In great cities, necessarily great centers of crime, we daily hear of murders; their frequency and remoteness leave us undisturbed.  Our sympathies can only be deeply moved either by some scenic peculiarities investing the crime with unusual romance or unusual atrocity, or else by the more immediate appeal of direct neighborly interest.  The murder which is read of in the Times as having occurred in Westminster, has seldom any special horror to the inhabitants of Islington or Oxford Street; but to the inhabitants of Westminster, and especially to the inhabitants of the particular street in which it was perpetrated, the crime assumes heart-shaking proportions.  Every detail is asked for, and every surmise listened to, with feverish eagerness is repeated and diffused through the crowd with growing interest.  The family of the victim; the antecedents of the assassin, if he is known; or the conjectures pointing to the unknown assassin,—­are eagerly discussed.  All the trivial details of household care or domestic fortunes, all the items of personal gossip, become invested with a solemn and affecting interest.  Pity for the victim and survivors mingle and alternate with fierce cries for vengeance on the guilty.  The whole street becomes one family, commingled by an energetic sympathy, united by one common feeling of compassion and wrath.

In villages, and in cities so small as Nuremberg, the same community of feeling is manifested.  The town became as one street.  The horror spread like a conflagration, the sympathy surged and swelled like a tide.  Everyone felt a personal interest in the event, as if the murder had been committed at his own door.  Never shall I forget that wail of passionate pity, and that cry for the vengeance of justice, which rose from all sides of the startled city.  Never shall I forget the hurry, the agitation, the feverish restlessness, the universal communicativeness, the volunteered services, the eager suggestion, surging round the house of the unhappy parents.  Herr Lehfeldt, the father of the unhappy girl, was a respected burgher known to almost every one.  His mercer’s shop was the leading one of the city.  A worthy, pious man, somewhat strict, but of irreproachable character; his virtues, no less than those of his wife, and of his only daughter, Lieschen—­ now, alas; for ever snatched from their yearning eyes—­were canvassed everywhere, and served to intensify the general grief.  That such a calamity should have fallen on a household so estimable, seemed to add fuel to the people’s wrath.  Poor Lieschen! her pretty, playful ways—­her opening prospects, as the only daughter of parents so well to do and so kind—­her youth and abounding life—­these were detailed with impassioned fervor by friends, and repeated by strangers who caught the tone of friends, as if they, too, had known and loved her.  But amidst the surging uproar of this sea of many voices no one clear voice of direction could be heard; no clue given to the clamorous bloodhounds to run down the assassin.