hooted at him in the street, could not withhold their
admiration,--sometimes a brooding dove with pretty, ruffled plumage;
sometimes the head and curving horns of a mountain chamois, instinct
with graceful life; sometimes a group of snails, each tiny spiral
reproduced with loving accuracy in the hard grained wood. To Peter
Burkgmaeier these evidences of a talent then in such high repute gave
most unbounded satisfaction. His own trade was far too severe for the
boy's frail strength, but wood-carving was fully as profitable, and
might lead to wealth and fame. Had not Veit Stoss, of whose genius
Nuremberg felt justly proud, already finished his wonderful group of
angels saluting the Virgin, which hung from the roof of St. Lorenz? With
such an example before him, what might not the boy hope to achieve
through talent and persevering labor? And Gabriel felt his own heart
burn as he looked with wistful eyes upon that masterpiece of rare and
delicate carving.

Nuremberg was then alive with the spirit of art, and everywhere he
turned there was something beautiful to quicken his pulse and feed the
flame within his soul, that was half rapture and half bitterness. No
idle boast was the old rhyme,--

"Nuremberg's hand
Goes through every land."

For the city's renown had spread far and wide, and in its many branches
of industry, as well as in the higher walks of art, it had reached the
zenith of its fame. Already, indeed, the canker-worm was gnawing at the
root, and unerring retribution was creeping on a blinded people; but no
sign of the future was manifested in the universal prosperity of the
day. Every street furnished its food for the artist's soul: the
Frauenkirche, enriched with the loving gifts of devout generations; St.
Sebald's, with its carved portal, its stained windows, its treasures of
bronze, and, above all, the shrine where Peter Vischer and his sons
labored for thirteen years. Gabriel loved St. Sebald's dearly, but
closer still to his heart was the majestic church of St. Lorenz, where,
in sharp relief against the dull red pillars, rose that dream in stone,
the Sacrament House of Adam Krafft, its slender, fretted spire springing
to the very roof, clasped in the embrace of the curling vine tendrils
carved around it.

Here the boy would linger for hours, never weary of studying every
detail of this faultless shrine. With envious eyes he gazed upon the
kneeling figures of Adam Krafft and his two fellow-labor