The whole city, which is very large, lies crowded and compact within its walls; but the fortifications, once the wonder of all Germany, and their three hundred and sixty-five towers, once the glory and safeguard of the inhabitants, exist no longer. Four huge circular towers stand at the principal gates,--four huge towers of almost dateless antiquity, and blackened with age, but of such admirable construction, that the masonry appears, from its entireness and smoothness, as if raised yesterday. The old castle or fortress, which stands on a height commanding the town and a glorious view, is a strange, dismantled, incongruous heap of buildings. It happened, that in the summer of 1833, the king of Bavaria, accompanied by the queen and the princess Matilda, had paid his good city of Nuremberg a visit, and had been most royally entertained by the inhabitants. The apartments in the old castle, long abandoned to the rats and spiders, had been prepared for the royal guests, and, when I saw it, three or four months afterwards, nothing could be more uncouth and fantastical than the effect of these irregular rooms, with all manner of angles, with their carved worm-eaten ceilings, their curious latticed and painted windows, and most preposterous stoves, now all tricked out with fresh paint here and there, and hung with gay glazed papers of the most modern fashion, and the most gaudy patterns. Even the chapel, with its four old pillars, which, according to the legend, had been brought by Old Nick himself from Rome, and the effigy of the monk who had cheated his infernal adversary, by saying the Litanies faster than had ever been known before or since, had, in honour of the king's visit, received a new coat of paint. There are some very curious old pictures in the castle, (which luckily were not repainted for the same grand occasion,) among them an original portrait of Albert Durer. In the courtyard of the fortress stands an extraordinary relic--the old lime-tree planted by the Empress Cunegunde, wife of the Emperor Henry III.; every thing is done to preserve it from decay, and it still bears its leafy honours, after beholding the revolution of seven centuries.