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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with
+Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected, by Anna Jameson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected
+       Vol. I (of 3)
+
+Author: Anna Jameson
+
+Release Date: July 23, 2011 [EBook #36818]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VISITS AND SKETCHES, VOL I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, David Garcia and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VISITS AND SKETCHES AT HOME AND ABROAD.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+[Illustration: SIGFRIED KRIMHILDE
+
+  _Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._
+
+  _Group from the Fresco in the King of Bavaria's Palace at Munich.
+  Painted by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld._
+
+  _Published by Saunders & Otley 1834._]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VISITS AND SKETCHES AT HOME AND ABROAD
+
+WITH TALES AND MISCELLANIES NOW FIRST COLLECTED.
+
+BY MRS. JAMESON,
+
+AUTHOR OF THE "CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN," "LIVES OF CELEBRATED FEMALE
+SOVEREIGNS," &c.
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+SECOND EDITION.
+
+
+  LONDON
+  SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
+  1835.
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+
+     Preface                                                           vii
+
+
+     SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER,
+     PART I. IN THREE DIALOGUES.
+
+
+I.   A Scene in a Steam Boat                                             4
+     A Singular Character                                               20
+     Gallery at Ghent                                                   25
+     The Prince of Orange's Pictures                                    27
+     A Female Gambler                                                   38
+     Cologne--the Medusa                                                44
+     Professor Walraf                                                   51
+     Schlegel and Madame de Stael                                       55
+     Story of Archbishop Gerard                                         64
+     Heidelberg--Elizabeth Stuart                                       68
+     An English Fanner's idea of the Picturesque                        85
+
+
+II.  Frankfort                                                          88
+     The Theatre, Madame Haitzinger                                     92
+     The Versorgung Haus                                                98
+     The Staedel Museum                                                 103
+     Dannecker, Memoir of his Life and Works                           106
+     German Sculpture--Rauch, Tieck, Schwanthaler                      147
+
+
+III. Goethe and his daughter-in-law                                    160
+     The German Women                                                  167
+     German Authoresses                                                177
+     German Domestic Life and Manners                                  187
+     German Coquetterie and German Romance                             199
+     The Story of a Devoted Sister                                     205
+
+     SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER,
+     PART II.
+
+     _Memoranda at Munich, Nuremberg, and Dresden._
+
+
+I.   MUNICH                                                            241
+
+     The Theatre--representation of "Egmont"                           245
+     Leo von Klenze                                                    250
+     The Glyptothek--its general arrangement--Egina
+       Marbles--Account of the Frescos of Cornelius--Canova's
+       Paris and Thorwaldson's Adonis                              252-273
+     The Opera at Munich, the Kapel Meister Stuntz                     274
+     The Poems of the King of Bavaria                                  279
+     A public day at the New Palace                                    281
+     Thoughts on Female Singers--Their condition and destiny           284
+     The Munich Gallery--Thoughts on Pictures--their moral
+       influence                                                       287
+     Rubens and the Flemish Masters                                    295
+     The Gallery of Schleissheim                                       304
+     The Boisseree Gallery--The old German School of Painting--Its
+       Effects on the Modern German School of Art                      304
+     Representation of the Braut von Messina                           310
+     The Hofgarten at Munich                                           313
+     The King's passion for Building                                   316
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
+
+
+It seems a foolish thing to send into the world a book requiring
+a preface of apologies; and yet more absurd, to presume that any
+deprecation on the part of the author could possibly win indulgence
+for what should be in itself worthless.
+
+For this reason, and with a very deep feeling of the kindness I have
+already experienced from the public, I should now abandon these little
+volumes to their destiny without one word of preface or remark, but
+that a certain portion of their contents seems to require a little
+explanation.
+
+It was the wish and request of my friends, many months ago, that I
+should collect various literary trifles which were scattered about in
+print or in manuscript, and allow them to be published together. My
+departure for the continent set aside this intention for the time. I had
+other and particular objects in view, which still keep full possession
+of my mind, and which have been suspended not without reluctance, in
+order to prepare these volumes for the press;--neither had I, while
+travelling in Germany, the slightest idea of writing any thing of that
+country: so far from it, that except during the last few weeks at
+Munich, I kept no regular notes: but finding on my return to England,
+that many particulars which had strongly excited my interest, with
+regard to the relative state of art and social existence in the two
+countries, appeared new to those with whom I conversed,--after some
+hesitation, I was induced to throw into form the few memoranda I had
+made on the spot. They are now given to the public in the first and
+second volumes of this little collection, with a very sincere feeling
+of their many imperfections, and much anxiety with regard to the
+reception they are likely to meet with; yet in the earnest hope that
+what has been written in perfect simplicity of heart, may be perused
+both by my English and German friends, particularly the artists, with
+indulgence; that those who read and doubt may be awakened to inquiry,
+and those who read and believe may be led to reflection; and that those
+who differ from, and those who agree with the writer, may both find some
+interest and amusement in the literal truth of the facts and impressions
+she has ventured to record.
+
+It was difficult to give sketches of art, literature, and character,
+without making now and then some _personal_ allusions; but though I
+have often sketched from the life, I have adhered throughout to this
+principle--never to give publicity to any name not already before the
+public, and in a manner public property.
+
+Two of the tales of the third volume, "The False One," and "The Indian
+Mother," were written at different times, to prove that I could write
+in a style which should not be recognised as mine even by my most
+intimate friends, and the _ruse_ so far succeeded, that both, as I am
+informed, have been attributed to other writers.
+
+                                                                  A. J.
+
+May 1834.
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.
+
+PART I.
+
+IN THREE DIALOGUES.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+MEDON--ALDA.
+
+
+MEDON.
+
+And so we are to have no "_Sentimental Travels in Germany_" on
+hot-pressed paper, illustrated with views taken on the spot?
+
+ALDA.
+
+No.
+
+MEDON.
+
+You have unloaded Time of his wallet only to deal out his "scraps of
+things past," his shreds of remembrance, in beggarly, indolent fashion,
+over your own fire-side? You are afraid of being termed an egotist; you,
+who within these ten minutes have assured me that not any opinion of any
+human being should prevent you from doing, saying, writing--any thing--
+
+ALDA.
+
+Finish the sentence--any thing, _for truth's sake_. But how is the cause
+of truth to be advanced by the insolent publication of a mass of crude
+thoughts and hasty observations picked up here and there, "as pigeons
+pick up peas," and which now lie safe within the clasps of those little
+green books? You need not look at them; they do not contain another
+Diary of an Ennuyee, thank Heaven! nor do I feel much inclined to play
+the _Ennuyeuse_ in public.
+
+MEDON.
+
+"Take any form but _that_, and my firm nerves shall never tremble;"
+but with eyes to see, a heart to feel, a mind to observe, and a pen
+to record those observations, I do not perceive why you should not
+contribute one drop to that great ocean of thought which is weltering
+round the world!
+
+ALDA.
+
+If I could.
+
+MEDON.
+
+There are people, who when they travel open their eyes and their ears,
+(aye, and their mouths to some purpose,) and shut up their hearts and
+souls. I have heard such persons make it their boast, that they have
+returned to old England with all their old prejudices thick upon
+them; they have come back, to use their own phrase, "with no foreign
+ideas--just the same as they went:" they are much to be congratulated!
+I hope you are not one of these?
+
+ALDA.
+
+I hope not; it is this cold impervious pride which is the perdition
+of us English, and of England. I remember that in one of my several
+excursions on the Rhine, we had, on board the steamboat, an English
+family of high rank. There was the lordly papa, plain and shy, who never
+spoke to any one except his own family, and then only in the lowest
+whisper. There was the lady mamma, so truly lady-like, with fine-cut
+patrician features, and in her countenance a kind of passive _hauteur_,
+softened by an appearance of suffering, and ill-health. There were two
+daughters, proud, pale, fine-looking girls, dressed _a ravir_, with
+that indescribable air of high pretension, so elegantly impassive--so
+self-possessed--which some people call _l'air distingue_, but which,
+as extremes meet, I would rather call the refinement of vulgarity--the
+polish we see bestowed on debased material--the plating over the
+steel--the stucco over the brick-work!
+
+MEDON.
+
+Good; you _can_ be severe then!
+
+ALDA.
+
+I spoke generally: bear witness to the general truth of the picture,
+for it will fit others as well as the personages I have brought before
+you, who are, indeed, but specimens of a species. This group, then, had
+designedly or instinctively entrenched themselves in a corner to the
+right of the steersman, within a fortification of tables and benches, so
+arranged as to forbid all approach within two or three yards; the young
+ladies had each their sketch-book, and wielded pencil and Indian rubber,
+I know not with what effect,--but I know that I never saw either
+countenance once relax or brighten, in the midst of the divine scenery
+through which we glided. Two female attendants, seated on the outer
+fortifications, formed a kind of piquet guard; and two footmen at the
+other end kept watch over the well-appointed carriages, and came and
+went as their attendance was required. No one else ventured to approach
+this aristocratic Olympus; the celestials within its precincts, though
+not exactly seated "on golden stools at golden tables," like the
+divinities in the song of the Parcae,[1] showed as supreme, as godlike
+an indifference to the throng of mortals in the nether sphere: no word
+was exchanged during the whole day with any of the fifty or sixty human
+beings who were round them; nay, when the rain drove us down to the
+pavilion, even there, amid twelve or fourteen others, they contrived to
+keep themselves aloof from contact and conversation. In this fashion
+they probably pursued their tour, exchanging the interior of their
+travelling carriage for the interior of an hotel; and every where
+associating only with those of their own caste. What do they see of all
+that is to be seen? What can they know of what is to be known? What do
+they endure of what is to be endured? I can speak from experience--I
+have travelled in that same style. As they went, so they return;
+happily, or rather pitifully, unconscious of the narrow circle in which
+move their factitious enjoyments, their confined experience, their
+half-awakened sympathies! And I should tell you, that in the same
+steam-boat were two German girls, under the care of an elderly relative,
+I think an aunt, and a brother, who was a celebrated _jurisconsulte_
+and judge: their rank was equal to that of my countrywomen; their blood,
+perhaps, more purely noble, that is, older by some centuries; and
+their family more illustrious, by God knows how many quarterings;
+moreover, their father was a minister of state. Both these girls were
+beautiful;--fair, and fair-haired, with complexions on which "the rose
+stood ready with a blush;" and one, the youngest sister, was exquisitely
+lovely--in truth, she might have sat for one of Guido's angels.
+They walked up and down the deck, neither seeking nor avoiding the
+proximity of others. They accepted the telescopes which the gentlemen,
+particularly some young Englishmen, pressed on them when any distant or
+remarkable object came in view, and repaid the courtesy with a bright
+kindly smile; they were natural and easy, and did not deem it necessary
+to mount guard over their own dignity. Do you think I did not observe
+and feel the contrast?
+
+MEDON.
+
+If nations begin at last to understand each other's true
+interests--morally and politically, it will be through the agency of
+gifted men; but if ever they learn to love and sympathize with each
+other, it will be through the medium of you women. You smile, and
+shake your head; but in spite of a late example, which might seem to
+controvert this idea, I still think so;--our prejudices are stronger
+and bitterer than yours, because they are those which perverted reason
+builds up on a foundation of pride; but yours, which are generally
+those of fancy and association, soon melt away before your own kindly
+affections. More mobile, more impressible, more easily yielding to
+external circumstances, more easily lending yourselves to different
+manners and habits, more quick to perceive, more gentle to judge;--yes,
+it is to you we must look, to break down the outworks of prejudice--you,
+the advanced guard of humanity and civilization!
+
+        "The gentle race and dear,
+  By whom alone the world is glorified!"
+
+
+Every feeling, well educated, generous, and truly refined woman, who
+travels, is as a dove sent out on a mission of peace; and should bring
+back at least an olive-leaf in her hand, if she bring nothing else.
+It is her part to soften the intercourse between rougher and stronger
+natures; to aid in the interfusion of the gentler sympathies; to speed
+the interchange of art and literature from pole to pole: not to pervert
+wit, and talent, and eloquence, and abuse the privileges of her sex, to
+sow the seeds of hatred where she might plant those of love--to embitter
+national discord and aversion, and disseminate individual prejudice and
+error.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Thank you! I need not say how entirely I agree with you.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Then tell me, what have _you_ brought home? if but an olive-leaf, let us
+have it; come, unpack your budget. Have you collected store of anecdotes,
+private, literary, scandalous, abundantly interspersed with proper names
+of grand-dukes and little dukes, counts, barons, ministers, poets,
+authors, actors, and opera dancers?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Me?
+
+MEDON.
+
+Cry you mercy!--I did but jest, so do not look so indignant! But have
+you then traced the cause and consequences of that undercurrent of
+opinion which is slowly but surely sapping the foundations of empires?
+Have you heard the low booming of that mighty ocean which approaches,
+wave after wave, to break up the dikes and boundaries of ancient power?
+
+ALDA.
+
+I? no; how should I--skimming over the surface of society with perpetual
+sunshine and favouring airs--how should I sound the gulfs and shoals
+which lie below?
+
+MEDON.
+
+Have you, then, analysed that odd combination of poetry, metaphysics,
+and politics, which, like the three primeval colours, tinge in various
+tints and shades, simple and complex, all literature, morals, art, and
+even conversation, through Germany?
+
+ALDA.
+
+No, indeed!
+
+MEDON.
+
+Have you decided between the different systems of Jacobi and Schelling?
+
+ALDA.
+
+You know I am a poor philosopher; but when Schelling was introduced
+to me at Munich, I remember I looked up at him with inexpressible
+admiration, as one whose giant arm had cut through an isthmus, and
+whose giant mind had new modelled the opinions of minds as gigantic
+as his own.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Then you are of this new school, which reveals the union of faith and
+philosophy?
+
+ALDA.
+
+If I am, it is by instinct.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Well, to descend to your own peculiar sphere, have you satisfied
+yourself as to the moral and social position of the women in Germany?
+
+ALDA.
+
+No, indeed!--at least, not yet.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Have you examined and noted down the routine of the _domestic_ education
+of their children? (we know something of the public and national
+systems.) Can you give some accurate notion of the ideas which generally
+prevail on this subject?
+
+ALDA.
+
+O no! you have mentioned things which would require a life to study.
+Merely to have thought upon them, to have glanced at them, gives me no
+right to discuss them, unless I could bring my observations to some
+tangible form, and derive from them some useful result.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Yet in this last journey you had an object--a purpose?
+
+ALDA.
+
+I had--a purpose which has long been revolving in my mind--an object
+never lost sight of;--but give me time!--time!
+
+MEDON.
+
+I see;--but are you prepared for consequences? Can you task your
+sensitive mind to stand reproach and ridicule? Remember your own story
+of Runckten the traveller, who, when about to commence his expedition
+into the desarts of Africa, prepared himself, by learning beforehand
+to digest poisons; to swallow without disgust reptiles, spiders,
+vermin----
+
+ALDA.
+
+"Thou hast the most unsavoury similes!"
+
+MEDON.
+
+Take a proverb then--"Bisogna coprirsi bene il viso innanzi di
+struzzicare il vespaio."
+
+ALDA.
+
+I will _not_ hide my face; nor can I answer you in this jesting vein,
+for to me it is a serious thought. There is in the kindly feeling, the
+spontaneous sympathy of the public towards me, something which fills me
+with gratitude and respect, and tells me to respect myself; which I
+would not exchange for the greater _eclat_ which hangs round greater
+names;--which I will not forfeit by writing one line from an unworthy
+motive; nor flatter, nor invite, by withholding one thought, opinion,
+or sentiment, which I believe to be true, and to which I can put the
+seal of my heart's conviction.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Good! I love a little enthusiasm now and then; so like Britomart in the
+enchanter's palace, the motto is,
+
+  "Be bold, be bold, and every where be bold!"
+
+ALDA.
+
+I should rather say, be gentle, be gentle, every where be gentle; and
+then we cannot _be too bold_.[2]
+
+MEDON.
+
+Well, then, I return once more to the charge. Have you been rambling
+about the world for these six months--yet learned nothing?
+
+ALDA.
+
+On the contrary.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Then what, in Heaven's name, _have_ you learned?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Not much; but I have learned to sweep my mind of some ill-conditioned
+cobwebs. I have learned to consider my own acquired knowledge but as a
+torch flung into an abyss, making the darkness visible, and showing me
+the extent of my own ignorance.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Then give us--give _me_, at least--the benefit of your ignorance; only
+let it be all your own. I honour a profession of ignorance--if only for
+its rarity--in these all-knowing times. Let me tell you, the ignorance
+of a candid and not uncultivated mind is better than the second-hand
+wisdom of those who take all things for granted; who are the echoes of
+others' opinions, the utterers of others' words; who _think_ they know,
+and who _think_ they think: I am sick of them all. Come, refresh me with
+a little ignorance--and be serious.
+
+ALDA.
+
+You make me smile; after all, 'tis only going over old ground, and I
+know not what pleasure, what interest it can impart, beyond half an
+hour's amusement.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Sceptic! is that nothing? In this harsh, cold, working-day world, is
+half an hour's amusement nothing? Old ground!--as if you did not know
+the pleasure of going over old ground with a new companion to refresh
+half-faded recollections--to compare impressions--to correct old ideas
+and acquire new ones? O I can suck knowledge out of ignorance, as a
+weazel sucks eggs!--Begin.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Where shall I begin?
+
+MEDON.
+
+Where, but at the beginning? and then diverge as you will. Your first
+journey was one of mere amusement?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Merely, and it answered its purpose; we travelled _a la milor
+Anglais_--a _partie carree_--a barouche hung on the most approved
+principle--double-cushioned--luxurious--rising and sinking on its
+springs like a swan on the wave--the pockets stuffed with new
+publications--maps and guides _ad infinitum_; English servants for
+comfort, foreign servants for use; a chess-board, backgammon tables--in
+short, surrounded with all that could render us entirely independent of
+the amusements we had come to seek, and of the people among whom we had
+come to visit.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Admirable--and English!
+
+ALDA.
