[!--Note--] 6 ([return])
See Taylor's "Historic Survey of German Poetry." Herman was afterwards murdered by a band of conspirators, and Thusnelda, on learning the fate of her husband, died brokenhearted.
[!--Note--] 7 ([return])
The notices which follow are abridged from the essay "on Ancient German and Northern Poetry," before mentioned—from the preface to the edition of the Nibelungen Lied, by M. Von der Hagen—and the analysis of the poem in the Illustrations of Northern Antiquities. My own first acquaintance with the Nibelungen Lied, I owed to an accomplished friend, who gave me a detailed and lively analysis of the story and characters; and certainly no child ever hung upon a tale of ogres and fairies with more intense interest than I did upon her recital of the adventures of the Nibelungen.
[!--Note--] 8 ([return])
Dietrich of Bern (i. e. Theodoric of Verona,) is the great hero of South Germany—the King Arthur of Teutonic romance, who figures in all the warlike lays and legends of the middle ages.
[!--Note--] 9 ([return])
See the Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 213.
[!--Note--] 10 ([return])
In the altercation between the two queens, Chrimhilde boasts of possessing these trophies, and displays them in triumph to her mortified rival; for which indiscretion, as she afterwards complains, "her husband was in high anger, and beat her black and blue." This treatment, however, which seems to have been quite a matter of course, does not diminish the fond idolatry of the wife,—rather increases it.
[!--Note--] 11 ([return])
This list will be subjoined at the end of these Sketches.
[!--Note--] 12 ([return])
Sofonisba Augusciola, one of the most charming of portrait painters. She died in 1626, at the age of ninety-three.
[!--Note--] 13 ([return])
I regret that I omitted to note the name of the artist of this magnificent work. There is a still more admirable monument of the same period in the church at Inspruck, the tomb of the archduke, Ferdinand of Tyrol, consisting, I believe, of twelve colossal statues in bronze.
[!--Note--] 14 ([return])
The first stone of the Valhalla was laid by the King of Bavaria, on the 18th of October 1830.
[!--Note--] 15 ([return])
The Einheriar are the souls of heroes admitted into the Valhalla.