Among the most treasured of Nuremberg's relics is the low-ceilinged, gabled house near the Thiergärtnerthor, in which Albert Dürer lived and died, in the street now called after his name. The works of art which he presented to the town, or with which he adorned its churches, have unfortunately, with but few exceptions, been sold to the stranger. It is in Vienna and Munich, in Dresden and Berlin, in Florence, in Prague, or the British Museum, that we find splendid collections of Dürer's works. Not at Nuremberg. But here at any rate we can see the house in which he toiled--no genius ever took more pains--and the surroundings which imprest his mind and influenced his inspiration. If, in the past, Nuremberg has been only too anxious to turn his works into cash, to-day she guards Albert Dürer's house with a care and reverence little short of religious. She has sold, in the days of her poverty and foolishness, the master's pictures and drawings, which are his own best monument; but she has set up a noble monument to his memory (by Rauch, 1840) in the Dürer Platz, and his house is opened to the public between the hours of 8 A.M. and 1 P.M., and 2 and 6 P.M. on week days. The Albert-Dürer-Haus Society has done admirable work in restoring and preserving the house in its original state with the aid of Professor Wanderer's architectural and antiquarian skill. Reproductions of Dürer's works are also kept here. The most superficial acquaintance with Dürer's drawings will have prepared us for the sight of his simple, unpretentious house and its contents. In his "Birth of the Virgin" he gives us a picture of the German home of his day, where there were few superfluous knick-knacks, but everything which served for daily use was well and strongly made and of good design. Ceilings, windows, doors and door-handles, chests, locks, candlesticks, banisters, waterpots, the very cooking utensils, all betray the fine taste and skilled labor, the personal interest of the man who made them. So in Dürer's house, as it is preserved to-day, we can still see and admire the careful simplicity of domestic furniture, which distinguishes that in the "Birth of the Virgin." The carved coffers, the solid tables, the spacious window-seats, the well-fitting cabinets let into the walls, the carefully wrought metal-work we see there are not luxurious; their merit is quite other than that. In workmanship as in design, how utterly do they put to shame the contents of the ordinary "luxuriously furnished apartments" of the present day!