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PAPERS ON LITERATURE AND ART.
| In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a Pix of sculpture rare, |
| Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. |
| Here, when Art was still Religion, with a simple reverent heart, |
| Lived and laboured Albert Durer, the Evangelist of Art; |
| Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, |
| Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land. |
| Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies; |
| Dead he is not, but departed, for the Artist never dies. |
| Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, |
| That he once has trod its pavement—that he once has breathed its air! |
| Through those streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, |
| Walked of yore the Master-singers, chanting rude poetic strains. |
| From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, |
| Building nests in Fame’s great temple, as in spouts the swallows build. |
| As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he to the mystic rhyme, |
| And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil’s chime; |
| Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom |
| In the forge’s dust and cinders—in the tissues of the loom. |
| Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft, |
| Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. |
| But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, |
| And a garland in the window, and his face above the door; |
| Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Paschman’s song, |
| As the old man grey and dove-like, with his great beard white and long. |
| And at night the swarth mechanic comes to drown his cank and care, |
| Quaffing ale from pewter tankards in the master’s antique chair. |
| Vanished is the ancient splendour, and before my dreamy eye |
| Wave these mingling shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry. |
| Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world’s regard; |
| But thy painter, Albert Durer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler bard. |
| Thus, oh, Nuremberg! a wanderer from a region far away, |
| As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay; |
| Gathering from the pavement’s crevice, as a flow’ret of the soil, |
| The nobility of labour, the long pedigree of toil. |
This image of the thought gathered like a flower from the crevice of the pavement, is truly natural and poetical.
Here is another image which came into the mind of the writer as he looked at the subject of his verse, and which pleases accor-
