“That is the keynote of this wonderful structure. Through years of difficulty and distress the pious artist had toiled and struggled on with the help of pious persons, paid by their voluntary contributions, to complete a work “to the praise of God Almighty alone and the honour of St. Sebald.” No word, one feels, can add to the simple dignity and faith of that inscription. It supplies us with the motive of the work, and it supplies us also with the true interpretation of the various groups and figures which form the shrine. To the glory of God,—we are shown how all the world, all nature and her products, all paganism with its heroic deeds and natural virtues, the Old Dispensation with its prophets and lawgivers, and the New, with its apostles and saints, pay homage to the Infant Christ, the guardian genius bringing salvation, who, enthroned on the summit of the central cupola, holds in his hands the terrestrial globe. To the honour of St. Sebald,—the miniature Gothic Chapel enshrines beneath its richly fretted canopy, fifteen feet high, the oaken coffer encased in beaten plates of gold and silver in which lie the bones of St. Sebald; and below this sarcophagus, which dates from 1397, are admirable bas-reliefs representing scenes and miracles from the life of the Saint. [Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [ST. SEBALD’S CHURCH, NÜRNBERG 8. ST. PETER] “Around the substructure of the tomb rise eight slender piers, bearing eight foliated arches, which, in turn, support three perforated cupolas enriched with pillared and arched buttresses. In the centre of these arches are placed richly ornamented candlesticks, with candles of bronze, and these also serve as supports and run out into leafy chalices on which graceful children play and swing. The bases of the eight slender pillars are formed by all sorts of strange figures and creatures suggestive of the world of pagan mythology, gods of the forest and of the sea, nymphs of the water and the wood. Between them are some lions couchant which recall to the memory Wolgemut’s Peringsdörffer altarpiece. At the four corners are real candlesticks held by the most graceful and seductive winged mermaids, with fish-tails and taloned feet, about whom serpents twine. But the most famous and the most beautiful figures are those of the twelve apostles, which stand, each about two feet high, under delicate canopies, on shafts of the piers already mentioned. Clad in graceful, flowing robes, their expression and whole attitude eloquent both of vigour and of tranquil dignity, these statues are wholly admirable. What sculpture or painting could convey to a higher degree the sense of the intellectual and moral beauty and strength which centred in these first followers of Christ? This characteristic pervades them all, but the unity of suggestion is conveyed through a variety of individualities and of pose. Each Apostle stands forth distinct in the vigour of his own inspired personality. (Ill. 8 and 9.)