The Hofkirche, then, may be entered casually, examined superficially, and quitted without regret. Time will be better spent in lingering on the old wooden foot-bridges that still span the green and insurgent Reuss at some little distance below its exit from the lake. Formerly there were three; but the longest--the old Hof-brücke--was sacrificed in 1852 to the passion for spurious improvement. Of the two that survive, the Kapell-Brücke is by far the most important, and apparently gets its name from the old St. Peter's Chapel on the north shore of the river, to which it leads diagonally across the clear and voluminous stream. In actual touch with this, but nearer the southern shore, rises the picturesque old Wasserturm, which is said once to have served as a lighthouse (_lucerna_), and to have given Lucerne its name. The Premonstratensian Abbey of La Lucerne, near Avranches, in Normandy, is stated in Joanne's handbook to have got its title from the same source; but the Swiss Lucerne is perhaps better derived (I do not profess to understand by what strange process of corruption) from the name of its patron, Leodegar. Anyhow, this old Water-Tower is a decidedly striking object, and conspicuous in most photographs and pictures of Lucerne, with its typical octagonal cap. Both the two old wooden bridges, as is common in Switzerland, are protected from the weather by open timber roofs; and inserted in the framing of these last is a series of eighteenth-century paintings, representing, in the case of the Kapell-Brücke, scenes from the history of the city, and from the lives of its patronal saints, St. Mauritius and St. Leodegar; and in the case of the lesser Spreuer, or Mühlen, Brücke a late, post-medieval representation of the grim, medieval humours of the ghastly Dance of Death. This strange _memento mori_ was a favourite morality of the Middle Time; Death in the form of a skeleton (Wordsworth's "Death the Skeleton") presents himself in turn to all kinds and conditions of men--in the great series at the old abbey church of La Chaise-Dieu (Haute-Loire) in France to actually not less than thirty-five, now setting his foot with timid determination on the trailing robe of a sacrosanct Pope; now greeting with mocking glance a Cardinal, who averts his head with hasty terror; now dancing with insolent familiarity in front of an aged man; now laying his bony grasp on a troubadour, who lets his mandoline clatter to the ground in access of sudden fear. These are subjects depicted at La Chaise-Dieu; but just the same spirit of gruesome raillery inspires the _danse macabre_ wherever found: "Le pauvre en sa chaumière où le chaume le courve Est sujet à ses lois; Et la garde qui veille aux barrières du Louvre N'en défend pas nos rois." At Hexham there are still four paintings on panel, representing Death with a Pope, an Emperor, a King, and a Cardinal. Browning tells us in connection with the old revellers of Venice how