Hans Sachs,[22] the old poet of Nuremberg, did as much for the Reformation by his songs and satires, as Luther and the doctors by their preaching; besides being one of the worshipful company of meister-singers, he found time to make shoes, and even enrich himself by his trade: he informs us himself that he had composed and written with his own hand "four thousand two hundred mastership songs; two hundred and eight comedies, tragedies, and farces; one thousand seven hundred fables, tales, and miscellaneous poems; and seventy-three devotional, military, and love songs." It is said he excelled in humour, but it was such as might have been expected from the times--it was vigorous and coarse. "Hans," says the critic, "tells his tale like a convivial burgher, fond of his can, and still fonder of his drollery."[23] If this be the case, his house has received a very appropriate designation: it is now an ale-house, from which, as I looked up, the mixed odours of beer and tobacco, and the sound of voices singing in chorus, streamed through the old latticed windows. "Drollery" and "the can" were as rife in the dwelling of the immortal shoemaker as they would have been in his own days, and in his own jovial presence. In the church of St. Sibbald, now the chief Protestant church, I was surprised to find that most of the Roman Catholic symbols and relics remained undisturbed: the large crucifix, the old pictures of the saints and Madonnas had been reverentially preserved. The perpetual light which had been vowed four centuries ago by one of the Tucher family, was still burning over his tomb; no puritanic zeal had quenched that tiny flame in its chased silver lamp; and through successive generations, and all revolutions of politics and religion, maintained and fed by the pious honesty of the descendants, it still shone on, Like the bright lamp that lay in Kildare's holy fane, And burned through long ages of darkness and storm!