with arabesques.  The foot of this cross rests upon a transverse beam, going from one pillar to another, on which are standing the holy women and other pious personages, in attitudes of grief and adoration; Adam and Eve, one on either side, are arranging their paradisaic costume as decently as may be; above the cross the keystone of the arch projects, adorned with flowers and leafage, and serves as a standing-place for an angel with long wings.  This construction, hanging in mid-air, and evidently light in weight, notwithstanding its magnitude, is of wood, carved with much taste and skill.  I can define it in no better way than to call it a carved portcullis, lowered halfway in front of the chancel.  It is the first example of such an arrangement that I have ever seen....

The Holstenthor, a city gate close by the railway station, is a most curious and picturesque specimen of German medieval architecture.  Imagine two enormous brick towers united by the main portion of the structure, through which opens an archway, like a basket-handle, and you have a rude sketch of the construction; but you would not easily conceive of the effect produced by the high summit of the edifice, the conical roofs of the towers, the whimsical windows in the walls and in the roofs, the dull red or violet tints of the defaced bricks.  It is altogether a new gamut for painters of architecture or of ruins; and I shall send them to Luebeck by the next train.  I recommend to their notice also, very near the Holstenthor, on the left bank of the Trave, five or six crimson houses, shouldering each other for mutual support, bulging out in front, pierced with six or seven stories of windows, with denticulated gables, the deep red reflection of them trailing in the water, like some high-colored apron which a servant-maid is washing.  What a picture Van den Heyden would have made of this!

Following the quay, along which runs a railway, where freight-trains were constantly passing, I enjoyed many amusing and varied scenes.  On the other side of the Trave were to be seen, amid houses and clumps of trees, vessels in various stages of building.  Here, a skeleton with ribs of wood, like the carcass of some stranded whale; there, a hull, clad with its planking near which smokes the calker’s cauldron,