+
+Yes, and pleasant. I thought, not without gratitude, of the contrast
+between present feelings and those of a former journey. To abandon
+oneself to the quickening influence of new objects without care or
+thought of to-morrow, with a mind awake in all its strength; with
+restored health and cheerfulness; with sensibility tamed, not dead;
+possessing one's soul in quiet; not seeking, nor yet shrinking from
+excitement; not self-engrossed, nor yet pining for sympathy; was not
+this much? Not so interesting, perhaps, as playing the _Ennuyee_;
+but, oh! you know not how sad it is to look upon the lovely through
+tearful eyes, and walk among the loving and the kind, wrapped as in
+a death-shroud; to carry into the midst of the most glorious scenes
+of nature, and the divinest creations of art, perceptions dimmed and
+troubled with sickness and anguish: to move in the morning with aching
+and reluctance--to faint in the evening with weariness and pain; to feel
+all change, all motion, a torment to the dying heart; all rest, all
+delay, a burthen to the impatient spirit; to shiver in the presence of
+joy, like a ghost in the sunshine, yet have no sympathy to spare for
+suffering. How could I remember that all this _had been_, and not bless
+the miracle-worker--Time? And _apropos_ to the miracles of time--I had
+on this first journey, one source of amusement, which I am sorry I
+cannot share with you at full length; it was the near contemplation
+of a very singular character, of which I can only afford you a sketch.
+Our CHEF _de voyage_, for so we chose to entitle him who was the planner
+and director of our excursion, was one of the most accomplished and most
+eccentric of human beings: even courtesy might have termed him old, at
+seventy; but old age and he were many miles asunder, and it seemed as
+though he had made some compact with Time, like that of Faust with the
+devil, and was not to surrender to his inevitable adversary till the
+very last moment. Years could not quench his vivacity, nor "stale his
+infinite variety." He had been one of the prince's wild companions in
+the days of Sheridan and Fox, and could play alternately blackguard and
+gentleman, and both in perfection; but the high-born gentleman ever
+prevailed. He had been heir to an enormous income, most of which had
+slipped through his fingers _unknownst_, as the Irish say, and had stood
+in the way of a coronet, which, somehow or other, had slipped over his
+head to light on that of his eldest son. He had lived a life which would
+have ruined twenty iron constitutions, and had suffered what might well
+have broken twenty hearts of common stuff; but his self-complacency
+was invulnerable, his animal spirits inexhaustible, his activity
+indefatigable. The eccentricities of this singular man have been matter
+of celebrity; but against each of these stories it would be easy to
+place some act of benevolence, some trait of lofty gentlemanly feeling,
+which would at least neutralize their effect. He often told me that he
+had early in life selected three models, after which to form his own
+conduct and character; namely, De Grammont, Hotspur, and Lord Herbert of
+Cherbury; and he certainly _did_ unite, in a greater degree than he knew
+himself, the characteristics of all three. Such was our CHEF, and thus
+led, thus appointed, away we posted on, from land to land, from city
+to city--
+
+MEDON.
+
+Stay--stay. This is galloping on at the rate of Lenora, and her phantom
+lover--
+
+  "Tramp, tramp across the land we go,
+  Splash, splash across the sea!"
+
+
+Take me with you, and a little more leisurely.
+
+ALDA.
+
+I think Bruges was the first place which interested me, perhaps from
+its historical associations. Bruges, where monarchs kissed the hand
+to merchants, now emptied of its former splendour, reminded me of the
+improvident steward in scripture, that could not dig, and to beg was
+ashamed. It had an air of grave idleness and threadbare dignity; and its
+listless, thinly-scattered inhabitants looked as if they had gone astray
+among the wide streets and huge tenantless edifices. There is one thing
+here which you must see--the tomb of Charles the Bold, and his daughter,
+Mary of Burgundy. The tomb is of the most exquisite workmanship,
+composed of polished brass and enamelled escutcheons; and there the
+fiery father and the gentle daughter lie, side by side, in sculptured
+bronze, equally still, cold, and silent. I remember that I stood long
+gazing on the inscription, which made me smile, and made me think. There
+was no mention of defeat and massacre, disgraceful flight, or obscure
+death. "But," says the epitaph, after enumerating his titles, his
+exploits, and his virtues, "fortune, who had hitherto been his good lady,
+ungently turned her back upon him on such a day of such a year, and
+_oppressed_ him"--an amusing instance of mingled courtesy and _naivete_.
+Ghent was our next resting place. The aspect of Ghent, so familiarized
+to us of late by our travelled artists, made a strong impression upon
+me, and I used to walk about for hours together, looking at the strange
+picturesque old buildings coeval with the Spanish dominion, with their
+ornamented fronts and peaked roofs. There is much trade here, many
+flourishing manufactories, and the canals and quays often exhibited a
+lively scene of bustle, of which the form, at least, was new to us. The
+first exposition, or exhibition, of the newly-founded Royal Academy
+of the Netherlands was at this season open. You will allow it was a
+fair opportunity of judging of the present state of painting, in the
+self-same land, where she had once found, if not a temple, at least
+a home.
+
+MEDON.
+
+And learned to be homely--but the result?
+
+ALDA.
+
+I can scarce express the surprise I felt at the time, though it has
+since diminished on reflection. All the attempts at historical painting
+were bad, without exception. There was the usual assortment of Virgins,
+St. Cecilias, Cupids and Psyches, Zephyrs and Floras;--but such
+incomparable atrocities! There were some cabinet pictures in the same
+style in which their Flemish ancestors excelled--such as small interior
+conversation pieces, battle pieces, and flowers and fruit; some of these
+were really excellent, but the proportion of bad to good was certainly
+fifty to one.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Something like our own Royal Academy.
+
+ALDA.
+
+No; because with much which was quite as bad, quite as insipid, as
+coarse in taste, as stupidly presumptuous in attempt, and ridiculous
+in failure, as ever shocked me on the walls of Somerset House, there
+was nothing to be compared to the best pictures I have seen there. As I
+looked and listened to the remarks of the crowd around me, I perceived
+that the taste for art is even as low in the Netherlands as it is here
+and elsewhere.
+
+MEDON.
+
+And, surely, not from the want of models, nor from the want of facility
+in the means of studying them. You visited, of course, Schamp's
+collection?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Surely; there were miracles of art crowded together like goods in a
+counting-house, with wondrous economy of space, and more lamentable
+economy of light. Some were nailed against doors, inside and out, or
+suspended from screens and window-shutters. Here I saw Rubens' picture
+of Father Rutseli, the confessor of Albert and Isabella: one of those
+heads more suited to the crown than to the cowl--grand, sagacious,
+intellectual, with such a world of meaning in the eye, that one almost
+shrunk away from the expression. Here, too, I found that remarkable
+picture of Charles the First, painted by Lely during the king's
+imprisonment at Windsor--the only one for which he sat between his
+dethronement and his death: he is still melancholy and gentlemanlike,
+but not quite so dignified as on the canvass of Vandyke. This is the
+very picture that Horace Walpole mentions as lost or abstracted from the
+collection at Windsor. How it came into Schamp's collection, I could
+not learn. A very small head of an Italian girl by Correggio, or in his
+manner, hung close beside a Dutch girl by Mieris: equally exquisite as
+paintings, they gave me an opportunity of contrasting two styles, both
+founded in nature--but the nature, how different! the one all life,
+the other life and soul. Schamp's collection is liberally open to the
+public, as well as many others; if artists fail, it is not for want
+of models.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Perhaps for want of patronage? Yet I hear that the late king of the
+Netherlands sent several young artists to Italy at his own expense,
+and that the Prince of Orange was liberal and even munificent in his
+purchases--particularly of the old masters.
+
+ALDA.
+
+When I went to see the collection of the Prince of Orange at Brussels,
+I stepped from the room in which hung the glorious Vandykes, perhaps
+unequalled in the world, into the adjoining apartment, in which were two
+unfinished portraits disposed upon easels. They represented members of
+the prince's family; and were painted by a native artist of fashionable
+fame, and royally patronised. These were pointed out to my admiration as
+universally approved. What shall I say of them? Believe me, that they
+were contemptible beyond all terms of contempt! Can you tell me why the
+Prince of Orange should have sufficient taste to select and appropriate
+the finest specimens of art, and yet purchase and patronize the vilest
+daubs ever perpetrated by imbecility and presumption?
+
+MEDON.
+
+I know not, unless it be that in the former case he made use of others'
+eyes and judgment, and in the latter, of his own.
+
+ALDA.
+
+I might have anticipated the answer; but be that as it may, of all the
+galleries I saw in the Netherlands, the small but invaluable collection
+he had formed in his palace pleased me most. I remember a portrait of
+Sir Thomas More, by Holbein. A female head, by Leonardo da Vinci, said
+to be one of the mistresses of Francis I., but this is doubtful; that
+most magnificent group, Christ delivering the keys to St. Peter, by
+Rubens, once in England; about eight or ten Vandykes, masterpieces--for
+instance, Philip IV. and his minister Olivarez, and a Chevalier le Roy
+and his wife: all that you can imagine of chivalrous dignity, and
+lady-like grace. But there was one picture, a family group, by Gonsalez,
+which struck me more than all the rest put together. I had never seen
+any production of this painter, whose works are scarcely known out of
+Spain; and I looked upon this with equal astonishment and admiration.
+There was also a small, but most curious collection of pictures, of
+the ancient Flemish and German schools, which it is now the fashion
+to admire, and, what is worse, to imitate. The word _fashion_ does
+not express the national enthusiasm on this subject which prevails in
+Germany. I can understand that these pictures are often most interesting
+as historic documents, and often admirable for their literal transcripts
+of nature and expression, but they can only possess comparative
+excellence and relative value; and where the feeling of ideal beauty and
+classic grace has been highly cultivated, the eye shrinks involuntarily
+from these hard, grotesque, and glaring productions of an age when
+genius was blindly groping amid the darkness of ignorance. To confess
+the truth, I was sometimes annoyed, and sometimes amused, by the cant I
+heard in Germany about those schools of painting which preceded Albert
+Durer. Perhaps I should not say _cant_--it is a vile expression; and in
+German affectation there is something so very peculiar--so poetical,
+so--so _natural_, if I might say so, that I would give it another name
+if I could find one. In this worship of their old painters, I really
+could sympathize sometimes, even when it most provoked me. Retzsch, whom
+I had the delight of knowing at Dresden, showed me a sketch, in which he
+had ridiculed this mania with the most exquisite humour: it represented
+the torso of an antique Apollo (emblematical of ideal grace), mutilated
+and half buried in the earth, and subject to every species of profanation;
+it serves as a stool for a German student, who, with his shirt-collar
+turned down, and his hair dishevelled, and his cap stuck on one side,
+_a la_ Rafaelle, is intently copying a stiff, hard, sour-looking old
+Madonna, while Ignorance looks on, gaping with admiration. No one knows
+better than Retzsch the value of these ancient masters--no one has a
+more genuine feeling for all that is admirable in them; but no one feels
+more sensibly the gross perversion and exaggeration of the worship paid
+to them. I wish he would publish this good-humoured little bit of satire,
+which is too just and too graceful to be called a caricature.
+
+I must tell you, however, that there were two most curious old pictures
+in the Orange Gallery, which arrested my attention, and of which I have
+retained a very distinct and vivid recollection; and that is more than I
+can say of many better pictures. They tell, in a striking manner, a very
+interesting story: the circumstances are said to have occurred about
+the year 985, but I cannot say that they rest on any very credible
+authority.
+
+Of these two pictures, each exhibits two scenes. A certain nobleman, a
+favourite of the Emperor Otho, is condemned to death by his master on
+the false testimony of the Empress (a sort of Potiphar's wife), who has
+accused him of having tempted her to break her marriage vow. In the
+back-ground we see the unfortunate man led to judgment; he is in his
+shirt, bare-footed and bare-headed. His wife walks at his side, to whom
+he appears to be speaking earnestly, and endeavouring to persuade her
+of his innocence. A friar precedes them, and a crowd of people follow
+after. On the walls of the city stand the Emperor and his wicked
+Empress, looking down on the melancholy procession. In the foreground,
+we have the dead body of the victim, stretched upon the earth, and the
+executioner is in the act of delivering the head to his wife, who looks
+grim with despair. The severed head and flowing blood are painted with
+such a horrid and literal fidelity to nature, that it has been found
+advisable to cover this portion of the picture.
+
+In the foreground of the second picture, the Emperor Otho is represented
+on his throne surrounded by his counsellors and courtiers. Before him
+kneels the widow of the Count: she has the ghastly head of her husband
+in her lap, and in her left-hand she holds firmly and unhurt the
+red-hot iron, the fiery ordeal by which she proves to the satisfaction
+of all present the innocence of her murdered lord. The Emperor looks
+thunderstruck; the Empress stands convicted, and is condemned to death;
+and in the back-ground, we have the catastrophe. She is bound to a
+stake, the fire is kindled, and she suffers the terrible penalty of
+her crime. These pictures, in subject and execution, might be termed
+tragico-comico-historical; but in spite of the harshness of the drawing,
+and the thousand defects of style and taste, they fix the attention by
+the vigour of the colouring and the expression of the heads, many of
+which are evidently from the life. The story is told in a very complete
+though very inartificial manner. The painter, Derick Steuerbout, was one
+of the very earliest of the Flemish masters, and lived about 1468, many
+years before Albert Durer and Holbein. I have heard that they were
+painted for the city of Lorraine, and until the invasion of the French,
+they remained undisturbed, and almost unnoticed, in the Hotel-de-Ville.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Does this collection of the Prince of Orange still exist at Brussels?
+
+ALDA.
+
+I am told that it does--that the whole palace, the furniture, the
+pictures, remain precisely as the prince and his family left them: that
+even down to the princess's work-box, and the portraits of her children
+which hang in her boudoir, nothing has been touched. This does not speak
+well for king Leopold's gallantry; and, in his place, I think I would
+have sent the private property of my rival after him.
+
+MEDON.
+
+So would not I, for this is not the age of chivalry, but of common
+sense. As to the pictures, the Belgians might plead that they were
+purchased with the public money, therefore justly public property. No,
+no; he should not have a picture of them--"If a Vandyke would save his
+soul, he should not; I'd keep them, by this hand!" that is, as long as
+I had a plausible excuse for keeping them; but the princess should have
+had her work-box and her children by the first courier. What more at
+Brussels?
+
+ALDA.
+
+I can recollect no more. The weather was sultry: we dressed, and dined,
+and ate ices, and drove up and down the Allee Verte, and saw I believe
+all that is to be seen--churches, palaces, hospitals, and so forth. We
+went from thence to Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa. As it was the height of the
+season, and both places were crowded with gay invalids, perhaps I ought
+to have been very much amused, but I confess I was _ennuyee_ to death.
+
+MEDON.
+
+This I can hardly conceive; for though there might have been little to
+amuse one of your turn of mind, there should have been much to observe.
+
+ALDA.
+
+There might have been matter for observation, or ridicule, or reflexion,
+at the moment, but nothing that I remember with pleasure. Spa I disliked
+particularly. I believe I am not in my nature cold or stern; but there
+was something in the shallow, tawdry, vicious gaiety of this place,
+which disgusted me. In all watering-places extremes meet; sickness and
+suffering, youth and dissipation, beggary and riches, collect together;
+but Spa being a very small town, a mere village, the approximation is
+brought immediately under the eye at every hour, every moment; and the
+beauty of the scenery around only rendered it more disagreeable: to me,
+even the hill of Annette and Lubin was polluted. Our Chef de voyage, who
+had visited Spa fifty years before, when on his _grand tour_, walked
+about with great complacency, recalling his youthful pleasures, and
+the days when he used to gallant his beautiful cousin, the Duchess of
+Rutland, of divine memory. While the rest of the party were amused, I
+fell into my old, habit of thinking and observing, and my contemplations
+were not agreeable. But instead of dealing in these general remarks,
+I will sketch you one or two pictures which have dwelt upon my memory.
+We had a well-dressed laquais-de-place, whose honesty and good-humour
+rendered him an especial favourite. His wife being ill, I went to see
+her; to my great surprise he conducted me to a little mud hovel, worse
+than the worst Irish cabin I ever heard described, where his wife lay
+stretched upon some straw, covered with a rug, and a little neglected
+ragged child was crawling about the floor, and about her bed. It seems
+then, that, this poor man, who every day waited at our luxurious table,
+dressed in smiles, and must habitually have witnessed the wasteful
+expenditure of the rich, returned every night to his miserable home,
+if home it could be called, to feel the stings of want with double
+bitterness. He told me that he and his wife lived the greater part of
+the year upon water-gruel, and that the row of wretched cabins, of which
+his own formed one, was inhabited by those who, like himself, were
+dependent upon the rich, extravagant, and dissipated strangers for the
+little pittance which was to support them for a twelvemonth. Was not
+this a fearful contrast? I should tell you that the benevolence of our
+Chef rendered this poor couple independent of change or chance for the
+next year. My other picture is in a different style. You know that
+at Spa the theatre immediately joins the ball-room. As soon as the
+performances are over, the parterre is laid down with boards, and in a
+few minutes metamorphosed into a gambling saloon. One night curiosity
+led me to be a spectator at one of the _rouge et noir_ tables. While I
+was there, a Flemish lady of rank, the Baroness B----, came in, hanging
+on the arm of a gentleman; she was not young, but still handsome. I had
+often met her in our walks, and had been struck by her fine eyes, and
+the amiable expression of her countenance. After one or two turns up
+and down the room, laughing and talking, she carelessly, and as if from
+a sudden thought, seated herself at the table. By degrees she became
+interested in the game, her stakes became deeper, her countenance became
+agitated, and her brow clouded. I left her playing. The next evening
+when I entered, I found her already seated at the table, as indeed I had
+anticipated. I watched her for some time with a painful interest. It was
+evident that she was not an habitual gambler, like several others at the
+same table, whose hard impassive features never varied with the variations
+of the game. There was one little old withered skeleton of a woman, like
+a death's head in artificial flowers, who stretched out her harpy claws
+upon the rouleaus of gold and silver, without moving a muscle or a
+wrinkle of her face,--with hardly an additional twinkle in her dull grey
+eye. Not so my poor baroness, who became every moment more agitated and
+more eager: her eyes sparkled with an unnatural keenness, her teeth
+became set, and her lips drawn away from them, wore, instead of the
+sweet smile which had at first attracted my attention, a grin of
+desperation. Gradually, as I looked at her, her countenance assumed so
+hideous, and, I may add, so vile an expression, that I could no longer
+endure the spectacle. I hastened from the room--more moved, more shocked
+than I can express; and often, since that time, her face has risen upon
+my day and night dreams like a horrid supernatural mask. Her husband,
+for this wretched woman was a wife and a mother, came to meet her a few
+days afterwards, and accompany her home; but I heard that in the interval
+she had attempted self-destruction, and failed.
+
+MEDON.
+
+The case is but too common; and even you, who are always seeking reasons
+and excuses for the delinquencies of your sex, would hardly find them
+here.
+
+ALDA.
