From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

looks as if it would afford standing-room for all the
citizens of Nuremberg. But vastness is the only
attribute now left it of its former splendor. It is long
since emperor trod that floor, or warrior feasted
under that roof, or Diet assembled within those
walls. Time's effacing finger has been busy with it,
and what was magnificence in the days of the
emperor, is in ours simply tawdriness. The
paintings on its walls and roof, some of which are
from the pencil of Albert Durer, have lost their
brilliance, and are now little better than mere
patches of color.
The gloss has passed from the silks and velvets
of its furniture; the few chairs that remain are
rickety and worm-eaten, and one fears to trust one's
self to them. A magnificent chandelier still hangs
suspended from the roof, its gilding sadly
tarnished, its lights burned out; and suggesting, as
it does, to the mind the gaiety of the past, makes
the dreariness and solitariness of the present to be
only the more felt. So passes the glory of the
world, and so has passed the imperial grandeur
which often found in this hall a stage for its
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