remains unsullied by contact with it, he and his friends devoted themselves to what is after all the highest philosophy, the study of mankind--hiding under a smiling face, nay, often a mocking mien, their confidence in the great destinies of the race. And yet a deep pathos attaches to Pirkheimer's closing days. Disappointed in his dreams of moral and spiritual regeneration for the people, he turned wearily back from the paths of the new doctrine to the bosom of Mother Church. His violent attack upon Johann Eck, his noble defence of Reuchlin, had seemed to foreshadow him as a leader of the Reformation.[117] But his ideals were in reality of {94} the past rather than of the future; and, brooding over his shattered hopes, he lingered out a solitary old age, whose sadness is but deepened by his swan-like lament for Dürer. [Illustration: ALBRECHT DURER] Dürer was indeed well worthy of all the praise which has been lavished upon him; for from all his works there shines forth the noble modesty of a pure good man. Though scarcely a scholar himself, his deep sympathy with the great movement is manifest not only in the manner in which his art interprets it, but also in his own written words.[118] His letters to Pirkheimer from Venice form delightful reading and show the keenness of his sympathy and observation. The years which followed his return to Nuremberg, 1507-1514, were the most productive period of his life, as well as the period of his most intimate connexion with Maximilian. From them date the ambitious designs of the "Ehrenpforte" (Triumphal Arch), which, though executed under Maximilian's direct supervision, were entirely the idea of Dürer. No less than ninety-two large woodcuts, the production of which occupied Dürer for two years, go to {95} make up this imposing metaphorical picture. A structure in itself impossible is overburdened by portraits of all the ancestors of Maximilian, mythical as well as real, and by the many exploits and adventures of the Emperor's own life. But the work must be estimated less by the quaintness of its composition than by its sterling artistic qualities and by the important place which it holds in the development of German Art. The idea was further developed in the "Triumphzug" and the "Triumphwagen," which was completed in 1516. The Imperial and other triumphal cars were drawn by Dürer in sixty-three woodcuts, while the remaining seventy-four were prepared in Augsburg by Hans Burgkmair and L. Beck.[119] The procession, whose magnificence was to idealize Maximilian as the greatest of Princes, includes sketches of almost everything that ever roused the Emperor's interest. Landsknechts, cannon, huntsmen, mummers, dancers of every rank and variety, the noble ladies of the Court, are mingled with allegories of every Imperial and human virtue, elaborately grouped upon triumphal cars. The keen personal interest of Maximilian in the progress of the work is well attested.