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 words, 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 interpretation of the various groups and statues 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 the New with its apostles and saints, pay homage to the Infant Christ, who enthroned on the summit holds in his hands the terrestrial globe. To the honour of St. Sebald,--the miniature Gothic chapel of bronze, under the richly fretted canopy some fifteen feet high, contains the oaken coffer encased with silver in which the bones of St. Sebald lie; and below this sarcophagus, which dates from 1397, are admirable bas-reliefs representing scenes and miracles from the life of the Saint.[46] At the feet of the eight slender pillars which support the canopy are 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 Altar-piece. At the four corners are candlesticks held by most graceful and seductive winged mermaids. But the most famous and the most beautiful figures are those of the Twelve Apostles, which stand, each about two feet, on high brackets and in niches on the pillars of the canopy. Clad in graceful, flowing robes, their expression and whole attitude expressive both of vigour and of tranquil dignity, these statues are wholly admirable. I know no sculpture or painting which conveys to a higher degree the sense of the intellectual and moral beauty and strength which centred in these first followers of Christ. That characteristic pervades them all, but the unity of suggestion is conveyed through a variety of individualities and of actions. Each apostle stands forth distinct in the vigour of his own inspired personality. Those at the east end of the monument are St. Peter and St. Andrew; on the north, or right side as we face these, are SS. Simon, Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthew; on the south, or left, SS. John, James, Philip, and Paul; and on the west SS. Thaddæus and Matthias. The apostles are surmounted by the forms of the Fathers of the Church, or rather perhaps of the twelve minor prophets. Beneath the apostles, on the substructure in a niche facing west, is a fine statue of St. Sebald, and at the corresponding place on the other end of the monument is the excellent statue of P. Vischer himself, to which we have referred.