Leman gain.'

After this exordium the story commences, the first half ending with the assassination of Siegfried.

Some years after the murder of Siegfried, Chrimhilde gives her hand to Etzel, (or Attila,) king of the Huns, in order that through his power and influence she may be enabled to execute her long-cherished schemes of vengeance. The assassins accordingly, and all their kindred and followers, are induced to visit King Etzel at Vienna, where, by the instigation of Chrimhilde, a deadly feud arises; in the course of which almost the whole army on both sides are cruelly slaughtered. By the powerful, but reluctant aid of Dietrich of Bern, 8 Hagen, the murderer of Siegfried, is at last vanquished, and brought bound to the feet of the queen, who at once raises the sword of her departed hero, and with her own hand strikes off the head of his enemy. Hildebrand instantly avenges the atrocious and unhospitable act, by stabbing the queen, who falls exulting on the body of her hated victim.

When Gunther's arms, and those of his brothers and champions, are brought to Worms, Brunhilde repents too late of her treachery to Siegfried, and the old queen Uta dies of grief. As to King Etzel, the poet professes himself ignorant, "whether he died in battle, or was taken up to heaven, or fell out of his skin, or was swallowed up by the devil;" leaving to his reader the choice of these singular catastrophes;—and thus the story ends. 9

The rivalry between Chrimhilde and her amazonian sister-in-law, Brunhilde, forms the most interesting and amusing episode in the poem; and the characters of the two queens—the fierce haughty Brunhilde, and the impassioned, devoted, confiding Chrimhilde—(whom the very excess of conjugal love converts into a relentless fury,) are admirably discriminated. "The work is divided into thirty-eight books, or adventures; and besides a liberal allowance of sorcery and wonders, contains a great deal of clear and animated narrative, and innumerable curious and picturesque traits of the manners of the age. The characters of the different warriors, as well as those of the two queens, and their heroic consorts, are very naturally and powerfully drawn—especially that of Hagen, the murderer of Siegfried, in whom the virtues of an heroic and chivalrous leader are strangely united with the atrocity and impenitent hardihood of an assassin.

"The author of the Lay of the Nibelungen has not been ascertained. In its present form it must have existed between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries;—this is proved by the language; but the manners, tone, thoughts, and actions, which are all in perfect keeping, bear testimony to an antiquity far beyond that of the present dress of the poem."

Here then was a boundless, an inexhaustible fund of inspiration for such a painter as Julius Schnorr; and his poetical fancy appears to have absolutely revelled in the grand, the gay, the tragic subjects afforded to his creative pencil.

In the first room, immediately over the entrance, he has represented the poet, or presumed author of the Nibelungen—an inspired figure, attended by two listening genii. On each side, but a little lower down, are two figures looking towards him; on one side a beautiful female, striking a harp, and attended by a genius crowned with roses—represents song or poesy. On the other side, a sybil listening to the voice of Time, represents tradition. The figures are all colossal.

Below, on each side of this door, are two beautiful groups. That to the right of the spectator represents Siegfried and Chrimhilde. She is leaning on the shoulder of her warlike husband with an air of the most inimitable and graceful abandonment in her whole figure: a falcon sits upon her hand, on which her eyes are turned with the most profound expression of tenderness and melancholy; she is thinking upon her dream, in which was foreshadowed the early and terrible doom of her husband.

It is said at Munich, that the wife of Schnorr, an exquisitely beautiful woman, whom he married under romantic circumstances, was the model of his Chrimhilde, and that one of her spontaneous attitudes furnished the idea of this exquisite group, on which I never look without emotion. The depth and splendour of the colouring adds to the effect. The figures are rather above the size of life.

On the opposite side of the door, as a pendant, we have Gunther, and his queen, Brunhilde. He holds one of her hands, with a deprecating expression. She turns from him with an averted countenance, exhibiting in her whole look and attitude, grief, rage, and shame. It is evident that she has just made the fatal discovery of her husband's obligations to Siegfried, which urges her to the destruction of the latter. I have heard travellers ignorantly criticise the grand, and somewhat exaggerated forms of Brunhilde, as being "really quite coarse and unfeminine." In the poem she is represented as possessing the strength of twelve men; and when Hagen sees her throw a spear, which it required four warriors to lift, he exclaims to her alarmed suitor, King Gunther,