+
+And unless I could know what were the previous habits and education
+of the victim, through what influences, blest or unblest, her mind
+had been trained, her moral existence built up--should I condemn? Who
+had taught this woman self-knowledge?--who had instructed her in the
+elements of her own being, and guarded her against her own excitable
+temperament?--what friendly voice had warned her ignorance?--what secret
+burden of misery--what joyless emptiness of heart--what fever of the
+nerves--what weariness of spirit--what "thankless husband or faithless
+lover" had driven her to the edge of the precipice? In this particular
+case I know that the husband bore the character of being both negligent
+and dissipated; and where was _he_,--what were his haunts and his
+amusements, while his wife staked with her gold, her honour, her reason,
+and her life? Tell me all this before we dare to pass judgment. O it is
+easy to compute what is done! and yet, who but the Being above us all,
+can know what is resisted?
+
+MEDON.
+
+You would plead then for a _female_ gambler?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Why do you lay such an emphasis upon _female_ gambler? In what respect
+is a female gambler worse than one of your sex? The case is more
+pitiable;--more rare--therefore, perhaps, more shocking; but why more
+hateful?
+
+MEDON.
+
+You pose me.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Then I will leave you to think;--or shall I go on? for at this rate we
+shall never arrive at the end of our journey. I was at Aix-la-Chapelle,
+was I not? Well, I spare you the relics of Charlemagne, and if you have
+any dear or splendid associations with that great name, spare your
+imagination the shock it may receive in the cathedral at Aix, and leave
+"Yarrow unvisited."[3] Luckily the theatre at Aix is beautiful, and
+there was a fine opera, and a very perfect orchestra; the singers
+tolerable. It was here I first heard the Don Juan and the Freyschutz
+performed in the German fashion, and with German words. The Freyschutz
+gave me unmixed pleasure. In the Don Juan I missed the recitative,
+and the soft Italian flow of syllables, from which the music had been
+divorced; so that the ear, long habituated to that marriage of sweet
+sounds, was disappointed; but to listen without pleasure and excitement
+was impossible. I remember that on looking round, after Donna Anna's
+song, I was surprised to see our Chef de voyage bathed in tears; but,
+no whit disconcerted, he merely wiped them away, saying, with a smile,
+"It is the very prettiest, softest thing to cry to one's self!"
+Afterwards, when we were in the carriage, he expressed his surprise that
+any man should be ashamed of tears. "For my own part," he added, "when
+I wish to enjoy the very high sublime of luxury, I dine alone, order a
+mutton cutlet, _cuite a point_, with a bottle of Burgundy on one side,
+and Ovid's epistle of Penelope to Ulysses on the other; and so I read,
+and eat, and cry to myself. And then he repeated with enthusiasm--
+
+  "Hanc tua Penelope lento tibi mittit Ulysse:
+  Nil mihi rescribas attamen ipse veni;"
+
+
+his eyes glistening as he recited the lines; he made me feel their
+beauty without understanding a word of their sense. "Strangest, and
+happiest of men!" I thought as I looked at him, "that after living
+seventy years in this world, can still have tears to spare for the
+sorrows of Penelope!" Well, our next resting place was Cologne.
+
+MEDON.
+
+You pause?--you have nothing to say of Cologne? No English traveller,
+except your professed tourists and guide-book makers, ever has; of the
+crowds who pass through the place, on their way up or down the Rhine,
+how few spend more than a night or a day there! their walk is between
+the Rheinberg and the cathedral; they look, perhaps, with a sneering
+curiosity at the shrine of the Three Kings; cut the usual jests on the
+Leda and the Cupid and Psyche;[4] glance at the St. Peter of Rubens;
+lounge on the bridge of boats; stock themselves with eau-de-Cologne, and
+then away! And yet this strange old city, which a bigoted priesthood,
+a jealous magistracy, and a variety of historical causes, have so
+long kept isolated in the midst of Europe, with its Roman origin, its
+classical associations, the wild gothic superstitions of which it has
+been the theatre; its legion of martyrs, its three kings and eleven
+thousand virgins, and the peculiar manners and physiognomy of the people,
+strangely take the fancy. What has become of its three hundred and fifty
+churches, and its thirty thousand beggars?--Thirty thousand beggars!
+Was there ever such a splendid establishment of licensed laziness,
+and consecrated rags and wallets! What a magnificent idea does it give
+one of the inexhaustible charity, and the incalculable riches of the
+inhabitants! but the French came with their besom of purification
+and destruction; and lo! the churches were turned into arsenals, the
+convents into barracks; and from its old-accustomed haunts, "the genius
+of beggary was with sighing sent." I really believe, that were I again
+to visit Cologne, I would not be content with a mere superficial glance,
+as heretofore.
+
+ALDA.
+
+And you would do well. To confess the truth, our first impressions of
+the place were exceedingly disagreeable; it appeared a huge, rambling,
+gloomy old city, whose endless narrow dirty streets, and dull
+dingy-looking edifices, were any thing but inviting. Nor on a second
+and a third visit were we tempted to prolong our stay. Yet Cologne has
+since become most interesting to me from a friendship I formed with
+a Colonese, a descendant of one of the oldest families of the place.
+How she loved her old city!--how she worshipped every relic with the
+most poetical, if not the most pious veneration!--how she looked
+down upon Berlin with scorn, as an upstart city, "_une ville ma chere,
+qui n'a ni histoire, ni antiquite_." The cathedral she used to call
+"_mon Berceau_," and the three kings "_mes trois peres_." Her profound
+knowledge of general history, her minute acquaintance with the local
+antiquities, the peculiar customs, the wild legends, the solemn
+superstitions of her birth-place, added to the most lively imagination
+and admirable descriptive powers, were to me an inexhaustible source
+of delight and information. It appears that the people of Cologne have
+a distinct character, but little modified by intercourse with the
+surrounding country, and preserved by continual intermarriages among
+themselves. They have a dialect, and songs, and ballads, and music,
+peculiar to their city; and are remarkable for an original vein of
+racy humour, a revengeful spirit, an exceeding superstition, a blind
+attachment to their native customs, a very decided contempt for
+other people, and a surpassing hatred of all innovations. They never
+admitted the jurisdiction of the electors of Cologne, and, although
+the most bigoted people in the world, were generally at war with
+their archbishops. Even Napoleon could not make them comformable.
+The city is now attached to Prussia, but still retains most of its
+ancient privileges, and all its ancient spirit of insubordination and
+independence. When, in 1828, the king of Prussia wished to force upon
+them an unpopular magistrate, the whole city rose, and obliged the
+obnoxious president to resign; the government, armed with all its legal
+and military terrors, could do nothing against the determined spirit
+of this half-civilized, fearless, reckless, yet merry, good-humoured
+populace. A history of this grotesque revolution, which had the same
+duration as the celebrated _trois jours de Paris_, and exhibited in
+its progress and issue some of the most striking, most characteristic,
+most farcical scenes you can imagine, were worthy of a Colonese Walter
+Scott. How I wish I could give you some of my friend's rich graphic
+sketches and humorous pictures of popular manner! but I feel that their
+peculiar spirit would evaporate in my hands. The event is celebrated in
+their local history as "_la Revolution du Carnaval_:" and this reminds
+me of another peculiarity of Cologne. The carnival is still celebrated
+there with a degree of splendour and fantastic humour, exceeding even
+the festivities of Rome and Naples in the present day; but as the season
+of the carnival is not the season for flight with our English birds of
+passage, few have ever witnessed these extraordinary Saturnalia. Such is
+the general ignorance or indifference relative to Cologne, that I met
+the other day with a very accomplished man, and a lover of art, who had
+frequently visited the place, and yet he had never seen the Medusa.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Nor I, by this good light!--I never even heard of it!
+
+ALDA.
+
+And how shall I attempt to describe it? Unless I had the "large
+utterance of the early gods," or could pour forth a string of Greek or
+German compounds, I know not in what words I could do justice to the
+effect it produced upon me. This wondrous mask measures about two feet
+and a half in height;[5] the colossal features, and I may add, the
+colossal expression, grand without exaggeration--so awfully vast, and
+yet so gloriously beautiful; the full rich lips curled with disdain--the
+mighty wings overshadowing the knit and tortured brow--the madness in
+the large dilated eyes--the wreathing and recoiling snakes, came upon me
+like something supernatural, and impressed me at once with astonishment,
+horror, and admiration. I was quite unprepared for what I beheld. As I
+stood before it my mind seemed to elevate and enlarge itself to admit
+this new vision of grandeur. Nothing but the two Fates in the Elgin
+marbles, and the Torso of the Vatican, ever affected me with the same
+inexpressible sense of the sublime: and this is not a fragment of some
+grand mystery, of which the remainder has been "to night and chaos
+hurled;" it is entire, in admirable preservation, and the workmanship as
+perfect as the conception is magnificent. I know not if it would have
+affected another in the same manner. For me, the ghastly allegory of the
+Medusa has a peculiar fascination. I confess that I have never wholly
+understood it, nor have any of the usual explanations satisfied me;
+it appears to me, that the Greeks, in thus blending the extremes of
+loveliness and terror, had a meaning, a purpose, more than is dreamt
+of by our philosophy.
+
+MEDON.
+
+But, how came this wonderful relic to Cologne, of all places in the
+world?
+
+ALDA.
+
+It stopped there on its road to England.
+
+MEDON.
+
+By what perverse destiny?--was it avarice on our part, or force or fraud
+on that of others?
+
+ALDA.
+
+It was, as Desdemona says, "our wretched fortune:" but the story, with
+all its circumstances, does so much honour to human nature, that it
+has half reconciled me to our loss. You must have heard of Professor
+Wallraf of Cologne, one of the canons of the cathedral, who, with his
+professorship and his canonship together, may have possessed from
+five to seven hundred francs a year. He was one of those wonderful
+and universal scholars, of whom we read in former times--men who
+concentrated all their powers and passions, and intellectual faculties,
+in the acquirement and advancement of knowledge, without any selfish aim
+or object, and from the mere abstract love of science. Early in life
+this man formed the resolution to remove from his native city the reproach
+of self-satisfied ignorance and monastic prejudices, which had hitherto
+characterized it; and in the course of a long existence of labour and
+privation, as professor and teacher, he contrived to collect together
+books, manuscripts, pictures, gems, works of art, and objects of natural
+history, to an immense amount. In the year 1818, on recovering from
+a dangerous illness, he presented his whole collection to his native
+city; and the magistracy, in return, bestowed on him a pension of three
+thousand francs for the remainder of his life. He was then more than
+seventy. About the same time a dealer in antiquities arrived from Rome,
+bringing with him this divine Medusa, with various other busts and
+fragments: he was on his way to England, where he hoped to dispose of
+them. He asked for his whole collection twelve thousand francs, and
+refused to sell any part of it separately. The city refused to make the
+purchase, thinking it too dear, and Wallraf, in despair at the idea
+of this glorious relic being consigned to other lands, mortgaged his
+yearly pension in order to raise the money, purchased the Medusa,
+presented it to the city, and then cheerfully resumed his accustomed
+life of self-denial and frugality. His only dread was lest he should die
+before the period was expired. He lived, however, to pay off his debt,
+and in three months afterwards he died.[6] Was not this admirable? The
+first time I saw the Medusa I did not know this anecdote; the second
+time, as I looked at it, I thought of Wallraf, and felt how much a moral
+interest can add to the charm of what is in itself most perfect.
+
+MEDON.
+
+I will certainly make a pilgrimage to this Medusa. She must be worth
+all the eleven thousand virgins together. What next?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Instead of embarking in the steam-boat, we posted along the left
+bank of the Rhine, spending a few days at Bonn, at Godesberg, and at
+Ehrenbreitstein; but I should tell you, as you allow me to diverge, that
+on my second journey, I owed much to a residence of some weeks at Bonn.
+There I became acquainted with the celebrated Schlegel, or I should
+rather say, M. le Chevalier de Schlegel, for I believe his titles and
+his "starry honours" are not indifferent to him; and in truth he wears
+them very gracefully. I was rather surprised to find in this sublime
+and eloquent critic, this awful scholar, whose comprehensive mind has
+grasped the whole universe of art, a most agreeable, lively, social
+being. Of the judgments passed on him in his own country, I know little,
+and understand less; I am not deep in German literary polemics. To me
+he was the author of the lectures on "Dramatic Literature," and the
+translator of Shakspeare, and, moreover, all that was amiable and
+polite: and was not this enough?
+
+MEDON.
+
+Enough for you, certainly; but, I believe that at this time Schlegel
+would rather found his fame on being one of the greatest oriental
+critics of the age, than on being the interpreter of the beauties of
+Calderon and Shakspeare.
+
+ALDA.
+
+I believe so; but for my own part, I would rather hear him talk of
+Romeo and Juliet, and of Madame de Stael, than of the Ramayana, the
+Bhagvat-Gita, or even the "eastern Con-fut-zee." This, of course, is
+only a proof of my own ignorance. Conversation may be compared to a lyre
+with seven chords--philosophy, art, poetry, politics, love, scandal,
+and the weather. There are some professors, who, like Paganini, "can
+discourse most eloquent music" upon one string only; and some who can
+grasp the whole instrument, and with a master's hand sound it from the
+top to the bottom of its compass. Now, Schlegel is one of the latter:
+he can thunder in the bass or caper in the treble; he can be a whole
+concert in himself. No man can trifle like him, nor, like him, blend in
+a few hours' converse, the critic, philologist, poet, philosopher, and
+man of the world--no man narrates more gracefully, nor more happily
+illustrates a casual thought. He told me many interesting things. "Do
+you know," said he one morning, as I was looking at a beautiful edition
+of Corinne, bound in red morocco, the gift of Madame de Stael; "do you
+know that I figure in that book?" I asked eagerly in what character?
+He bid me guess. I guessed playfully, the Comte d'Erfeuil. "No! no!"
+said he, laughing, "I am immortalized in the Prince Castel-Forte, the
+faithful, humble, unaspiring, friend of Corinne."
+
+MEDON.
+
+To any man but Schlegel, such an immortality were worth a life. Nay,
+there is no man, though his fame extended to the ends of the earth, whom
+the pen of Madame de Stael could not honour.
+
+ALDA.
+
+He seemed to think so, and I liked him for the self-complacency with
+which he twined her little myrtle leaf with his own palmy honours. Nor
+did he once refer to what I believe every body knows, her obligations to
+him in her De l'Allemagne.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Apropos--do tell me what is the general opinion of that book among the
+Germans themselves.
+
+ALDA.
+
+I think they do not judge it fairly. Some speak of it as eloquent, but
+superficial:[7] others denounce it altogether as a work full of mistakes
+and flippant, presumptuous criticism: others again affect to speak of
+it, and even of Madame de Stael herself, as things of another era, quite
+gone by and forgotten; this appeared to me too ridiculous. They forget,
+or do not know, what _we_ know, that her De l'Allemagne was the first
+book which awakened in France and England a lively and general interest
+in German art and literature. It is now five-and-twenty years since it
+was published. The march of opinion, and criticism, and knowledge of
+every kind, has been so rapid, that much has become old which then was
+new; but this does not detract from its merit. Once or twice I tried to
+convince my German friends that they were exceedingly ungrateful in
+abusing Madame de Stael, but it was all in vain; so I sat swelling with
+indignation to hear my idol traduced, and called--O profanation!--
+"_cette Stael_."
+
+MEDON.
+
+But do you think the Germans could at all appreciate or understand such
+a phenomenon as Madame de Stael must have appeared in those days? She
+whisked through their skies like a meteor, before they could bring the
+telescope of their wits to a right focus for observation. How she must
+have made them open their eyes!--and you see in the correspondence
+between Goethe and Schiller what _they_ thought of her.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Yes, I know that with her lively egotism and Parisian volubility,
+she stunned Schiller and teased Goethe: but while our estimate of
+_manner_ may be allowed to be relative and comparative, our estimate
+of _character_ should be positive and abstract. Madame de Stael was
+in manner the Frenchwoman, accustomed to be the cynosure of a salon,
+but she was not ridiculous or egoiste in character. She was, to use
+Schlegel's expression, "femme grande et magnanime jusque dans les replis
+de son ame." The best proof is the very spirit in which she viewed
+Germany, in spite of all her natural and national prejudices. To apply
+your own expression, she went forth, in the spirit of peace, and brought
+back, not only an olive leaf, but a whole tree, and it has flourished.
+She had a universal mind. I believe she never thought, and still less
+_made_, any one ridiculous in her life.[8]
+
+At Bonn much of my time was spent in intimate and almost hourly
+intercourse with two friends, one of whom I have already mentioned to
+you--a rare creature!--the other, who was herself the daughter of a
+distinguished authoress,[9] was one of the most generally accomplished
+women I ever met with. Opposed to each other in the constitution of
+their minds--in all their views of literature and art, and all their
+experience of life--in their tastes, and habits, and feelings--yet
+mutually appreciating each other: both were distinguished by talents of
+the highest order and by great originality of character, and both were
+German, and very essentially _German_: English society and English
+education would never have produced two such women. Their conversation
+prepared me to form correct ideas of what I was to see and hear, and
+guarded me against the mistakes and hasty conclusions of vivacious
+travellers. At Bonn I also saw, for the first time, a specimen of the
+fresco painting, lately revived in Germany with such brilliant success.
+By command of the Prussian Board of Education the hall of the university
+of Bonn is to be painted in fresco, and the work has been entrusted
+to C. Hermann, Goetzenberger, and Foerster--all, I believe, pupils of
+Cornelius. The three sides of the hall are to represent the three
+faculties--Theology, Jurisprudence, and Philosophy; the first of these
+is finished, and here is an engraving of it. You see Theology is throned
+in the centre. The four evangelists, with St. Peter and St. Paul, stand
+on the steps of the throne; around her are the fathers and doctors of
+the church, and (which is the chief novelty of the composition) grouped
+together with a very liberal disregard to all religious differences;
+for there you see pope Gregory, and Ignatius Loyola, and St. Bernard,
+and Abelard, and Dante; and here we have Luther, and Melanchthon,
+and Calvin, and Wickliff, and Huss. On the opposite side of the hall,
+Philosophy, under which head are comprised all science, poetry, and art,
+is represented surrounded by the great poets, philosophers, and artists,
+from Homer, Aristotle, and Phideas, down to Shakspeare, Raffaelle,
+Goethe, and Kant. Jurisprudence, which is not begun, is to occupy the
+third side. The cartoons pleased me better than the paintings, for the
+drawing and grouping are really fine; but the execution struck me as
+somewhat hard and mannered. I shall have much to say hereafter of the
+fresco painting in Germany; for the present, proceed we on our journey.
+
+Tell me, had you a full moon while you were on the Rhine?
+
+MEDON.
