| E Canonia Claustroneoburgensi, 17 Septbr 1818. | ... dominationis Tuæ addictissimum MAXIMILIANUM FISCHER. Can. reg. Bibliothec. et Archivar." |
[157] The Emperor of Austria having stopped at this hotel, the landlord asked his permission to call it from henceforth by his Majesty's name; which was readily granted. There is an Album here, in which travellers are requested to inscribe their names, and in which I saw the imperial autograph.
[158] Especially in the striped broad shoes; which strongly resemble those in the series of wood-cuts descriptive of the triumphs of the Emperor Maximilian.
[159] There is a lithographic print of it recently published, from the drawing of Quaglio--of the same folio size with the similar prints of Ulm and Nuremburg. The date of the towers of the Cathedral of Ratisbon may be ascertained with the greatest satisfaction. From the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 folio xcviii, recto, it appears that when the author (Hartmann Schedel) wrote the text of that book, "the edifice was yet incomplete." This incomplete state, alludes, as I suspect, to the towers; for in the wood-cut, attached to the description, there is a crane fixed upon the top of one of the towers, and a stone being drawn up by it--this tower being one story shorter than the other. Schedel is warm in commendation of the numerous religious establishments, which, in his time, distinguished the city of Ratisbon. Of that of St. Emmeran, the following note supplies some account.
[160] Lord Spencer possesses some few early Classics from this monastic library, which was broken up about twenty years ago. His Lordship's copy of the Pliny of 1469, folio, from the same library, is, in all probability, the finest which exists. The MONASTERY OF ST. EMMERAM was doubtless among the "most celebrated throughout Europe." In Hartmann Schedel's time, it was "an ample monastery of the order of St. Benedict." In the Acta Sanctorum, mense Septembris, vol. vi. Sep. 22, p. 469, the writer of the life of St. Emmeram supposes the monastery to have been built towards the end of the VIIth century. It was at first situated without the walls,--but was afterwards (A.D. 920) included within the walls. Hansizius, a Jesuit, wrote a work in 1755, concerning the origin and constitution of the monastery--in which he says it was founded by Theodo in 688. The body of St. Emmeram was interred in the church of St. George, by Gaubaldus, in the VIIIth century, which church was reduced to ashes in 1642; but three years afterwards, they found the body of St. Emmeram, preserved in a double chest, or coffin, and afterwards exposed it, on Whitsunday, 1659, in a case of silver--to all the people.
[161] He died in April, 1820.
[162] [NOT so--as I understand. It is re-established in its previous form.]
[163] So I heard him called everywhere--in Austria and Bavaria--by men of every degree and rank in society; and by professional men as frequently as by others. I recollect when at Landshut, standing at the door of the hotel, and conversing with two gallant-looking Bavarian officers, who had spent half their lives in the service: one of them declaring that "he should like to have been opposed to WELLINGTON--to have died even in such opposition, if he could not have vanquished him." I asked him, why? "Because (said he) there is glory in such a contest--for he is, doubtless, the FIRST CAPTAIN OF THE AGE."
[164] Dr. Bright, in Travels in Lower Hungary, p. 90-3, has an animated passage connected with this once flourishing, but now comparatively drooping, city. In the Bibl. Spenceriana, vol. iii. p. 261-3, will be found an extract or two, from Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, fol. c., &c. edit. 1493, which may serve to give a notion of the celebrity of Nuremberg about three centuries and a half ago.
[165] Or rather, walls which have certain round towers, with a projecting top, at given intervals. These towers have a very strong and picturesque appearance; and are doubtless of the middle part of the fifteenth century. In Hartman Schedel's time, there were as many of them as there were days in the year.