Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart,

Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, 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.

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 these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,

Walked of yore the Mastersingers, 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 too 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 alehouse, 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 Puschman's song,

As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long.

And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care,

Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the

master's antique chair.

Vanished is the ancient splendor, 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, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler-bard.

Thus, O 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 floweret of the soil,

The nobility of labor, -the long pedigree of

toil.

THE NORMAN BARON.

Dans les moments de la vie où la réflexion devient plus calme et plus profonde, où l'intérêt et l'avarice parlent moins haut que la raison, dans les instants de chagrin domestique, de maladie, et de péril de mort, les nobles se repentirent de posséder des serfs, comme d'une chose peu agréable à Dieu, qui avait créé tous les hommes à son image.

THIERRY CONQUÊTE DE L'ANGLETERRE.

In his chamber, weak and dying,
Was the Norman baron lying;

Loud, without, the tempest thundered,

And the castle-turret shook.