+
+Truly, I forget.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Then you had _not_; for it would so have blended with your recollections,
+that as a circumstance it could not have been forgotten; and take
+my advice, when next you are off on your annual flight, consult the
+calendar, and propitiate the fairest of all the fair Existences of
+heaven to give you the light of her countenance. If you never took a
+solitary ramble, or, what is better, a _tete-a-tete_ drive through the
+villages and vineyards between Bonn and Plittersdorf, when the moon
+hung over the Drachenfels, when the undulating outlines of the Seven
+Mountains seemed to dissolve into the skies, and the Rhine was spread
+out at their feet like a lake--so ample, and so still;--if you have
+never seen the stars shine through the ruined arch of the Rolandseck,
+and the height of Godesberg, with its single giant tower, stand out of
+the plain,--black, and frowning against the silvery distance, then you
+have not beheld one of the loveliest landscapes ever presented to a
+thoughtful worshipper of nature. There is a story, too, connected with
+the ruins of Godesberg:--one of those fine tragedies of real life, which
+distance all fiction. It is not so popular as the celebrated legend
+of the brave Roland, and his cloistered love; but it is at least
+as authentic. You know that, according to tradition, the castle of
+Godesberg was founded by Julian the Apostate; another, and a more
+interesting apostate, was the cause of its destruction.
+
+Gerard[10] de Truchses, Count Waldbourg, who was archbishop and elector
+of Cologne in 1583, scandalized his see, and all the Roman Catholic
+powers, by turning Protestant. According to himself, his conversion was
+owing to "the goodness of God, who had revealed to him the darkness and
+the errors of popery;" but according to his enemies, it was owing to his
+love for the beautiful Agnes de Mansfeld, canoness of Gersheim; she was
+a daughter of one of the greatest Protestant houses in Germany; and her
+two brothers, bigoted Calvinists, and jealous of the honour of their
+family, conceived themselves insulted by the public homage which a
+Catholic priest, bound by his vows, dared to pay to their sister. They
+were yet more incensed on discovering that the love was mutual, and
+loudly threatened vengeance to both. Gerard renounced the Catholic
+faith, and the lovers were united. He was excommunicated and degraded,
+of course; but he insisted on his right to retain his secular dominions
+and privileges, and refused to resign the electorate, which the emperor,
+meantime, had awarded to Ernest of Bavaria, bishop of Liege. The contest
+became desperate. The whole of that beautiful and fertile plain, from
+the walls of Cologne to the Godesberg, grew "familiar with bloodshed as
+the morn with dew;" and Gerard displayed qualities which showed him more
+fitted to win and wear a bride, than to do honour to any priestly vows
+of sanctity and temperance. Attacked on all sides,--by his subjects, who
+had learned to detest him as an apostate, by the infuriated clergy, and
+by the Duke of Bavaria, who had brought an army to enforce his brother's
+claims,--he carried on the struggle for five years, and at last, reduced
+to extremity, threw himself, with a few faithful friends, into the
+castle of Godesberg. After a brave defence, the castle was stormed and
+taken by the Bavarians, who left it nearly in the state we now see it--a
+heap of ruins.
+
+Gerard escaped with his wife, and fled to Holland, where Maurice, Prince
+of Orange, granted him an asylum. Thence he sent his beautiful and
+devoted wife to the court of Queen Elizabeth, to claim a former promise
+of protection, and supplicate her aid, as the great support of the
+Protestant cause, for the recovery of his rights. He could not have
+chosen a more luckless ambassadress; for Agnes, though her beauty was
+somewhat impaired by the persecutions and anxieties which had followed
+her ill-fated union, was yet most lovely and stately, in all the pride
+of womanhood; and her misfortunes and her charms, as well as the
+peculiar circumstances of her marriage, excited the enthusiasm of all
+the English chivalry. Unhappily the Earl of Essex was among the first to
+espouse her cause with all the generous warmth of his character, and his
+visits to her were so frequent, and his admiration so indiscreet, that
+Elizabeth's jealousy was excited even to fury. Agnes was first driven
+from the court, and then ordered to quit the kingdom. She took refuge in
+the Netherlands, where she died soon afterwards; and Gerard, who never
+recovered his dominions, retired to Strasbourg, where he died. So ends
+this sad eventful history, which, methinks, would make a very pretty
+romance. The tower of Godesberg, lasting as their love and ruined as
+their fortunes, still remains one of the most striking monuments in that
+land, where almost every hill is crowned with its castle, and every
+castle has its tale of terror, or of love.[11]
+
+Another beautiful picture, which, merely as a picture, has dwelt on my
+remembrance, was the city of Coblentz and the fort of Ehrenbreitstein,
+as viewed from the bridge of boats under a cloudless moon. The city,
+with its fantastic steeples and masses of building, relieved against
+the clear deep blue of the summer sky--the lights which sparkled in the
+windows reflected in the broad river, and the various forms and tall
+masts of the craft anchored above and opposite--the huge hill, with its
+tiara of fortifications, which, in the sunshine and in the broad day,
+had disappointed me by its formality, now seen under the soft moonlight,
+as its long lines of architecture and abrupt angles were projected in
+brightness or receded in shadow, had altogether a most sublime effect.
+But _apropos_ to moonlights and pictures--of all the enchanted and
+enchanting scenes ever lighted by the full round moon, give me
+Heidelberg! Not the Colosseum of Rome--neither in itself, nor yet in
+Lord Byron's description, and I have both by heart--can be more grand;
+and in moral interest, in poetical associations, in varying and wondrous
+beauty, the castle of Heidelberg has the advantage. In the course of
+many visits, Heidelberg became to me familiar as the face of a friend,
+and its remembrance still "haunts me as a passion." I have known it
+under every changeful aspect which the seasons, and the hours, and the
+changeful moods of my own mind, could lend it. I have seen it when the
+sun, rising over the Geisberg, first kindled the vapours as they floated
+away from the old towers, and when the ivy and the wreathed verdure on
+the walls sparkled with dewy light: and I have seen it when its huge
+black masses stood against the flaming sunset; and its enormous shadow,
+flung down the chasm beneath, made it night there, while daylight
+lingered around and above. I have seen it when mantled in all the bloom
+and foliage of summer, and when the dead leaves were heaped on the paths,
+and choked the entrance to many a favourite nook. I have seen it when
+crowds of gay visitors flitted along its ruined terraces,[12] and music
+sounded near; and with friends, whose presence endeared every pleasure;
+and I have walked alone round its desolate precincts, with no companions
+but my own sad and troubled thoughts. I have seen it when clothed in
+calm and glorious moonlight. I have seen it when the winds rushed
+shrieking through its sculptured halls, and when grey clouds came
+rolling down the mountains, folding it in their ample skirts from the
+view of the city below. And what have I seen to liken to it by night or
+by day, in storm or in calm, in summer or in winter! Then its historical
+and poetical associations--
+
+MEDON.
+
+There now!--will you not leave the picture, perfect as it is, and not
+for ever seek in every object something more than is there?
+
+ALDA.
+
+I do not seek it--I find it. You will say--I have _heard_ you say--that
+Heidelberg wants no beauty unborrowed of the eye; but if history had not
+clothed it in recollections, fancy must have invested it in its own
+dreams. It is true, that it is a mere modern edifice compared with all
+the classic, and most of the gothic ruins; yet over Heidelberg there
+hangs a terror and a mystery peculiar to itself: for the mind which
+acquiesces in decay, recoils from destruction. Here ruin and desolation
+make mocks with luxurious art and gay magnificence. Here it is not the
+equal, gradual power of time, adorning and endearing what yet it spares
+not, which has wrought this devastation, but savage war and elemental
+rage. Twice blasted by the thunderbolt, three times consumed by fire,
+ten times ravaged, plundered, desecrated by foes, and at last dismantled
+and abandoned by its own princes, it is still strong to endure and
+mighty to resist all that time, and war, and the elements may do against
+it--and, mutilated rather than decayed, may still defy centuries. The
+very anomalies of architecture and fantastic incongruities of this
+fortress-palace, are to me a fascination. Here are startling and
+terrific contrasts. That huge round tower--the tower of Frederic the
+Victorious--now "deep trenched with thunder fires," looks as if built
+by the Titans or the Huns; and those delicate sculptures in the palace
+of Otho-Henry, as if the genius of Raffaelle or Correggio had breathed
+on the stone. What flowing grace of outline! what luxuriant life! what
+endless variety and invention in those half-defaced fragments! These are
+the work of Italian artists, whose very names have perished;--all traces
+of their existence and of their destinies so utterly lost, that one
+might almost believe, with the peasantry, that these exquisite remains
+are not the work of mortal hands, but of fairies and spirits of air,
+evoked to do the will of an enchanter. The old palatines, the lords of
+Heidelberg, were a magnificent and magnanimous race. Louis III.,
+Frederic the Victorious, Frederic II., Otho-Henry, were all men who had
+stepped in advance of their age. They could think as well as fight, in
+days when fighting, not thinking, was the established fashion among
+potentates and people. A liberal and enlightened spirit, and a love of
+all the arts that humanise mankind, seem to have been hereditary in
+this princely family. Frederic I. lay under the suspicion of heresy
+and sorcery, in consequence of his tolerant opinions, and his love of
+mathematics and astronomy. His personal prowess, and the circumstance
+of his never having been vanquished in battle, gave rise to the report,
+that he was assisted by evil demons; and for years, both before and
+after his accession, he was under the ban of the secret tribunal.
+Heidelberg was the scene of some of the mysterious attacks on his life,
+but they were constantly frustrated by the fidelity of his friends, and
+the watchful love of his wife.
+
+It was at Heidelberg this prince celebrated a festival, renowned
+in German history, and, for the age in which it occurred, most
+extraordinary. He invited to a banquet all the factious barons whom he
+had vanquished at Seckingen, and who had previously ravaged and laid
+waste great part of the palatinate. Among them were the Bishop of Metz
+and the Margrave of Baden. The repast was plentiful and luxurious, but
+there was no bread. The warrior guests looked round with surprise
+and inquiry. "Do you ask for bread?" said Frederic, sternly; "you,
+who have wasted the fruits of the earth, and destroyed those whose
+industry cultivates it? There is no bread. Eat and be satisfied; and
+learn henceforth mercy to those who put the bread into your mouths."
+A singular lesson from the lips of an iron-clad warrior of the middle
+ages.
+
+It was Frederic II. and his nephew Otho-Henry, who enriched the library,
+then the first in Europe next to the Vatican, with treasures of
+learning, and who invited painters and sculptors from Italy to adorn
+their noble palace with the treasures of art. In less than one hundred
+years those beautiful creations were defaced or utterly destroyed, and
+all the memorials and records of their authors are supposed to have
+perished at the time when the ruthless Tilly stormed the castle, and the
+archives and part of the library of precious MSS. were taken to litter
+his dragoons' horses, during a transient scarcity of straw.[13]--You
+groan!
+
+MEDON.
+
+The anecdote is not new to me; but I was thinking, at the moment, of a
+pretty phrase in the letters of the Prince de Ligne, "la guerre--c'est
+un malheur--mais c'est le plus beau des malheurs."
+
+ALDA.
+
+O if there be any thing more terrific, more disgusting, than war and
+its consequences, it is that perversion of all human intellect--that
+depravation of all human feeling--that contempt or misconception of every
+Christian precept, which has permitted the great, and the good, and the
+tenderhearted, to admire war as a splendid game--a part of the poetry
+of life--and to defend it as a glorious evil, which the very nature and
+passions of man have ever rendered, and will ever render, necessary and
+inevitable. Perhaps the idea of human suffering--though when we think
+of it in detail it makes the blood curdle--is not so bad as the general
+loss to humanity, the interruption to the progress of thought in the
+destruction of the works of wisdom or genius. Listen to this magnificent
+sentence out of the volume now lying open before me--"Who kills a man,
+kills a reasonable creature--God's image; but he who destroys a good
+book, kills reason itself. Many a man lives a burthen to the earth, but
+a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and
+treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can
+restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss: and revolutions
+of ages do not oft recover the loss of rejected truth, for the want of
+which whole nations fare the worse; therefore we should be wary how we
+spill the seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books."
+
+MEDON.
+
+"Methinks we do know the fine Roman hand." Milton, is it not?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Yes; and after this, think of Milton's Areopagitica, or his Paradise
+Lost, under the hoofs of Tilly's dragoon horses, or feeding the fishes
+in the Baltic! It might have happened had he written in Germany instead
+of England.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Do you forget that the cause of the thirty years war was a woman?
+
+ALDA.
+
+A woman and religion; the two best or worst things in the world,
+according as they are understood and felt, used and abused. You allude
+to Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was to Heidelberg what Helen was to Troy?
+
+One of the most interesting monuments of Heidelberg, at least to an
+English traveller, is the elegant triumphal arch raised by the palatine
+Frederic V. in honour of his bride--this very Elizabeth Stuart. I well
+remember with what self-complacency and enthusiasm our Chef walked about
+in a heavy rain, examining, dwelling upon every trace of this celebrated
+and unhappy woman. She had been educated at his country-seat, and one
+of the avenues of his magnificent park yet bears her name. On her
+fell a double portion of the miseries of her fated family. She had the
+beauty and the wit, the gay spirits, the elegant tastes, the kindly
+disposition, of her grandmother, Mary of Scotland. Her very virtues as
+a wife and a woman, not less than her pride and feminine prejudices,
+ruined herself, her husband, and her people. When Frederick hesitated to
+accept the crown of Bohemia, his high-hearted wife exclaimed--"Let me
+rather eat dry bread at a king's table than feast at the board of an
+elector;" and it seemed as if some avenging demon hovered in the air,
+to take her literally at her word, for she and her family lived to
+eat dry bread--aye, and to beg it before they ate it; but she _would_
+be a queen. Blest as she was in love, in all good gifts of nature and
+fortune, in all means of happiness, a kingly crown was wanting to
+complete her felicity, and it was cemented to her brow with the blood of
+two millions of men. And who was to blame? Was not her mode of thinking
+the fashion of her time, the effect of her education? Who had
+
+  "Put in her tender heart the aspiring flame
+  Of golden sovereignty?"
+
+
+For how many ages will you men exclaim against the mischiefs and
+miseries, caused by the influence of women; thus allowing the influence,
+yet taking no thought how to make that influence a means of good,
+instead of an instrument of evil!
+
+Elizabeth had brought with her from England some luxurious tastes, as
+yet unknown in the palatinate; she had been familiarized with the dramas
+of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and she had figured in the masques of Ben
+Jonson. To gratify her, Frederic added to the castle of Heidelberg the
+theatre and banqueting-room, and all that beautiful group of buildings
+at the western angle, the ruins of which are still called the _English
+palace_. She had inherited from her grandmother, or had early imbibed
+from education, a love of nature and of amusements in the open air,
+and a passion for gardening; and it was to please her, and under her
+auspices, that Frederic planned those magnificent gardens, which were
+intended to unite within their bounds, all that nature could contribute
+or art devise; had they been completed, they would have rendered
+Heidelberg a pleasure-palace, fit for fairy-land. Nor were those designs
+unworthy of a prosperous and pacific sovereign, whose treasury was
+full, whose sway was just and mild, whose people had long enjoyed in
+tranquillity the fruits of their own industry. When I had the pleasure
+of spending a few days with the Schlossers, at their beautiful seat
+on the Necker, (Stift Neuburg,) I went over the ground with Madame de
+Schlosser, who had seen and studied the original plans. Her description
+of the magnitude and the sumptuous taste of these unfinished designs,
+while we stood together amid a wilderness of ruins, was a commentary on
+the vicissitudes of this world, worth fifty moral treatises, and as many
+sermons.
+
+        "For in the wreck of IS and WAS,
+  Things incomplete and purposes betray'd,
+  Make sadder transits o'er Truth's mystic glass,
+  Than noblest objects utterly decay'd."
+
+
+Close to the ruins of poor Elizabeth's palace, there where the effigies
+of her handsome husband, and his bearded ancestor Louis V. look down
+from the ivy-mantled wall, you remember the beautiful terrace towards
+the west? It is still,--after four centuries of changes, of disasters,
+of desolation,--the garden of Clara. When Frederic the Victorious
+assumed the sovereignty, in a moment of danger and faction, he took,
+at the same time, a solemn vow never to marry, that the rights of his
+infant nephew, the son of the late palatine, should not be prejudiced,
+nor the peace of the country endangered by a disputed succession. He
+kept his oath religiously, but at that very time he loved Clara Dettin
+de Wertheim, a young girl of plebeian origin, and a native of Augsburg,
+whose musical talents and melody of voice had raised her to a high
+situation in the court of the late princess palatine. Frederick, with
+the consent of his nephew, was united to Clara by a left-hand marriage,
+an expedient still in use in Germany, and, I believe, peculiar to its
+constitution; such a marriage is valid before God and man, yet the wife
+has no acknowledged rights, and the offspring no supposed existence.
+Clara is celebrated by the poets and chroniclers of her time, and
+appears to have been a very extraordinary being in her way. In that age
+of ignorance, she had devoted herself to study--she could sympathize in
+her husband's pursuits, and share the toils of government--she collected
+round her the wisest and most learned men of the time--she continued to
+cultivate the beautiful voice which had won the heart of Frederic, and
+her song and her lute were always ready to soothe his cares. Tradition
+points out the spot where it is said she loved to meditate, and, looking
+down upon the little hamlet, on the declivity of the hill, to recall
+her own humble origin; that little hamlet, embowered in foliage, and
+the remembrance of Clara, have survived the glories of Heidelberg. Her
+descendants became princes of the empire, and still exist in the family
+of Lowenstein.
+
+Then, for those who love the marvellous, there is the wild legend of
+the witch Jetta, who still flits among the ruins, and bathes her golden
+tresses in the Wolfsbrunnen; but why should I tell you of these
+tales--you, whose head is a sort of black-letter library?
+
+MEDON.
+
+True; but it is pleasant to have one's old recollections taken down
+from their shelves and dusted, and placed in a new light; only do not
+require, even if I again visit Heidelberg, that I should see it as you
+have beheld it, with your quick spirit of association, and clothed in
+the hues of your own individual mind. While you speak, it is not so much
+the places and objects you describe, as their reflection in your own
+fancy, which I see before me; and every different mind will reflect them
+under a different aspect. Then, where is truth? you say. If we want
+information as to mere facts--the situation of a town, the measurement
+of a church, the date of a ruin, the catalogue of a gallery--we can go
+to our dictionaries and our _guides des voyageurs_. But if, besides form
+and outline, we must have colouring too, we should remember that every
+individual mind will paint the scene with its own proper hues; and if
+we judge of the mind and the objects it represents relatively to each
+other, we may come at the truth, not otherwise. I would ask nothing of
+a traveller, but accuracy and sincerity in the expression of his
+opinions and feelings. I have then a page out of the great book of human
+nature--the portrait of a particular mind; when that is fairly before me
+I have a standard by which to judge: I can draw my own inferences. Will
+you not allow that it is possible to visit Heidelberg, and to derive
+the most intense pleasure from its picturesque beauty, without dreaming
+over witches and warriors, palatines and princes? Can we not admire and
+appreciate the sculpture in the palace of Otho-Henry, without losing
+ourselves in vague, wondering reveries over the destinies of the
+sculptors?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Yes; but it is amusing, and not less instructive, to observe the
+manner in which the individual character and pursuits shall modify the
+impressions of external things; only we should be prepared for this, as
+the pilot makes allowance for the variation of the needle, and directs
+his course accordingly. It is a mistake to suppose that those who cannot
+see the imaginative aspect of things, see, therefore, the only true
+aspect; they only see one aspect of the truth. _Vous etes orfevre,
+Monsieur Josse_, is as applicable to travellers as to every other
+species of egotist.
+
+Once, in an excursion to the north, I fell into conversation with a
+Sussex farmer, one of that race of sturdy, rich, and independent
+English yeomen, of which I am afraid few specimens remain: he was quite
+a character in his way. I must sketch him for you; but only Miss Mitford
+could do him justice. His coat was of the finest broad-cloth; his
+shirt-frill, in which was stuck a huge agate pin, and his neckcloth, were
+both white as the snow; his good beaver shone in all its pristine gloss,
+and an enormous bunch of gold seals adorned his watch-chain; his voice
+was loud and dictatorial, and his language surprisingly good and flowing,
+though tinctured with a little coarseness and a few provincialisms. He
+had made up his mind about the Reform Bill--the Catholic Question--the
+Corn Laws--and about things in general, and things in particular; he
+had doubts about nothing: it was evident that he was accustomed to lay
+down the law in his own village--that he was the tyrant of his own
+fire-side--that his wife was "his horse, his ox, his ass, his any thing,"
+while his sons went to college, and his daughters played on the piano.
+London was to him merely a vast congregation of pestilential vapours--a
+receptacle of thieves, cut-throats and profligates--a place in which no
+sensible man, who had a care for his life, his health, or his pockets,
+would willingly set his foot; he thanked God that he never spent but two
+nights in the metropolis, and at intervals of twenty-seven years: the
+first night he had passed in the streets, in dread of fire and vermin;
+and on the last occasion, he had not ventured beyond Smithfield. What he
+did not know, was to him not worth knowing; and the word _French_, which
+comprised all that was foreign, he used as a term, expressing the most
+unbounded abhorrence, pity, and contempt. I should add, that though
+rustic, and arrogant, and prejudiced, he was not vulgar. We were at
+an inn, on the borders of Leicestershire, through which we had both
+recently travelled; my farmer was enthusiastic in his admiration of
+the country. "A fine country, madam--a beautiful country--a splendid
+country!"
+
+"Do you call it a fine country?" said I, absently, my head full of the
+Alps and Appenines, the Pyrenean, and the river Po.
+
+"To be sure I do; and where would you see a finer?"
+
+"I did not see any thing very picturesque," said I.
+
+"_Picturesque!_" he repeated with some contempt; "I don't know what
+_you_ call picturesque; but _I_ say, give me a soil, that when you turn
+it up you have something for your pains; the fine soil makes the fine
+country, madam!"
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE AND CHARACTER.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+MEDON.
+
+I observed the other evening, that in making a sort of imaginative bound
+from Coblentz to Heidelberg, you either skipped over Frankfort, or left
+it on one side.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Did I?--if I had done _either_, in my heart or my memory, I had been
+most ungrateful; but I thought you knew Frankfort well.
+
+MEDON.
+
+I was there for two days, on my way to Switzerland, and it rained the
+whole time from morning till night. I have a vision in my mind of
+dirty streets, chilly houses, dull shops, dingy-looking Jews, dripping
+umbrellas, luxurious hotels, and exorbitant charges,--and this is all
+I can recollect of Frankfort.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Indeed!--I pity you. To me it was associated only with pleasant
+feelings, and, in truth, it is a pleasant place. Life, there, appears in
+a very attractive costume: not in a half-holiday, half-beggarly garb, as
+at Rome and Naples; nor in a thin undress of superficial decency as at
+Berlin; nor in a court domino, hiding, we know not what--as at Vienna
+and Munich; nor half motley, half military, as at Paris; nor in rags
+and embroidery, as in London; but at Frankfort all the outside at least
+is fair, substantial, and consistent. The shops vie in splendour with
+those of London and Paris; the principal streets are clean, the houses
+spacious and airy, and there is a general appearance of cheerfulness and
+tranquillity, mingled with the luxury of wealth and the bustle of
+business, which, after the misery, and murmuring, and bitterness of
+faction, we had left in London, was really a relief to the spirits.
+It is true, that during my last two visits, this apparent tranquillity
+concealed a good deal of political ferment. The prisons were filled
+with those unfortunate wretches who had endeavoured to excite a popular
+tumult against the Prussian and Austrian governments. The trials were
+going forward every day, but not a syllable of the result transpired
+beyond the walls of the Roemer Saal. Although the most reasonable and
+liberal of the citizens agreed in condemning the rashness and folly of
+these young men, the tide of feeling was evidently in their favour: for
+instance, it was not the _fashion_ to invite the Prussian officers, and
+I well remember that when Goethe's Egmont was announced at the theatre,
+it was forbidden by the magistracy, from a fear that certain scenes and
+passages in that play might call forth some open and decided expression
+of the public feeling; in fact, only a few evenings before, some
+passages in the Massaniello had been applied and applauded by the
+audience, in a manner so _ill-bred_, that the wife of one of the
+ministers of the Holy Alliance, rose and left her box, followed by some
+other old women,--male and female. The theatre is rather commodious than
+splendid; the established company, both for the opera and the regular
+drama, excellent, and often varied by temporary visits of great actors
+and singers from the other theatres of Germany. On my first visit to
+Frankfort, which was during the fair of 1829, Paganini, then in the
+zenith of his glory, was giving a series of concerts; but do not ask
+me any thing about him, for it is a worn-out subject, and you know I am
+not one of the enthusiastic, or even the orthodox, with regard to his
+merits.
+
+MEDON.
+
+You do not mean--you will not tell me--that with all your love of music,
+you were insensible to the miraculous powers of that man?
+
+ALDA.
+
+I suppose they were miraculous, as I heard every one say so round me;
+but I listened to him as to any other musician, for the sake of the
+pleasure to be derived from music, not for the sake of wondering at
+difficulties overcome, and impossibilities made possible--they might
+have remained impossibilities for me. But insensible I was _not_ to
+the wondrous charm of his tone and expression. I was thrilled, melted,
+excited, at the moment, but it left no relish on the palate, if I may
+use the expression. To throw me into such _convulsions_ of enthusiasm,
+as I saw this man excite here and on the continent, I must have the
+orchestra with all its various mingling world of sound, or the _divine_
+human voice breathing music and passion together; but this is a matter
+of feeling, habit, education, like all other tastes in art.
+
+I think it was during our third visit to Frankfort that Madame
+Haitzinger-Neumann was playing the _gast-rolles_, for so they courteously
+denominate the parts filled by occasional visitors, to whom, as guests,
+the precedence is always given. Madame Haitzinger is the wife of
+Haitzinger, the tenor singer, who was in London, and sung in the Fidelio,
+with Madame Devrient-Schroeder. She is one of the most celebrated
+actresses in Germany for light comedy, if any comedy in Germany can be
+called light, in comparison with the same style of acting in France or
+England. Her figure is rather large--
+
+MEDON.
+
+Like most of the German actresses--for I never yet saw one who had
+attained to celebrity, who was not much too _embonpoint_ for our ideas
+of a youthful or sentimental heroine--
+
+ALDA.
+
+Not Devrient-Schroeder?
+
+MEDON.
+
+Devrient is all impassioned grace; but I think that in time even _she_
+will be in danger of becoming a little--how shall I express it with
+sufficient delicacy?--a _little_ too substantial.
+
+ALDA.
+
+No, not if a soul of music and fire, informing a feverish, excitable
+temperament, which is to the mantling spirit within, what the
+high-pitched instrument is to the breeze which sweeps over its
+chords,--not if these can avert the catastrophe; but what if you had
+seen Mademoiselle Lindner, with a figure like Mrs. Liston's--all but
+spherical--enacting Fenella and Claerchen?
+
+MEDON.
+
+I should have said, that only a German imagination could stand it! It
+is one of Madame de Stael's clever aphorisms, that on the stage, "Il
+faut menager les caprices des yeux avec le plus grand scrupule, car ils
+peuvent detruire, sans appel tout effet serieux;" but the Germans do not
+appear to be subject to these _caprices des yeux_; and have not these
+fastidious scruples about corporeal grace; for them sentiment, however
+clumsy, is still sentiment. Perhaps they are in the right.
+
+ALDA.
+
+And Mademoiselle Lindner _has_ sentiment; she must have been a fine
+actress, and is evidently a favourite with the audience. But to return
+to Madame Haitzinger;--she is handsome, with a fair complexion, and no
+very striking expression; but there is a heart and soul, and mellowness
+in her acting, which is delicious. I could not give you an idea of her
+manner by a comparison with any of our English actresses, for she is
+essentially German; she never aimed at making points; she was never
+broadly arch or comic, but the general effect was as rich as it was true
+to nature. I saw her in some of her favourite parts: in the comedy of
+"Stille Wasser sind tief;" (our Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, admirably
+adapted to the German stage by Schroeder;) in the "Mirandolina,"
+(the famous Locandiera of Goldoni,) and in the pretty lively vaudeville
+composed for her by Holtei, "Die Wiener in Berlin," in which the popular
+waltzes and airs, sung in the genuine national spirit, and enjoyed by
+the audience with a true national zest, delighted us _foreigners_.
+Herr Becker is an excellent actor in tragedy and high comedy. Of their
+singers I could not say so much--there were none I should account
+first-rate, except Dobler, whom you may remember in England.
+
+One of the most delightful peculiarities of Frankfort, one that most
+struck my fancy, is the public garden, planted on the site of the
+ramparts; a girdle of verdure and shade--of trees and flowers circling
+the whole city; accessible to all and on every side,--the promenade of
+the rich, the solace of the poor. Fifty men are employed to keep it in
+order, and it is forbidden to steal the flowers, or to kill the singing
+birds which haunt the shrubberies.
+
+MEDON.
+
+And does this prohibition avail much in a population of sixty thousand
+persons?
+
+ALDA.
+
+It does generally. A short time before we arrived some mischievous
+wretch had shot a nightingale, and was caught in the fact. His
+punishment was characteristic; his hands were tied behind him, and
+a label setting forth his crime was fixed on his breast: in this guise,
+with a police officer on each side, he was marched all round the
+gardens, and made the circuit of the city, pursued by the hisses of
+the populace and the abhorrent looks of the upper classes; he was not
+otherwise punished, but he never again made his appearance within the
+walls of the city. This was the only instance which I could learn of
+the infraction of a law which might seem at least nugatory.
+
+Of the spacious, magnificent, well-arranged cemetery, its admirable
+apparatus for restoring suspended animation, and all its beautiful
+accompaniments and memorials of the dead, there was a long account
+published in London, at the time that a cemetery was planned for this
+great overgrown city; and in truth I know not where we could find a
+better model than the one at Frankfort; it appeared to me perfection.
+
+The institutions at Frankfort, both for charity and education, are
+numerous as becomes a rich and free city; and those I had an opportunity
+of examining appeared to me admirably managed. Besides the orphan schools,
+and the Burger schule, and the school for female education, established
+and maintained by the wives of the citizens, there are several infant
+schools, where children of a year old and upwards are nursed, and fed,
+and kept out of mischief and harm, while their parents are at work.
+These are also maintained by subscription among the ladies, who take
+upon them in turns the task of daily superintendence; and I shall not
+easily forget the gentle-looking, elegant, well-dressed girl, who,
+defended from the encroachments of dirty little paws by a large apron,
+sat in the midst of a swarm of thirty or forty babies, (the eldest not
+four years old,) the very personification of feminine charity! But
+the hospital for the infirm poor--Das Versorgung Haus--pleased me
+particularly; 'tis true, that the cost was not a third--what do I say?
+not a sixth of the expense of some of our institutions for the same
+purpose. There was no luxury of architecture, nor huge gates shutting
+in wretchedness, and shutting out hope; nor grated windows; nor were the
+arrangements on so large a scale as in that splendid edifice, the Hopital
+des Vieillards, at Brussels;--a house for the poor need not be either a
+prison or a palace. But here, I recollect, the door opened with a latch;
+we entered unannounced, as unexpected. Here there was perfect neatness,
+abundance of space, of air, of light, of water, and also of occupation.
+I found that, besides the inmates of the place, many poor old creatures,
+who could not have the facilities or materials for work in their own
+dwellings, or whose relatives were busied in the daytime, might find
+here employment of any kind suited to their strength or capacity,--for
+which, observe, they were paid; thus leaving them to the last possible
+moment the feeling of independence and usefulness. I observed that many
+of those who seemed in the last stage of decrepitude had hung round
+their beds sundry little prints and pictures, and slips of paper, on
+which were written legibly, texts from scripture, moral sentences, and
+scraps of poetry. The ward of the superannuated and the sick was at a
+distance from the working and eating rooms; and all breathed around
+that peace and quiet which should accompany old age, instead of that
+"life-consuming din" I _have_ heard in such places. On the pillow of
+one bed, there was laid by some chance a bouquet of flowers.
+
+In this ward there was an old man nearly blind and lethargic; another
+old man was reading to him. I remarked a poor bed-ridden woman, utterly
+helpless, but not old, and with good and even refined features; and
+another poor woman, seated by her, was employed in keeping the flies
+from settling on her face. To one old woman, whose countenance struck
+me, I said a few words in English--I could speak no German, unluckily.
+She took my hand, kissed it, and turning away, burst into tears. No one
+asked for any thing even by a look, nor apparently wanted any thing; and
+I felt that from the unaffected good-nature of the lady who accompanied
+us, we had not so much the appearance of coming to look at the poor
+inmates as of paying them a kind visit;--and this was as it should
+be. The mild, open countenances of the two persons who managed the
+establishment, pleased me particularly; and the manner of the matron
+superintendent, as she led us over the rooms, was so simple and kind,
+that I was quite at ease: I experienced none of that awkward shyness
+and reluctance I have felt when ostentatiously led over such places in
+England--feeling ashamed to stare upon the misery I could not cure. In
+such cases I have probably attributed to the sufferers a delicacy or a
+sensibility, long blunted, if ever possessed; but I was in pain for them
+and for myself.
+
+One thing more: there was a neat chapel; and we were shown with some
+pride the only piece of splendour in the establishment. The communion
+plate of massy silver was the gift of two brothers, who had married
+on the same day two sisters; and these two sisters had died nearly at
+the same time--I believe it was actually on the same day. The widowed
+husbands presented this plate in memory of their loss and the virtues
+of their wives; and I am sorry I did not copy the simple and affecting
+inscription in which this is attested. There was also a silver vase,
+which had been presented as an offering by a poor miller whom an
+unexpected legacy had raised to independence.
+
+I might give you similar sketches of other institutions, here and
+elsewhere, but I did not bestow sufficient attention on the practical
+details, and the comparative merits of the different methods adopted,
+to render my observations useful. Though deeply interested, as any
+feeling, thinking being must be on such subjects, I have not studied
+them sufficiently. There are others, however, who are doing this better
+than I could:--blessings be on them, and eternal praise!--My general
+impression was, pleasure from the benevolence and simplicity of heart
+with which these institutions were conducted and superintended, and
+wonder, not to be expressed, at their extreme cheapness.
+
+The day preceding my visit to the Versorgung Haus, I had been in a fever
+of indignation at the fate of poor R----, one of the conspirators, who
+had become insane from the severity of his confinement. I had descanted
+with great complacency on our open tribunals and our trials by jury, and
+yet I could not help thinking to myself, "Well, if _we_ have not their
+state-prisons, neither have _they_ our poor-houses!"
+
+MEDON.
+
+It is plain that the rich, charitable, worldly prosperous, self-seeking,
+Frankfort, would be your chosen residence after all!
+
+ALDA.
+
+No--as a fixed residence I should not prefer Frankfort. There is a
+little too much of the pride of purse--too much of the aristocracy of
+wealth--too much dressing and dinnering--and society is too much broken
+up into sets and circles to please me: besides, it must be confessed,
+that the arts do not flourish in this free imperial city.
+
+The Staedel Museum was opened just before our last visit to Frankfort.
+A rich banker of that name bequeathed, in 1816, his collection of
+prints and pictures, and nearly a million and a half of florins, for
+the commencement and maintenance of this institution, and they have
+certainly begun on a splendid scale. The edifice in which the collection
+is arranged is spacious, fitted up with great cost, and generally with
+great taste, except the ceilings, which, being the glory and admiration
+of the good people of Frankfort, I must endeavour to describe to you
+particularly. The elaborate beauty of the arabesque ornaments, their
+endless variety, and the vivid colouring and gilding, reminded me of some
+of the illuminated manuscripts; but I was rather amused than pleased,
+and rather surprised to see art and ornament so misplaced--invention,
+labour, money, time, lavished to so little purpose. No effect was
+aimed at--none produced. The strained and wearied eye wandered amid
+a profusion of unmeaning forms, and of gorgeous colours, which never
+harmonized into a whole: and after I had half broken my neck by looking
+up at them through an opera glass, in order to perceive the elegant
+interlacing of the minute patterns and exquisite finish of the
+workmanship, I turned away laughing and provoked, and wondering at such
+a strange perversion, or rather sacrifice, of taste.
+
+MEDON.
+
+But the collection itself?--
+
+ALDA.
+
+It is not very interesting. It contains some curious old German
+pictures; Staedel having been, like others, smitten with the mania of
+buying Van Eyks and Hemlings and Schoreels. Here, however, these old
+masters, as part of a school, or history of art, are well placed.
+There are a few fine Flemish paintings--and, in particular, a wondrous
+portrait by Flinck, which you must see. It is a lady in black, on the
+left side of the door--of--I forget which room--but you cannot miss
+it: those soft eyes will look out at you, till you will feel inclined
+to ask her name, and wonder the lips do not unclose to answer you. Of
+first-rate pictures there are none--I mean none of the historical and
+Italian schools: the collection of casts from the antique is splendid
+and well-selected.
+
+MEDON.
+
+But Bethmann, the banker, had already set an example of munificent
+patronage of art: when he shamed kings, for instance, by purchasing
+Dannecker's Ariadne--one of the chief lions of Frankfort, if fame
+says true.
+
+ALDA.
+
+How! have you not seen it?
+
+MEDON.
+
+No--unhappily. The weather, as I have told you, was dreadful. I was
+discouraged--I procrastinated. That flippant observation I had read in
+some English traveller, that "Dannecker's Ariadne looked as if it had
+been cut out of old Stilton cheese," was floating in my mind. In short,
+I was careless, as we often are, when the means of gratifying curiosity
+appear secure, and within our reach. I repent me now. I wish I had
+settled to my own satisfaction, and with mine own eyes, the disputed
+merits of this famous statue; but I will trust to you. It ought to be
+something admirable. I do not know much of Dannecker, or his works, but
+by all accounts he has not to complain of the want of patronage. To him
+cannot be applied the pathetic common-place, so familiar in the mouths
+of our young artists, about "chill penury," the struggle to live, the
+cares that "freeze the genial current of the soul," the efforts of
+unassisted genius, and so forth. Want never came to him since he devoted
+himself to art. He appears to have had leisure and freedom to give full
+scope to his powers, and to work out his own creations.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Had he? Had he indeed? His own story would be different, I fancy.
+Dannecker, like every patronized artist I ever met with, would execrate
+patronage if he dared. Good old man! The thought of what he might have
+done, and could have done, breaks out sometimes in the midst of all
+his self-complacent _naive_ exultation over what he _has_ done. I will
+endeavour to give you a correct idea of the Ariadne, and then I will
+tell you something of Dannecker himself. His history is a good
+commentary upon royal patronage.
+
+I had heard so much of this statue, that my curiosity was strongly
+excited. A part of its fame may be owing to its situation, and the
+number of travellers who go to visit Bethmann's Museum, as a matter of
+course. I used to observe that all travellers, who were on the road to
+Italy, praised it, and all who were on their way home criticised it.
+As I ascended the steps of the pavilion in which it is placed, the
+enthusiasm of expectation faded away from my mind: I said to myself,
+"I shall be disappointed!"--Yet I was not disappointed.
+
+The Ariadne occupied the centre of a cabinet, hung with a dark grey
+colour, and illuminated by a high lateral window, so that the light and
+shade, and the relief of the figure, were perfectly well managed and
+effective. Dannecker has not represented Ariadne in her more poetical
+and picturesque character, as, when betrayed and forsaken by Theseus,
+she stood alone on the wild shore of Naxos, "her hair blown by the
+winds, and all about her expressing desolation." It is Ariadne, immortal
+and triumphant, as the bride of Bacchus. The figure is larger than life.
+She is seated, or rather reclined, on the back of a panther. The right
+arm is carelessly extended: the left arm rests on the head of the
+animal, and the hand supports the drapery, which appears to have just
+dropped from her limbs. The head is turned a little upwards, as if she
+already anticipated her starry home; and her tresses are braided with
+the vine leaves. The grace and ease of the attitude, so firm, and yet
+so light; the flowing beauty of the form, and the position of the head,
+enchanted me. Perhaps the features are not sufficiently _Greek_: for,
+though I am not one of those who think all beauty comprised in the
+antique models, and that nothing can be orthodox but the straight nose
+and short upper lip, still to Ariadne the pure _classical_ ideal of
+beauty, both in form and face, are properly in character. A cast from
+that divine head, the Greek Ariadne, is placed in the same cabinet, and
+I confess to you, that the contrast being immediately brought before the
+eye, Dannecker's Ariadne seemed to want refinement, in comparison. It is
+true, that the moment chosen by the German sculptor required an expression
+altogether different. In the Greek bust, though already circled by the
+viny crown, and though all heaven seems to repose on the noble arch of
+that expanded brow, yet the head is declined, and a tender melancholy
+lingers round the all-perfect mouth, as if the remembrance of a mortal
+love--a mortal sorrow--yet shaded her celestial bridal hours, and made
+pale her immortality. But, Dannecker's Ariadne is the flushed queen
+of the Bacchante, and, in the clash of the cymbals and the mantling
+cup, she has already forgotten Theseus. There is a look of life, an
+individual truth in the beauty of the form, which distinguishes it from
+the long-limbed vapid pieces of elegance called nymphs and Venuses, which
+
+  "Stretch their white arms, and bend their marble necks,"
+
+
+in the galleries of our modern sculptors. One objection struck me,
+but not till after a second or third view of the statue. The panther
+seemed to me rather too bulky and ferocious. It is true, it is not a
+natural, but a mythological panther, such as we see in the antique
+basso-relievos, and the arabesques of Herculaneum: yet, methinks if
+he appeared a little more conscious of his lovely burthen, more tamed
+by the influence of beauty, it would have been better. However, the
+sculptor may have had a design, a feeling, in this very point, which has
+escaped me: I regret now that I did not ask him. One thing is certain,
+that the extreme massiveness of the panther's limbs serves to give a
+firmness to the support of the figure, and sets off to advantage its
+lightness and delicacy. It is equally certain that if the head of the
+animal had been ever so slightly turned, the pose of the right arm, and
+with it the whole attitude, must have been altered.
+
+The window of the cabinet is so contrived, that by drawing up a blind
+of stained glass, a soft crimson tint is shed over the figure, as if
+the marble blushed. This did not please me: partly from a dislike to all
+trickery in art; partly because, to my taste, the pale colourless purity
+of the marble is one of the beauties of a fine statue.
+
+It is true that Dannecker has been unfortunate in his material. The
+block from which he cut his figure is imperfect and streaky; but how it
+could possibly have suggested the idea of _Stilton cheese_ I am at a loss
+to conceive. It is not worse than Canova's Venus, in the Pitti palace,
+who has a terrible black streak across her bosom. M. Passavant,[14] who
+was standing by when I paid my last visit to the Ariadne, assured me,
+that when the statue was placed on its pedestal, about sixteen years
+ago, these black specks were scarcely visible, and that they seemed to
+multiply and grow darker with time. This is a lamentable, and, to me, an
+unaccountable fact.
+
+MEDON.
+
+And, I am afraid, past cure: but now tell me something of the sculptor
+himself. After looking on a grand work of art, we naturally turn to look
+into the mind which conceived and created it.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Dannecker, like all the great modern sculptors, sprung from the people.
+Thorwaldson, Flaxman, Chantrey, Canova, Schadow, Ranch--I believe we may
+go farther back, to Cellini, Bandinelli, Bernini, Pigalle--all I can at
+this moment recollect, were of plebeian origin. When I was at Dresden,
+I was told of a young count, of noble family, who had adopted sculpture
+as a profession. This, I think, is a solitary instance of any person of
+noble birth devoting himself to this noblest of the arts.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Do you forget Mrs. Darner and Lady Dacre?
+
+ALDA.
+
+No; but I do not think that either the exquisite modelling of Lady
+Dacre, or the meritorious _attempts_ of Mrs. Damer, come under the head
+of sculpture in its grand sense. By-the-bye, when Horace Walpole said
+that Mrs. Damer was the first female sculptor who had attained any
+celebrity, he forgot the Greek girl, Lala,[15] and the Properzia Rossi
+of modern times.
+
+Dannecker was born at Stuttgardt in 1758. On him descended no hereditary
+mantle of genius; it was the immediate gift of Heaven, and apparently
+heaven-directed. His father was a groom in the duke's stable, and
+appears to have been merely an ill-tempered, thick-headed boor. How
+young Dannecker picked up the rudiments of reading and writing, he does
+not himself remember; nor by what circumstances the bent of his fancy
+and genius was directed to the fine arts. Like other great men, who have
+been led to trace the progress of their own minds, he attributed to his
+mother the first promptings to the fair and good, the first softening
+and elevating influences which his mind acknowledged. He had neither
+paper nor pencils; but next door to his father there lived a
+stone-cutter, whose blocks of marble and free-stone were every day
+scrawled over with rude imitations of natural objects in chalk or
+charcoal--the first essays of the infant Dannecker. When he was beaten
+by his father for this proof of idleness, his mother interfered to
+protect or to encourage him. As soon as he was old enough, he assisted
+his father in the stable; and while running about the precincts of the
+palace, ragged and bare-foot, he appears to have attracted, by his
+vivacity and alertness, the occasional notice of the duke himself.
+
+Duke Charles, the grandfather of the present king of Wurtemburg, had
+founded a military school, called the Karl Schuele, (Charles' School,)
+annexed to the Hunting Palace of the Solitude. At this academy, music and
+drawing were taught as well as military tactics. One day, when Dannecker
+was about thirteen, his father returned home in a very ill-humour, and
+informed his family that the duke intended to admit the children of his
+domestics into his new military school. The boy, with joyful eagerness,
+declared his intention of going immediately to present himself as a
+candidate. The father, with a stare of astonishment, desired him to
+remain at home, and mind his business; on his persisting, he resorted to
+blows, and ended by locking him up. The boy escaped by jumping out of
+the window; and, collecting several of his comrades, he made them a long
+harangue in praise of the duke's beneficence, then placing himself at
+their head, marched them up to the palace, where the whole court was
+assembled for the Easter festivities. On being asked their business,
+Dannecker replied as spokesman--"Tell his highness the duke we want to
+go to the Karl-schuele." One of the attendants, amused, perhaps, with
+this juvenile ardour, went and informed the duke, who had just risen
+from table. He came out himself and mustered the little troop before
+him. He first darted a rapid scrutinizing glance along the line, then
+selecting one from the number, placed him on his right-hand; then
+another, and another, till only young Dannecker and two others remained
+on his left. Dannecker has since acknowledged that he suffered for a few
+moments such exquisite pain and shame at the idea of being rejected,
+that his first impulse was to run away and hide himself; and that his
+surprise and joy, when he found that he and his two companions were the
+accepted candidates, had nearly overpowered him. The duke ordered them
+to go the next morning to the Solitude, and then dismissed them. When
+Dannecker returned home, his father, enraged at losing the services
+of his son, turned him out of the house, and forbade him ever more to
+enter it; but his mother (mother like) packed up his little bundle of
+necessaries, accompanied him for some distance on his road, and parted
+from him with blessings, and tears, and words of encouragement and love.
+
+At the Karl-schuele Dannecker made but little progress in his studies.
+Nothing could be worse managed than this royal establishment. The inferior
+teachers were accustomed to employ the poorer boys in the most servile
+offices, and in this, so called, academy, he was actually obliged to
+learn by stealth: but here he formed a friendship with Schiller, who,
+like himself, was an ardent genius pining and writhing under a chilling
+system; and the two boys, thrown upon one another for consolation,
+became friends for life. Dannecker must have been about fifteen when
+the Karl-schuele was removed from the Solitude to Stuttgard. He was then
+placed under the tuition of Grubel, a professor of sculpture, and in the
+following year he produced his first original composition. It was a Milo
+of Crotona modelled in clay, and was judged worthy of the first prize.
+Dannecker was at this time so unfriended and little known, that the
+duke, who appears to have forgotten him, learnt with astonishment that
+this nameless boy, the son of his groom, had carried off the highest
+honours of the school from all his competitors. For a few years he
+was employed in the duke's service in carving cornices, Cupids, and
+caryatides, to ornament the new palaces at Stuttgard and Hohenheim:
+this task-work, over which he often sighed, may possibly have assisted
+in giving him that certainty and mechanical dexterity in the use of his
+tools for which he is remarkable. About ten years were thus passed; he
+then obtained permission to travel for his improvement with an allowance
+of three hundred florins a-year from the duke. With these slender means
+Dannecker set off for Paris on foot. There, for the first time, he had
+opportunities of studying the living model. His enthusiasm for his art
+enabled him to endure extraordinary privations of every kind; for out
+of his little pension of L23 a-year he had not only to feed and clothe
+himself, but to purchase all the materials for his art, and the means
+of instruction; and this in an expensive capital, surrounded with
+temptations which an artist and an enthusiastic young man finds it
+difficult to withstand. He told me himself that day after day he has
+studied in the Louvre dinnerless, and dressed in a garb which scarce
+retained even the appearance of decency. He left Paris, after a two
+years' residence, as simple in mind and heart as when he entered it, and
+considerably improved in his knowledge of anatomy and in the technical
+part of his profession. The treasures of the Louvre, though far inferior
+to what they now are, had let in a flood of ideas upon his mind, among
+which (as he described his own feelings) he groped as one bewildered and
+intoxicated, amazed rather than enlightened.
+
+MEDON.
+
+But Dannecker must have been poor in spirit as in pocket--simple,
+indeed, if he did not profit by the opportunities which Paris afforded
+of studying human nature, noting the passions and their physiognomy, and
+gaining other experiences most useful to an artist.
+
+ALDA.
+
+There I differ from you. Would you send a young artist--more particularly
+a young sculptor--to study the human nature of London or Paris?--to
+seek the ideal among shop-girls and opera-dancers? Or the sublime and
+beautiful among the frivolous and degraded of one sex, the money-making
+or the brutalized of the other? Is it from the man who has steeped his
+youthful prime in vulgar dissipation, by way of "seeing life," as it is
+called, who has courted patronage at the convivial board, that you shall
+require that union of lofty enthusiasm and patient industry, which are
+necessary, first to conceive the grand and the poetical, then consume
+long years in shaping out his creation in the everlasting marble?
+
+MEDON.
+
+But how is the sculptor himself to live during those long years? It must
+needs be a hard struggle. I have heard young artists say, that they have
+been forced on a dissipated life merely as a means of "getting on in the
+world," as the phrase is.
+
+ALDA.
+
+So have I. It is so base a plea, that when I hear it, I generally regard
+it as the excuse for dispositions already perverted. The men who talk
+thus are doomed: they will either creep through life in mediocrity and
+dependence to their grave; or, at the best, if they have parts, as well
+as cunning and assurance, they may make themselves the fashion, and make
+their fortune; they may be clever portrait-painters and bust-makers, but
+when they attempt to soar into the historical and ideal department of
+their art, they move the laughter of gods and men; to them the higher,
+holier fountains of inspiration are thenceforth sealed.
+
+MEDON.
+
+But think of the temptations of society!
+
+ALDA.
+
+I think of those who have overcome them. "Great men have been among us,"
+though they be rare. Have we not had a Flaxman? But the artist must
+choose where he will worship. He cannot serve God and Mammon. That man
+of genius who thinks he can tamper with his glorious gifts, and for a
+season indulge in social excesses, stoop from his high calling to the
+dregs of earth, abandon himself to the stream of common life, and trust
+to his native powers to bring him up again;--O believe it, he plays a
+desperate game!--one that in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred
+is fatal.
+
+MEDON.
+
+I begin to see your drift; but you would find it difficult to prove that
+the men who executed those works, on which we now look with wonder and
+despair, lived like anchorites, or were unexceptionable moral characters.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Will you not allow that they worked in a different spirit? Or do you
+suppose that it was by the possession of some sleight-of-hand that these
+things were performed?--That it was by some knack of chiselling, some
+secret of colouring now lost, that a Phidias or a Correggio still remain
+unapproached, and, as people will tell you, unapproachable?
+
+MEDON.
+
+They had a different nature to work from.
+
+ALDA.
+
+A different modification of nature, but not a different nature. Nature
+and truth are one, and immutable, and inseparable as beauty and love.
+I do maintain that, in these latter times, we have artists, who in
+genius, in the power of looking at nature, and in manual skill, are
+not beneath the great ancients, but their works are found wanting in
+comparison; they have fallen short of the models their early ambition
+set before them; and why?--because, having genius, they want the moral
+grandeur that should accompany it, and have neglected the training of
+their own minds from necessity, or from dissipation or from pride, so
+that having imagination and skill, they have yet wanted the materials
+out of which to work. Recollect that the great artists of old were
+not mere painters or mere sculptors, who were nothing except with the
+pencil or the chisel in their hand. They were philosophers, scholars,
+poets, musicians, noble beings, whose eyes were not ever on themselves,
+but who looked above, before, and after. Our modern artists turn
+coxcombs, and then fancy themselves like Rafaelle; or they are greedy
+of present praise, or greedy of gain; or they will not pay the price
+for immortality; or they have sold their glorious birthright of fame
+for a mess of pottage.
+
+Poor Dannecker found his mess of pottage bitter now and then, as you
+shall hear. He set off for Italy, in 1783, with his pension raised to
+four hundred florins a year, that is, about thirty pounds: he reached
+Rome, on foot, and he told me that, for some months after his arrival,
+he suffered from a terrible depression of spirits, and a painful sense
+of loneliness: like Thorwaldson, when he too visited that city some
+years afterwards, a friendless youth, he was often home-sick and
+heart-sick. At this time he used to wander about among the ruins and
+relics of almighty Rome, lost in the sense of their grandeur, depressed
+by his own vague aspirations--ignorant, and without courage to apply
+himself. Luckily for him, Herder and Goethe were then residing at Rome;
+he became known to them, and their conversation directed him to higher
+sources of inspiration in his art than he had yet contemplated--to the
+very well-heads and mother-streams of poetry. They showed him the
+distinction between the _spirit_ and the _form_ of ancient art. Dannecker
+felt, and afterwards applied some of the grand revelations of these men,
+who were at once profound critics and inspired poets. He might have
+grasped at more, but that his early nurture was here against him, and
+his subsequent destinies as a court sculptor seldom left him sufficient
+freedom of thought or action to follow out his own conceptions. While at
+Rome he also became acquainted with Canova, who, although only one year
+older than himself, had already achieved great things. He was now at
+work on the monument of the Pope Ganganelli. The courteous, kind-hearted
+Italian would sometimes visit the poor German in his studio, and cheer
+him by his remarks and encouragement.
+
+Dannecker remained five years at Rome; he was then ordered to return to
+Stuttgard. As he had already greatly distinguished himself, the Duke
+of Wurtemburg received him with much kindness, and promised him his
+protection. Now, the protection and the patronage which a sovereign
+accords to an artist generally amounts to this: he begins by carving or
+painting the portrait of his patron, and of some of the various members
+of his patron's family. If these are approved of, he is allowed to stick
+a ribbon in his button-hole, and is appointed professor of fine arts,
+with a certain stipend, and thenceforth his time, his labour, and his
+genius belong as entirely to his master as those of a hired servant; his
+path is marked out for him. It was thus with Dannecker; he received a
+pension of eight hundred florins a year and his professorship, and upon
+the strength of this he married Henrietta Rapp. From this period his
+life has passed in a course of tranquil and uninterrupted occupation,
+yet, though constantly employed, his works are not numerous; almost
+every moment being taken up with the duties of his professorship, in
+trying to teach what no man of genius can teach, and in making drawings
+and designs after the fancies of the Grand Duke. He was required to
+compose a basso-relievo for the duke's private cabinet. The subject which
+he chose was as appropriate as it was beautifully treated--Alexander
+pressing his seal upon the lips of Parmenio. He modelled this in
+bas-relief, and the best judges pronounced it exquisite; but it did
+not please the duke, and instead of receiving an order to finish it in
+marble, he was obliged to throw it aside, and to execute some design
+dictated by his master. The original model remained for many years
+in his studio; but a short time before my last visit to him he had
+presented it as a birth-day gift to a friend. The first great work which
+gave him celebrity as a sculptor, was the mausoleum of Count Zeppelin,
+the duke's favourite, in which the figure of Friendship has much
+simplicity and grace: this is now at Louisberg. While he was modelling
+this beautiful figure, the first idea of the Ariadne was suggested to
+his fancy, but some years elapsed before it came into form. At this time
+he was much employed in executing busts, for which his fine eye for
+living nature and manly simplicity of taste peculiarly fitted him. In
+this particular department of his art he has neither equal nor rival,
+except our Chantrey. The best I have seen are those of Schiller, Gluck,
+and Lavater. Never are the fine arts, never are great artists, better
+employed than when they serve to illustrate and to immortalize each
+other! About the year 1808, Dannecker was considered, beyond dispute,
+the first sculptor in Germany; for as yet Rauch, Tieck, and Schwanthaler
+had not worked their way up to their present high celebrity. He
+received, in 1811, an intimation, that if he would enter the service of
+the king of Bavaria, he should be placed at the head of the school of
+sculpture at Munich, with a salary three times the amount of that which
+he at present enjoyed.--
+
+MEDON.
+
+Which Dannecker declined?
+
+ALDA.
+
+He did.
+
+MEDON.
+
+I could have sworn to it--_extempore_! What is more touching in the
+history of men of genius than that deep and constant attachment they
+have shown to their early patrons! Not to go back to the days of Horace
+and Mecaenas, nor even to those of Ariosto and Tasso and the family of
+Este, or Cellini and the Duke of Florence, or Lucas Kranach, and the
+Elector John Frederic--[16] do you remember Mozart's exclamation, when
+he was offered the most magnificent remuneration if he would quit the
+service of Joseph II. for that of the Elector of Saxony--"Shall I leave
+my good Emperor?" In the same manner Metastasio rejected every
+inducement to quit the service of Maria Theresa,----
+
+ALDA.
+
+Add Goethe and the Duke of Weimar, and a hundred other instances. The
+difficulty would be to find _one_, in which the patronage of the great
+has not been repaid ten thousand fold in gratitude and fame. Dannecker's
+love for his native city, and his native princes, prevailed over his
+self-interest; his decision was honourable to his heart; but it is
+not less certain that at Munich he would have found more enlightened
+patronage, and a wider scope for his talents. Frederic, the late king of
+Wurtemburg, who had married our princess royal, was a man of a coarse
+mind and profligate habits. Napoleon had gratified his vulgar ambition
+by making him a king, and thereupon he stuck a huge, tawdry gilt
+crown on the top of his palace, the impudent sign of his subservient
+_majesty_. I never looked at it without thinking of an overgrown child
+and its new toy; he also, to commemorate the acquisition of his kingly
+titles, instituted the order of the Wurtemburg crown, and Dannecker
+was gratified by this new order of merit, and a bit of ribbon in his
+button-hole.
+
+But in the mean time the model of the Ariadne remained in his studio,
+and it was not till the year 1809 that he could afford to purchase a
+block of marble, and begin the statue on speculation. It occupied him
+for seven years, but in the interval he completed other beautiful works.
+The king ordered him to execute a Cupid in marble, for which he gave
+him the design. It was a design which displeased the pure mind and high
+taste of Dannecker; he would not so desecrate his divine art: "c'etait
+travailler pour le diable!" said he to me, in telling the story. He
+therefore only half fulfilled his commission; and changing the purpose
+and sentiment of the figure, he represented the Greek Cupid at the
+moment that he is waked by the drop of burning oil from Psyche's lamp.
+An English general, I believe Sir John Murray, saw this charming statue,
+in 1814, and immediately commanded a work from the sculptor's hands: he
+wished, but did not absolutely require, a duplicate of the statue he so
+admired. Dannecker, instead of repeating himself, produced his Psyche,
+whom he has represented--not as the Greek allegorical Psyche, the
+bride of Cupid, "with lucent fans, fluttering"--but as the abstract
+personification of the human soul; or, to use Dannecker's own words,
+"Ein rein, sittlich, sinniges Wesen,"--a pure, moral, intellectual
+being. As he had an idea that Love had become moral and sentimental
+after he had been waked by the drop of burning oil, so I could not
+help asking him whether this was Psyche, grown reasonable after she
+had beheld the wings of Love? He has not in this beautiful statue quite
+accomplished his own idea. It has much girlish grace and simplicity, but
+it wants elevation; it is not sufficiently ideal, and will not stand a
+comparison either with the Psyche of Westmacott, or that of Canova. The
+Ariadne was finished in 1816, but the sculptor was disappointed in his
+hope that this, his masterpiece, would adorn his native city. The king
+showed no desire to possess it, and it was purchased by M. Bethmann,
+of Frankfort, for a sum equal to about one thousand pounds. Soon after
+the Ariadne was finished, Dannecker conceived, in a moment of pious
+enthusiasm, his famous statue of the Redeemer, which has caused a great
+deal of discussion in Germany. This was standing in his work-room when
+we paid our first visit to him. He told me what I had often heard, that
+the figure had visited him in a dream three several times; and the
+good old man firmly believed that he had been divinely inspired, and
+predestined to the work. While the visionary image was fresh in his
+imagination, he first executed a small clay model, and placed it
+before a child of five or six years old;--there were none of the usual
+emblematical accompaniments--no cross--no crown of thorns to assist the
+fancy--nothing but the simple figure roughly modelled; yet the child
+immediately exclaimed, "The Redeemer!" and Dannecker was confirmed in
+his design. Gradually the completion of this statue became the one
+engrossing idea of his enthusiastic mind: for eight years it was his
+dream by night, his thought by day; all things else, all the affairs and
+duties of life, merged into this. He told me that he frequently felt as
+if pursued, excited by some strong, irresistible power, which would even
+visit him in sleep, and impel him to rise from his bed and work. He
+explained to me some of the difficulties he encountered, and which he
+was persuaded that he had perfectly overcome only through divine aid,
+and the constant study of the Scriptures. They were not few nor trifling.
+Physical power, majesty, and beauty, formed no part of the character of
+the Saviour of the world: the glory that was around him was not of this
+earth, nor visible to the eye; "there was nothing in him that he should
+be desired;" therefore to throw into the impersonation of exceeding
+humility and benignity a superhuman grace, and from material elements
+work out a manifestation of abstract moral grandeur--this was surely
+not only a new and difficult, but a bold and sublime enterprize.
+
+You remember Michael Angelo's statue of Christ in the church of Santa
+Maria sopra Minerva at Rome?
+
+MEDON.
+
+Perfectly; and I never looked at it without thinking of Neptune and
+his trident.
+
+ALDA.
+
+The same thought occurred to me, and must inevitably have occurred to
+others. Dannecker is not certainly so great a man as Michael Angelo,
+but here he has surpassed him. Instead of emulating the antique models,
+he has worked in the antique spirit--the spirit of faith and enthusiasm.
+He has taken a new form in which to clothe a grand poetical conception.
+Whether the being he has represented be a fit subject for the plastic
+art, has been disputed; but it appears to me that Dannecker has more
+nearly approached the christian ideal than any of his predecessors;
+there is nothing to be compared to it, except Titian's Christo della
+Moneta, and that is a head merely. The sentiment chosen by the sculptor
+is expressed in the inscription on the pedestal: "Through me, to the
+Father." The proportions of the figure are exceedingly slender and
+delicate; the attitude a little drooping; one hand is pressed on the
+bosom, the other extended; the lips are unclosed as in the act to speak.
+In the head and facial line, by carefully throwing out every indication
+of the animal propensities, and giving added importance and development
+to all that indicates the moral and intellectual faculties, he has
+succeeded in embodying a species of ideal, of which there is no other
+example in art. I have heard, (not from Dannecker himself,) that when
+the head of the Jupiter Tonans was placed beside the Christ, the merely
+physical grandeur of the former, compared with the purely intellectual
+expression of the latter, reminded every one present of a lion's head
+erect and humanized.
+
+MEDON.
+
+But what were your own impressions? After all this eulogium, which
+I believe to be just, tell me frankly, were you satisfied yourself?
+
+ALDA.
+
+No--not quite. The expression of the mouth in the last finished statue
+(he has repeated the subject three times) is not so fine as in the
+model, and the simplicity of the whole bordered on meagreness. This,
+I think, is a general fault in all Dannecker's works. He has of course
+avoided nudity, but the flowing robe, which completely envelopes the
+figure, is so managed as to disclose the exact form of the limbs. One
+little circumstance will give you an idea of the attention and accuracy
+with which he seized and embodied every touch of individual character
+conveyed in Holy Writ. In the original model he had made the beard
+rather full and thick, and a little curled, expressing the prime of
+manhood; but recollecting that in the gospel the Saviour is represented
+as sinking under the weight of the cross, which the first man they met
+accidentally was able to carry, he immediately altered his first
+conception, and gave to the beard that soft, flowing, downy texture
+which is supposed to indicate a feeble and delicate temperament.
+
+I shall not easily forget the countenance of the good and gifted old
+man, as, leaning on the pedestal, with his cap in his hand, and his long
+grey hair waving round his face, he looked up at his work with a mixture
+of reverence and exultation, saying, in his imperfect and scarce
+intelligible French, "Oui, quand on a fait comme cela, on reste sur la
+terre!" meaning, I suppose, that this statue had ensured his immortality
+on earth. He added, "They ask me often where are the models after which
+I worked? and I answer, _here_, and _here_;" laying his hand first on
+his head, then on his heart.
+
+I remember that when we first entered his room he was at work on one of
+the figures for the tomb of the late Queen Catherine of Wurtemburg. You
+perhaps recollect her in England when only Duchess of Oldenburg?
+
+MEDON.
+
+Yes; I remember, as a youngster, joining the mob who shouted before the
+windows of the Pulteney-hotel, and hailed her and her brother Alexander
+as if they had been a newly descended Jupiter and Juno! O verily, times
+are changed!
+
+ALDA.
+
+But in that woman there were the elements of a fine nature. She had
+the talents, the strength of mind, and far-reaching ambition of her
+grandmother, Catherine of Russia, but was not so perverted. During her
+short reign as Queen of Wurtemburg, the influence of her active mind was
+felt through the whole government. She founded, among other institutions,
+a school for the daughters of the nobility connected with the court,--in
+plain English, a charity-school for the nobility of Wurtemburg, who are
+among the most indigent and most ignorant of Germany. There are a few,
+very few, brilliant exceptions. One lady of rank said to me, "As to an
+English governess, _that_ is an advantage I can never hope to have for
+my daughters. The princesses have an English governess, but _we_ cannot
+dream of such a thing." The late queen really deserved the regrets of
+her people. The king, whose sluggish mind she ruled or stimulated, is
+now devoted to his stables and hunting. He has married another wife, but
+he has erected to the honour of Catherine a splendid mausoleum, on the
+peak of a high hill, which can be seen from almost every part of the
+city; and on the summer evenings when the red sun-set falls upon its
+white columns it is a beautiful object. The figure on which Dannecker
+was occupied, represented Prayer, or what he called, "La triomphe de
+la Priere;" it recalled to my mind Flaxman's lovely statue of the same
+subject,--the "Our Father which art in Heaven," but suffered by the
+involuntary comparison. On the rough base of the statue he had tried to
+spell the name of Chantrey, but not very successfully. I took up a bit
+of chalk and wrote underneath, in distinct characters, FRANCIS CHANTREY.
+
+"I grow old," said he, looking from his work to the bust of the late
+queen which stood opposite. "I have carved the effigies of three
+generations of poets, and as many of princes. Twenty years ago I was
+at work on the tomb of the Duke of Oldenburg, and now I am at work upon
+_her's_ who gave me that order. All die away: soon I shall be left
+alone. Of my early friends none remain but Goethe. I shall die before
+him, and perhaps he will write my epitaph." He spoke with a smile, not
+foreseeing that he would be the survivor.
+
+Three years afterwards[17] I again paid Dannecker a visit, but a change
+had come over him: his feeble, trembling hand could no longer grasp the
+mallet, or guide the chisel; his eyes were dim; his fine benevolent
+countenance wore a childish, vacant smile, now and then crossed by a
+gleam of awakened memory or thought--and yet he seemed so perfectly
+happy! He walked backwards and forwards, from his Christ to his bust
+of Schiller, with an unwearied self-complacency, in which there was
+something mournful, and yet delightful. While I sat looking at the
+magnificent head of Schiller, the original of the multifarious casts
+and copies which are dispersed through all Germany, he sat down beside
+me, and taking my hands between his own, which trembled with age and
+nervous emotion, he began to speak of his friend. "Nous etions amis des
+l'enfance; aussi j'y ai travaille avec amour, avec douleur--on ne peut
+pas plus faire." He then went on--"When Schiller came to Louisberg, he
+sent to tell me that he was very ill--that he should not live very long,
+and that he wished me to execute his bust. It was the first wish of my
+own heart. I went immediately. When I entered the house, I found a lady
+sitting on the _canape_--it was Schiller's wife, and I did not know her;
+but she knew me. She said, 'Ah! you are Dannecker!--Schiller expects
+you;'--then she ran into the next room, where Schiller was lying down
+on a couch, and in a moment after he came in, exclaiming as he entered,
+'Where is he? where is Dannecker?' That was the moment--the expression
+I caught--you see it here--the head raised, the countenance full of
+inspiration, and affection, and bright hope! I told him that to keep up
+this expression he must have some of his best friends to converse with
+him while I took the model, for I could not talk and work too. O if
+I could but remember what glorious things then fell from those lips!
+Sometimes I stopped in my work--I could not go on--I could only listen."
+And here the old man wept; then suddenly changing his mood, he said--"But
+I must cut off that long hair; he never wore it so; it is not in the
+fashion, you know!" I begged him for heaven's sake not to touch it; he
+then, with a sad smile, turned up the sleeve of his coat and showed me
+his wrist, swelled with the continual use of his implements--"You see
+I _cannot_!" And I could not help wishing at the moment, that while his
+mind was thus enfeebled, no transient return of physical strength might
+enable him to put his wild threat in execution. What a noble bequest to
+posterity is the effigy of a great man, when executed in such a spirit
+as this of Schiller! I assure you I could not look at it, without
+feeling my heart "overflow in silent worship" of moral and intellectual
+power, till the deification of great men in the old times appeared to me
+rather religion than idolatry. I have been affected in the same manner
+by the busts of Goethe, Scott, Homer, Milton, Howard, Newton;--never by
+the painted portraits of the same men, however perfect in resemblance
+and admirable in execution.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Painting gives us the material, sculpture the abstract, ethical aspect
+of the man. In the bust, whatever is common-place, familiar, and actual,
+is thrown out or kept down: in a picture it is not only retained, but,
+in most cases, it is necessarily obtrusive. Goethe, in a blue coat and
+metal buttons, and a white neckcloth, would not recall the author of the
+"Iphigenia;" still less does that wrinkled, decrepit-looking face, in
+the gallery at Hardwicke, portray Boyle, the philosopher.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Dannecker told me that he first modelled the head of Schiller the exact
+size of life, and conscientiously rendered each, even the slightest,
+individual trait; yet this head appeared to every one smaller than
+nature, and to himself almost _mesquin_.[18] He was in despair. He
+repeated the bust in a colossal size; and the development of the
+intellectual organization, on a larger scale, immediately gave what was
+wanting:--it appeared to the eye or to the mind's eye as only the size
+of life. He showed me a beautiful basso-relievo of the Muse of Tragedy,
+listening with an inspired look to the revelations of the Muse of
+History. This admirable little group struck me the more, because long
+ago I had clothed nearly the same idea in imperfect words.
+
+I took leave of Dannecker with emotion: I shall never see him again!
+But he is one of those who cannot die; to use his own expression--"Quand
+on a fait _comme cela_, on reste sur la terre." When Canova, then a
+melancholy invalid, paid him a visit, he was so struck by the child-like
+simplicity, the pure unworldly nature, the genuine goodness, and lively
+happy temperament of the German sculptor, that he gave him the surname
+of _il Beato_; and if the epithet _blessed_ can, with propriety, be
+bestowed on any mortal, it is on him whose long life has been one of
+labour and of love; who has left behind him lasting memorials of his
+genius; who has never profaned the talents which God has given him
+to any unworthy purpose:--but in the midst of all the beautiful and
+exciting influences of poetry and art, has kept from youth to age a soul
+serene, a conscience and a life pure in the sight of God and man. Such
+was our own Flaxman--such is Dannecker!
+
+MEDON.
+
+Who are now the principal sculptors in Germany?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Rauch, of Berlin; Christian Frederic Tieck, the brother of the
+celebrated poet and critic, Ludwig Tieck; and Schwanthaler, of Munich.
+Rauch is the court sculptor of Berlin. He has, like Dannecker,[19] his
+professorship, his order of merit,[20] and, I believe, one or two places
+under the government, besides constant employment in his art. He works
+_by the piece_, as the labourers say. But though he too has yoked his
+genius to the car of power and patronage, he has done great things. The
+statue of the late queen of Prussia is reckoned his _chef-d'oeuvre_,
+and is not, perhaps, exceeded in modern sculpture. It was conceived and
+worked out in all the inspiration of love and grief; as Dannecker would
+say, "Mit Lieb und Schmerzen." He had been attached to the queen's
+personal service, and shared, in an intense degree, the enthusiastic,
+devoted affection with which all her subjects regarded that beautiful
+and amiable woman. This statue he executed at Carrara; and a living
+eagle, which had been taken captive among the Appenines, was the
+original of that magnificent eagle he has placed at her feet:--nothing,
+you see, like going at once to nature! In the course of twenty-five
+years Rauch has executed sixty-nine busts, of which twenty are colossal.
