It may seem a little superfluous here to attempt to describe the Rathskeller at Bremen, for it is well known to many travellers. But from the method by which travellers are usually conducted through the vaults, in which Hauff spent his grandfather's _Schalttag_ in that bygone October, little acquaintance with the object of his story is to be derived. The Rathhaus at Bremen, then, is by far the most conspicuous object in the town. It contains some of the most beautiful of the German efforts, both in stone and wood carving, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Whether there is any connection between the fact that the fifteenth century preferred stone, the sixteenth wood, and the other fact that the former of these centuries was to the Hanse towns the epoch of glory, the latter the epoch of decay, we must leave for Mr. Ruskin to decide. Anyhow, the men who embellished that Rathhaus inside were as little conscious of the decay of their city as those who built it and decorated it outside. So far as Germany is concerned, even in the best examples of Lübeck, Augsburg, or Nuremberg, the force of Art could no further go. But descend the steps on the left of the building, and you will find a very different state of things. The cellar is built as a cellar should be, strictly with a view to the practical--that is, to the comfort of its inhabitants, the mighty spirits imprisoned in the mighty casks. For the comfort of those who came to commune with those mighty spirits, a broad oak settle with strong arms would and did suffice; and the steps were made strictly with a view to be _easy of ascent_. Since Hauff's time, and partly in consequence of his story, the internal arrangements appear to have been much altered. Some of the cellar chambers have been painted in the true modern German style, about which we should prefer not to say too much. Some of the mural paintings profess to be representations of scenes in the story. There is no longer a passage straight through from the Apostle cellar to the boudoir of Frau Rosa herself, and of the other vaults the cellar of Bacchus is alone unaltered. Bacchus, indeed, is the hero of the place. No better description could possibly be given of him than that which Hauff gives, and therefore we will not attempt to amplify it. But the same Bacchus does not actually 'in the wood,' so to speak, sit there. He was taken down ten years ago, and a new one put up in his place--why, I failed to discover. His cask is, however, like all the other casks except Frau Rosa (who has disappeared altogether), the old one, a veritable Thirty Years War cask, beautifully carved with fantastic figures in relief. In the Apostle cellar all the wine is Hochheimer or Rüdesheimer, and the names are still graven on each cask, and 'Herr Judas, 1729,' is said to contain the best wine. But from a somewhat limited experience it is difficult cordially to endorse the reported opinion of the late King Ludwig of Bavaria, that the finest