Alas, how the finest fairy tales may be spoiled!  The knight, in fact, when he has found the sleeping princess, ought to cut a piece from her priceless veil, and when, by his bravery, she has been awakened from her magic sleep and is again seated on her golden throne in her palace, the knight should approach her and say, “My fairest princess, dost thou not know me?” Then she will answer, “My bravest knight, I know thee not!” And then he shows her the piece cut from her veil, exactly fitting the deficiency, and she knows that he is her deliverer, and both tenderly embrace, and the trumpets sound, and the marriage is celebrated.  It is really a very peculiar misfortune that my love-dreams so seldom have so fine a conclusion.

[Illustration:  OLD IMPERIAL PALACE, GOSLAR]

The name of Goslar rings so pleasantly, and there are so many very ancient and imperial associations connected therewith, that I had hoped to find an imposing and stately town.  But it is always the same old story when we examine celebrities too closely.  I found a nest of houses, drilled in every direction with narrow streets of labyrinthine crookedness, and amid which a miserable stream, probably the Gose, winds its sad and muddy way.  The pavement of the town is as ragged as Berlin hexameters.  Only the antiquities which are imbedded in the frame or mounting of the city—­that is to say, its remnants of walls, towers, and battlements—­give the place a piquant look.  One of these towers, known as the “Zwinger,” or donjonkeep, has walls of such extraordinary thickness that entire rooms are excavated therein.  The open place before the town, where the world-renowned shooting matches are held, is a beautiful large plain surrounded by high mountains.  The market is small, and in its midst is a spring fountain, the waters from which pours into a great metallic basin.  When an alarm of fire is raised, they strike several times on this cup-formed basin, which gives out a very loud vibration.  Nothing is known of the origin of this work.  Some say that the devil placed it once during the night on the spot where it stands.  In those days people were as yet fools, nor was the devil any wiser, and they mutually exchanged gifts.

The town hall of Goslar is a whitewashed guard-room.  The Guildhall, hard by, has a somewhat better appearance.  In this building, equidistant from roof and ceiling, stands the statues of German emperors.  Blackened with smoke and partly gilded, in one hand the sceptre, and in the other the globe, they look like roasted college beadles.  One of the emperors holds a sword instead of a sceptre.  I cannot imagine the reason of this variation from the established order, though it has doubtless some occult signification, as Germans have the remarkable peculiarity of meaning something in whatever they do.

In Gottschalk’s Handbook I had read much of the very ancient cathedral, and of the far-famed imperial throne at Goslar.  But when I wished to see these curiosities, I was informed that the church had been torn down, and that the throne had been carried to Berlin.  We live in deeply significant times, when millennial churches are destroyed and imperial thrones are tumbled into the lumber-room.