E-text prepared by Steven desJardins
and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
The sunset-gun had been fired from the ramparts of the fortifications ofMunich and the shadows were thickly descending on the famous old city ofSouthern Germany. The evening breeze in this truly March weather camechill over the plain of stones where Isar flowed darkly, and at thefirst puff of it, forcing him to wind his cloak round him, a lonelywanderer in the low quarter recognized why "the City of Monks" was alsocalled "the Realm of Rheumatism."
The new town, which he had not yet seen, might justify yet another ofits nicknames, "the German Athens," but here were, in this southern andunfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of thequaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, datedanterior to the filling up of the town moat in 1791.
The stranger was clearly fond of antiquarian spectacles, for his eye,though too youthful to belong to a Dryasdust professor, and unshaded bythe almost universal colored spectacles of the learned classes, gloatedon the mansions, once inhabited by the wealthy burghers. They wereirregular in plan and period of erection; the windows had ornamentalframes of great depth, b