The interior of the Church of St. Lawrence is richer than any other I remember, with its magnificent pillars of dark red stone, rising and foliating out to form the roof; its splendid windows of stained glass, glowing with sacred story; a high gallery of stone entirely round the choir, and beautiful statuary on every column.  Here, too, is the famous Sacrament House of honest old Adam Kraft, the most exquisite thing I ever saw in stone.  The color is light gray; and it rises beside one of the dark, massive pillars, sixty-four feet, growing to a point, which then strikes the arch of the roof, and there curls up like a vine to avoid it.  The base is supported by the kneeling figures of Adam Kraft and two fellow-workmen, who labored on it for four years.  Above is the Last Supper, Christ blessing little children, and other beautiful tableaux in stone.  The Gothic spire grows up and around these, now and then throwing out graceful tendrils, like a vine, and seeming to be rather a living plant than inanimate stone.  The faithful artist evidently had this feeling for it; for, as it grew under his hands, he found that it would strike the roof, or he must sacrifice something of its graceful proportion.  So his loving and daring genius suggested the happy design of letting it grow to its curving, graceful completeness.

He who travels by a German railway needs patience and a full haversack.  Time is of no value.  The rate of speed of the trains is so slow, that one sometimes has a desire to get out and walk, and the stoppages at the stations seem eternal; but then we must remember that it is a long distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer.  We left Lindau on one of the usual trains at half-past five in the morning, and reached Augsburg at one o’clock in the afternoon:  the distance cannot be more than a hundred miles.  That is quicker than by diligence, and one has leisure to see the country as he jogs along.  There is nothing more sedate than a German train in motion; nothing can stand so dead still as a German train at a station.  But there are express trains.

We were on one from Augsburg to Nuremberg, and I think must have run twenty miles an hour.  The fare on the express trains is one fifth higher than on the others.  The cars are all comfortable; and the officials, who wear a good deal of uniform, are much more civil and obliging than officials in a country where they do not wear uniforms.  So, not swiftly, but safely and in good-humor, we rode to the capital of Bavaria.

OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH