Of course, we went to see the houses where these old worthies lived, and the works of art they have left behind them,--things seen and described by everybody.The stone carving about the church portals and on side buttresses is inexpressibly quaint and *****.The subjects are sacred; and with the sacred is mingled the comic, here as at Augsburg, where over one portal of the cathedral, with saints and angels, monkeys climb and gibber.A favorite subject is that of our Lord praying in the Garden, while the apostles, who could not watch one hour, are sleeping in various attitudes of stony comicality.All the stone-cutters seem to have tried their chisels on this group, and there are dozens of them.The wise and foolish virgins also stand at the church doors in time-stained stone,--the one with a perked-up air of conscious virtue, and the other with a penitent dejection that seems to merit better treatment.Over the great portal of St.Lawrence--a magnificent structure, with lofty twin spires and glorious rosewindow is carved "The Last Judgment."Underneath, the dead are climbing out of their stone coffins; above sits the Judge, with the attending angels.On the right hand go away the stiff, prim saints, in flowing robes, and with palms and harps, up steps into heaven, through a narrow door which St.Peter opens for them; while on the left depart the wicked, with wry faces and distorted forms, down into the stone flames, towards which the Devil is dragging them by their stony hair.
The interior of the Church of St.Lawrence is richer than any other Iremember, 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
I saw yesterday, on the 31st of August, in the English Garden, dead leaves whirling down to the ground, a too evident sign that the summer weather is going.Indeed, it has been sour, chilly weather for a week now, raining a little every day, and with a very autumn feeling in the air.The nightly concerts in the beer-gardens must have shivering listeners, if the bands do not, as many of them do, play within doors.The line of droschke drivers, in front of the post-office colonnade, hide the red facings of their coats under long overcoats, and stand in cold expectancy beside their blanketed horses, which must need twice the quantity of black-bread in this chilly air; for the horses here eat bread, like people.I see the drivers every day slicing up the black loaves, and feeding them, taking now and then a mouthful themselves, wetting it down with a pull from the mug of beer that stands within reach.And lastly (I am still speaking of the weather), the gay military officers come abroad in long cloaks, to some extent concealing their manly forms and smart uniforms, which I am sure they would not do, except under the pressure of necessity.
Yet I think this raw weather is not to continue.It is only a rough visit from the Tyrol, which will give place to kinder influences.We came up here from hot Switzerland at the end of July, expecting to find Munich a furnace.It will be dreadful in Munich everybody said.
So we left Luzerne, where it was warm, not daring to stay till the expected rival sun, Victoria of England, should make the heat overpowering.But the first week of August in Munich it was delicious weather,--clear, sparkling, bracing air, with no chill in it and no languor in it, just as you would say it ought to be on a high, gravelly plain, seventeen hundred feet above the sea.Then came a week of what the Muncheners call hot weather, with the thermometer up to eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and the white wide streets and gray buildings in a glare of light; since then, weather of the most uncertain sort.