PLAINS OF THE ELBE, ODER, AND VISTULA. 



333 



Hanseatic League, its " Rights," or " Law," being observed from N'ovgorod to 

 Amsterdam, and from Cracow to Cologne. The fleets which occasionally gathered 

 in the estuary of the Trave were powerful enough to oppose those of Denmark and 

 Sweden, and the representatives of more than eighty cities met in the town-hall 

 to deliberate on their common affairs. This federation of free cities formed a 

 very powerful European state. The Baltic at that time was one of the most 

 frequented seas of Europe, but after the discovery of a direct passage to the Indies, 

 and of the New World, it lost its importance, and Liibeck gradually sank to 



Fig. 192. — LUBECK. AND E-OSTOCK. 



Scale 1 : 1,0(X),OjO. 



the position of a second-rate city. Other causes contributed to its decay. The 

 herrings disappeared from the banks of Scania, and migrated to the western coasts 

 of Scandinavia ; religious wars destroyed the prosperity of the inland members 

 of the Hanseatic League; and a final attempt to revive that federation, in 1669, 

 led to no result. 



Liibeck is now a very inferior town to Hamburg, and in some respects it is 

 even a dependency of it, playing the part of an outlying port on the Baltic. The 

 absence of bustle has preserved the town from innovations, and its ancient 

 towers and buildings impart to it quite a mediaeval aspect. The town-hall. 



