274 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINN^US 



The duodecimo biographers who never think, but only 

 copy, of course agree likewise. Exit Chorus. 



A spiry place is peeping above yonder hill. It must 

 be Liibeck. It is so. Now it looks like a dozen or so 

 of spear-pointed steel pens with their points upwards 

 as onr two Swedes arrive at the bridge by the gate of 

 this quaint and ancient city ; an old, and what young 

 persons who sketch call a most rapturous, gateway, 

 dated 1477, bent with its age and weight, with a sheaf 

 of spire-like lances rising behind it the shield and 

 spears of the city. Above the portal arch is the legend 

 CONCORDIA DOMI FORIS PAX. This heavy pile is shaped 

 into two round towers, cone-spired, with a burgomaster's 

 house betwixt them, from under which the broad low 

 portal has been hollowed. The gate is brick-built in 

 stripes of black and red, the black bricks, being vitrified, 

 look white and lustrous at a distance, giving altogether 

 a peculiar effect as of a large mineralogical specimen. 

 It is all sunken in the ground, which has been excavated 

 to leave its roadway clear. 



Friends were busy at the wharfs and coach-offices 

 meeting friends ; but no one knew Linnaeus and his 

 companion, bewildered with their first experience of 

 encountering an entirely foreign language. The two 

 Swedes carried their chattels up the hilly street, where 

 now the tramcars climb ; and, oh ! they did indeed find 

 views and architectural surprises. Linnaeus was as yet 

 a novice in architectural criticism, and I find no com- 

 ments so far in his diaries. It was all what he might 



