The facts as to the origin of Nuremberg are lost in the dim shadows of tradition. When the little town sprang up amid the forests and swamps which still marked the course of the Pegnitz, we know as little as we know the origin of the name Nürnberg. It is true that the Chronicles of later days are only too ready to furnish us with information; but the information is not always reliable. The Chronicles, like our own peerage, are apt to contain too vivid efforts of imaginative fiction. The Chroniclers, unharassed by facts or documents, with minds "not by geography prejudiced, or warped by history," cannot unfortunately always be believed. It is, for instance, quite possible that Attila, King of the Huns, passed and plundered Nuremberg, as they tell us. But there is no proof, no record of that visitation. Again, the inevitable legend of a visit from Charlemagne occurs. He, you may be sure, was lost in the woods whilst hunting near Nuremberg, and passed all night alone, unhurt by the wild beasts. As a token of gratitude for God's manifest favour he caused a chapel to be built on the spot. The chapel stands to this day--a twelfth-century building--but no matter! for did not Otho I., as our Chroniclers tell us, attend mass in St. Sebald's Church in 970, though St. Sebald's Church cannot have been built till a century later? The origin of the very name of Nuremberg is hidden in clouds of obscurity. In the earliest documents we find it spelt with the usual variations of early manuscripts--Nourenberg, Nuorimperc, Niurenberg, Nuremberc, etc. The origin of the place, we repeat, is equally obscure. Many attempts have been made to find history in the light of the derivations of the name. But when philology turns historian it is apt to play strange tricks. Nur ein Berg (only a castle), or Nero's Castle, or Norix Tower--what matter which is the right derivation, so long as we can base a possible theory on it? The Norixberg theory will serve to illustrate the incredible quantity of misplaced ingenuity which both of old times and in the present has been wasted in trying to explain the inexplicable. The Heidenthurm--the Heathen Tower of the Castle--is so called from some carvings on the exterior which were once regarded as idols. Wolckan maintains that it was an ancient temple of Diana. For those carvings, he says, represent the figures of dogs and of two male figures with clubs, who must be Hercules and his son _Noricus_. Hence Norixberg. After which it seems prosaic to have to assert that the "figures of dogs" are really lions, and the male figures are Saints or Kings of Israel, and certainly not heathen images. There is in point of fact no trace of Roman colonisation here. [Illustration: THE HEATHEN TOWER]