But I feel that, in criticising its brick work, I have been led into abusing old Lübeck almost too much. Perhaps I ought only to express my grateful recollection of all the treasures which she still possesses,--of her screens, her church furniture, her spacious interiors, and her many picturesque features of antiquarian and ecclesiological interest, her triptychs, her brasses, and her gateways,--rather than attempt to draw a parallel between her and Italy; between the stern ruggedness of the north, and the sunny softness and delicacy of the south; between, moreover, a city built as it were in a day,--for Lübeck’s rise was sudden almost beyond all precedent, without a history, and without older days to teach and to correct her,--and a land whose memories of the past and associations with old art were, even in the Middle Ages, well nigh as great, and as valuable in their influence on the mind of her people, as they can be even at the present day. More just it is, perhaps, only to be thankful for all the pleasures with which my three days’ sojourn in this noble old city was full even to overflowing; and (forgetful of the faults of her architects) to dwell more upon the lessons which their works cannot fail to teach us, if we will only lovingly and patiently study and examine them. II NAUMBURG CATHEDRAL I reached Naumburg late at night in a tremendous storm; but the sun rose cheeringly, and I started early for the cathedral fearful of disappointment, as I had spent half the previous day in a mistaken attempt to find something interesting at Merseburg,--a place against which it is only right to warn all ecclesiologists. At Naumburg my fate was happier. The first view of the exterior is not very striking. A fair apsidal choir with a tower rising on either side, Romanesque at the base, and finished in late third-pointed, does not rise above the picturesque, and gives but small promise of the excessive interest of the interior. The plan is curious. A late Romanesque, or very early-pointed nave finished with eastern and western apsidal choirs, and separated from both of them by rood-screens; that to the eastern choir Romanesque, that to the western of most exquisite early pointed, and both of them coeval with the portions of the main fabric to which they belong. The eastern choir extends across the transepts, and is raised considerably above them, with solid stone parcloses, arcaded on the faces towards the transepts with semicircular arches, a kind of parclose not uncommon in the churches in this part of Germany.