+Among his numerous other works, designed or executed within the same
+time, there is the colossal statue of Blucher, now at Breslau; this is
+in bronze, upon a granite pedestal. There is another statue of Blucher
+at Berlin, of which the pedestal, rich with bas-reliefs, is also in
+bronze. Rauch has been employed for the last twenty years in modelling
+field-marshals and generals, and has devoted his best powers to vanquish
+the difficulties presented by monotonous faces, drilled figures,
+military uniforms, and regimental boots and buttons; and all that man
+_can_ do, I am told he has done. I have seen some of his busts, which
+are quite admirable. At Peterstein, near Munich, I saw his statue of a
+little girl, about ten years old, which, in its simplicity, truth, and
+elegance, reminded me of Chantrey's Lady Louisa Russell, though in
+conception and _manner_ as distinct as possible. The full length of
+Goethe, in his dressing-gown, of which there is such an infinitude of
+casts and copies throughout Germany, is also by Rauch.
+
+Christian Tieck is the old and intimate friend of Rauch. They live,
+or did live, under the same roof, and it is not known that a moment
+of jealousy or rivalship ever disturbed the union between these two
+celebrated and gifted men, who, starting nearly at the same time,[21]
+have run their brilliant career together in the self-same path, and,
+whatever judgment the world or posterity may form of their comparative
+merits, seem determined to enter the temple of immortality hand in hand.
+Tieck's works are dispersed from one end of Germany to the other. His
+statue of Neckar; his busts of Madame de Stael, of her second husband
+Rocca, of the Duke and Duchess de Broglie, and of A. W. Schlegel,
+I have seen; and all, particularly the busts of Rocca and Schlegel are
+exceedingly fine. At Munich, at Dresden, and at Weimar, I saw many of
+his works; and at Manheim the bust of Madame de Heygendorf,[22] full of
+beauty, and life, and expression. At Berlin, Tieck has been employed
+for many years in designing and executing the sculptured ornaments of
+the new theatre. There is a colossal Apollo; a Pegasus, striking the
+fountain of Helicon from the rock, colossal Muses, and a variety of
+other heathen perpetrations--all (as I am assured) exceedingly fine
+in their way. I believe his seated statue of Iffland (the Garrick of
+Germany) is considered one of his _chef-d'oeuvres_. He also, like
+Rauch, has been much employed in modelling generals and trophies, in
+memory of the late war.
+
+Schwanthaler, the son of a statuary of Munich, is still a young man; his
+works first began to create a sensation in Germany in the year 1823.
+In spirit and fire, and creative talent, in a fine classic feeling for
+his art, he appeared to me to be treading in the steps of Flaxman, and
+like _him_, he is a profound and accomplished scholar, who has sought
+inspiration at the very fountain of Greek poetry. His basso-relievo of
+the battle of the ships in the Iliad, his games of Greece, his designs
+from the Theogony of Hesiod, and a variety of other works which I have
+seen, appeared to me full of imagination, and in a pure and vigorous
+style of art. Of him, and some other sculptors, you will find more
+particulars in the note-book I kept at Munich; we will look over it
+together one of these days.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Thank you; but I must needs ask you a question. In the works you have
+enumerated, nothing has struck me as new, or in a new spirit, except
+perhaps the Christ of Dannecker, and the statue of the queen of Prussia.
+Now, why should not sculpture have its Gothic (or romantic) school, as
+well as its antique, or classical school?
+
+ALDA.
+
+And has it not?
+
+MEDON.
+
+If you allude to the sculpture of the middle ages, _that_ has not become
+a school of art, like their architecture and their painting: yet can it
+be true that there is something in our modern institutions, our northern
+descent, our christian faith, inimical to the spirit of sculpture?--and,
+while poetry in every other form is regenerate around us, that in
+sculpture alone we are doomed to imitate, never to create?--doomed to
+the servile reproduction of the same ideas? that this alone, of all
+the fine arts, is to belong to some peculiar mode of existence, some
+peculiar mode of thinking, feeling, and believing? "Qui me delivrera des
+Grecs et des Remains?"--who will deliver me from gods and goddesses, and
+from all these
+
+    "Repetitions, wearisome of sense,
+  Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place?"
+
+
+ALDA.
+
+You are little better than a heretic in these matters. But I will admit
+thus much--that the classical and mythological sculpture of our modern
+artists, is to the ancient marbles, what Racine's tragedies are to those
+of Sophocles; that we are so far condemned to the "repetition wearisome
+of _forms_," from which the ancient spirit has evaporated; but that is
+not the fault of the subjects, but of the manner of treating them, for
+never can the beautiful mythology of ancient Greece, which has woven
+itself into our earliest dreams of poetry, become a "creed out-worn."
+Its forms, and its symbols, and its imagery, have mingled with every
+branch of art, and become a universal language. It is the deification of
+the material world; and therefore, that art, which in its perfection may
+be called the apotheosis of form, finds there its proper region and
+element.
+
+MEDON.
+
+You do not suppose that, with all my Gothic tastes, I am such a Goth
+as not to feel the truth of what you say? But I am an enemy to the
+exclusive in every thing; and--pardon me--your worship of the Elgin
+marbles and the Niobe, is, I think, a little too exclusive. All I ask
+is, that modern sculpture should be allowed, like painting and poetry,
+to have its romantic, as well as its classical school.
+
+ALDA.
+
+It has been otherwise decided.
+
+MEDON.
+
+But it has not been otherwise proved. There has been much theoretical
+eloquence and criticism expended on the subject, but I deny that the
+experiment has been fairly and practically brought before us. I know
+very well you are ready with a thousand instances of attempt and
+failure, but may we not seek the cause in the mistaken application of
+certain classical, or, I should say, pedantic ideas on the subject? If
+I ask for Milton's Satan, standing like a tower in his spiritual might,
+his thunder-scarred brow wreathed with the diadem of hell, why am I to
+be presented with an Athlete, or an Achilles? Why would Canova give us
+for the head of Dante's Beatrice that of a muse, or an Aspasia? and for
+Petrarch's Laura, a mere _tete de nymphe_? I contend that to apply the
+forms suggested by the modern poetry demands a different spirit from
+that of classic art. How to apply or modify the example bequeathed to us
+by the great masters of old, Flaxman has shown us in his Dante. And why
+should we not have in sculpture a Lear as well as a Laocoon? a Constance
+as well as a Niobe? a Gismunda as well as a Cleopatra?----
+
+ALDA.
+
+Or a Tam o'Shanter as well as a laughing Faun?
+
+MEDON.
+
+When I am serious and poetical, which is not often, I will not allow you
+to be perverse and ironical!
+
+ALDA.
+
+See, here is a passage which I have just found among Mrs. Austin's
+beautiful specimens of translation: "The critic of art ought to keep in
+view, not only the capabilities, but the proper objects of art. Not all
+that art can accomplish ought she to attempt. It is from this cause
+alone, and because we have lost sight of these principles, that art
+among us has become more extensive and difficult, and less effective and
+perfect."[23]
+
+MEDON.
+
+Very well,--and very true:--but who shall bring a rule and compass to
+measure the capabilities of art, and define its proper objects? May
+there not exist in the depths or heights of philosophy and art, truths
+yet to be revealed, as there are stars in heaven, whose light has
+not yet reached the naked eye? and why should not criticism have its
+telescope for truth, as well as its microscope for error? Art may be
+finite; but who shall fix its limits, and say, "thus far shalt thou go?"
+There are those who regard the distant as the unattainable, the unknown
+as the unexisting, the actual as the necessary;--are you one of such,
+O you of little faith! For my own part, I look forward to a new era in
+sculpture. I believe that the purely natural and the purely ideal are
+_one_, and susceptible of forms and modifications as yet untried. For
+Nature, the infinite, sits within her tabernacle, not made by human
+hands, and Genius and Love are the cherubim, to whom it is permitted
+to look into her unveiled eyes, and reflect their light; Art is the
+priestess of her divine mysteries, and Criticism, the door-keeper of
+her temple, should be Janus-headed, looking forward as well as backward.
+Reason estimates what has been done; Imagination alone divines what
+_may_ be done. But I am losing myself in these reveries. To attempt
+something new,--perfectly new in style and conception--and spend, like
+Dannecker, eight years in working out that conception--and then perhaps
+eight years more waiting for a purchaser, and this in a country where
+one must eat and pay taxes--truly, it is not easy.
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+MEDON.
+
+You have been frowning and musing in your chair for the last half-hour,
+with your fore-finger between the leaves of your book--where were your
+thoughts?
+
+ALDA.
+
+They were far--very far! I am afraid that I appear very stupid?
+
+MEDON.
+
+O not at all! you know there are stars which appear dim and fixed to
+the eye, while they are taking flights and making revolutions, which
+imagination cannot follow nor science compute.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Upon my word, you are very sublimely ironical--my thoughts were not
+quite so far.
+
+MEDON.
+
+May one beg, or borrow them?--What is your book?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Mrs. Austin's "Characteristics of Goethe." I came upon a passage which
+sent back my thoughts to Weimar. I was again in his house; the faces,
+the voices of his grandchildren were around me; the room in which he
+studied, the bed in which he slept, the old chair in which he died,--and,
+above all, _her_ in whose arms he died--from whose lips I heard the
+detail of his last moments--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MEDON.
+
+What! all this emotion for Goethe?
+
+ALDA.
+
+For Goethe!--I should as soon think of weeping because the sun set
+yesterday, which now is pouring its light around me! Our tears are for
+those who suffer, for those who die, for those who are absent, for
+those who are cold or lost--not for those who cannot die, who cannot
+suffer,--who must be, to the end of time, a presence and an existence
+among us! No.
+
+But I was reading here, among the Characteristics of Goethe, who
+certainly "knew all qualities, with a learned spirit in human dealings,"
+that he was not only the quick discerner and most cordial hater of all
+affectation;--but even the unconscious affectation--the _nature de
+convention_,--the taught, the artificial, the acquired in manner or
+character, though it were meritorious in itself, he always detected,
+and it appeared to impress him disagreeably. Stay, I will read you the
+passage--here it is.
+
+"Even virtue, laboriously and painfully acquired, was distasteful to
+him. I might almost affirm, that a faulty but vigorous character, if
+it had any real native qualities as its basis, was regarded by him
+with more indulgence and respect than one which, at no moment of its
+existence, is genuine; which is incessantly under the most unamiable
+constraint, and consequently imposes a painful constraint on others.
+'Oh,' said he, sighing, on such occasions, 'if they had but the heart to
+commit some absurdity, that would be something, and they would at least
+be restored to their own natural soil, free from all hypocrisy and
+acting: wherever that is the case, one may entertain the cheering hope
+that something will spring from the germ of good which nature implants
+in every individual. But on the ground they are now upon, nothing can
+grow.' 'Pretty dolls,' was his common expression when speaking of them.
+Another phrase was, 'That's a piece of nature,' (literally, _das ist
+eine Natur_, that is a nature,) which from Goethe's lips was considerable
+praise."[24]
+
+This last phrase threw me back upon my remembrances. I thought of the
+daughter-in-law of the poet,--the trusted friend, the constant companion,
+the devoted and careful nurse of his last years. It accounted for the
+unrivalled influence which apparently she possessed--I will not say
+_over_ his mind--but _in_ his mind, in his affections; for in her he
+found truly _eine Natur_--a piece of nature, which could bear even _his_
+microscopic examination. All other beings who approached Goethe either
+were, or had been, or might be, more or less modified by the action of
+that universal and master spirit. Consciously, or unconsciously, in love
+or in fear, they bowed down before him, and gave up their individuality,
+or forgot it, in his presence; they took the bent he chose to impress,
+or the colour he chose to throw upon them. Their minds, in presence of
+his, were as opake bodies in the sun, absorbing in different degrees,
+reflecting in various hues, his vital beams; but HER'S was, in comparison,
+like a transparent medium, through which the rays of that luminary
+passed,--pervading and enlightening, but leaving no other trace.
+Conceive a woman, a young, accomplished, enthusiastic woman, who had
+qualities to attach, talents to amuse, and capacity to appreciate, GOETHE;
+who, for fourteen or fifteen years, could exist in daily, hourly
+communication with that gigantic spirit, yet retain, from first to
+last, the most perfect simplicity of character, and this less from the
+strength than from the purity and delicacy of the original texture.
+Those oft-abused words, _naive_, _naivete_, were more applicable to her
+in their fullest sense than to any other woman I ever met with. Her
+conversation was the most untiring I ever enjoyed, because the stores
+which fed that flowing eloquence were all native and unborrowed: you
+were not borne along by it as by a torrent--_bongre_, _malgre_,--nor
+dazzled as by an artificial _jet d'eau_ set to play for your amusement.
+There was the obvious wish to please--a little natural _coquetterie_--
+vivacity without effort, sentiment without affectation, exceeding
+mobility, which yet never looked like caprice; and the most consummate
+refinement of thought, and feeling, and expression. From that really
+elegant and highly-toned mind, nothing flippant nor harsh could ever
+proceed; slander died away in her presence; what was evil she would
+not hear of; what was malicious she would not understand; what was
+ridiculous she would not see. Sometimes there was a wild, artless
+fervour in her impulses and feelings, which might have become a
+feather-cinctured Indian on her savannah; then, the next moment, her
+bearing reminded you of the court-bred lady of the bed-chamber. Quick
+in perception, yet femininely confiding, uniting a sort of restless
+vivacity with an indolent gracefulness, she appeared to me by far
+the most poetical and genuine being of my own sex I ever knew in
+highly-cultivated life: one to whom no wrong could teach mistrust; no
+injury, bitterness; one to whom the common-place realities, the vulgar
+necessary cares of existence, were but too indifferent;--who was, in
+reality, all that other women try to appear, and betrayed, with a
+careless independence, what they most wish to conceal. I draw from the
+life,--now, what would you say to such a woman if you met with her in
+the world?
+
+MEDON.
+
+I should say--she had no business there.
+
+ALDA.
+
+How?
+
+MEDON.
+
+I repeat that the woman you have just portrayed is hardly fit for
+the world.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Say rather, the world is not fitted for her. As the Sabbath was made for
+man, not man for the Sabbath, so the world was made for man, not man for
+the world--still less woman.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Do you know what you mean?
+
+ALDA.
+
+I think I do, though I am afraid I can but ill-explain myself. By the
+world, I mean that system of social life in all its complicate bearings
+by which we are surrounded; which was, I suppose, devised at first with
+a reference to the wants, the happiness, and the benefit of men, but
+for which no _man_ was specifically created; his being has a high and
+individual purpose beyond the world. Now, it seems to me one reason of
+the low average of what we call _character_, that we judge a human soul,
+not as it is abstractedly, but simply in relation to others, and to
+the circumstances around it. If it be in harmony with the world, and
+worldly, we praise it--it is a very respectable soul; if so constituted,
+that it is in discord with a world, (which, observe, all our philosophers,
+our pastors, and our masters, unite to assure us, is a sad wicked place,
+and must be reformed or renounced forthwith,) then--I pray your attention
+to this point--_then_ the fault, the bitter penalty, lies not upon this
+said wicked world,--O no!--but on that unlucky "piece of nature," which
+in its power, its goodness, its purity, its truth, its faith, and its
+tenderness, stands aloof from it. Is it not so?
+
+MEDON.
+
+Do you apply this personally?
+
+ALDA.
+
+No, generally; but I return to her who suggested the thought, and whom
+I ought not, perhaps, to have made the subject of such a conversation as
+this: it is against all my principles, contrary to my custom; and, in
+truth, I speak of one in whom there is so much to love, that we cannot
+praise without being accused of partiality; and so much to admire, that
+we could not censure without being suspected of envy. I might as well
+be silent therefore. Yet shall such a woman bear such a name, and hold
+such a position as the mother of Goethe's posterity;[25]--shall she be
+rendered by both a mark for observation, from one end of Europe to the
+other;--shall she be "condemned to celebrity," and shall it be allowed
+to ignorance, or ill-nature, or vanity, to prate of her;--and shall it
+be forbidden to friendship even to speak?--that were hardly just. Of
+those effusions of her creative and poetical talents, which charm her
+friends, I say nothing, because in all probability neither you nor the
+public will ever benefit by them. I met with several other women in
+Germany who possessed striking poetical genius, and whose compositions
+were equally destined to remain unknown, except to the circle of their
+immediate friends and relatives.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Mr. Hayward, in his notes to his translation of Faust, remarks on the
+strong prejudice against female authorship, which still exists in
+Germany; but he has hopes that it will not endure, and that something
+may be done "to unlock the stores of fancy and feeling which the
+Ottilies and the Adeles have hived up." Tell me--did you find this
+prejudice entertained by the women themselves, or existing chiefly on
+the part of the men?
+
+ALDA.
+
+It was expressed most strongly by the women, but it must have originated
+with the men. All your prejudices you instil into us; and then we are
+not satisfied with adopting them, we exaggerate them--we mix them up with
+our fancies and affections, and transmit them to your children. You are
+"the mirrors in which we dress ourselves."
+
+MEDON.
+
+For which you dress yourselves!
+
+ALDA.
+
+Psha!--I mean that your minds and opinions are the mirrors in which we
+form our own. You legislate for us, mould us, form us as you will. If
+you prefer slaves and playthings to companions and helpmates, is that
+our fault? In Germany I met with some men who, perhaps out of compliment,
+descanted with enthusiasm on female talent, and in behalf of female
+authorship; but the women almost uniformly spoke of the latter with
+dread, as something formidable, or with contempt, as of something
+beneath them: what is an unworthy prejudice in your sex, becomes, when
+transplanted into ours, a _feeling_;--a mistaken, but a genuine, and
+even a generous feeling. Many women, who have sufficient sense and
+simplicity of mind to rise above the mere _prejudice_, would not contend
+with the _feeling_: they would not scruple to encounter the public
+judgment in a cause approved by their own hearts, but they have not
+courage to brave or to oppose the opinions of friends and kindred--
+
+MEDON.
+
+Or risk the loss of a lover. You remember the axiom of that clever
+Frenchman,[26] who certainly spoke the existing opinions of his country
+only a few years ago, when he said--"Imprimer, pour une femme de moins
+de cinquante ans c'est mettre son bonheur a la plus terrible des
+lotteries; si elle a un amant elle commencera par le perdre."
+
+ALDA.
+
+I really believe that in Germany the latter catastrophe would be in most
+cases inevitable; and where is the woman who knowingly would risk it?
+
+MEDON.
+
+All, however, have not lovers to lose, or husbands to displease,
+or friends to affront; and if the women, in compliance with our
+self-revolving egotism, affect to prostrate themselves, and undervalue
+one another--do the men allow it to this extent? Do not the Germans most
+justly boast, that in their land arose the first feeling of veneration
+for women, the result of the Christian dispensation, grafted on the
+old German manners? Do they not point to their literature and their
+institutions, as more favourable to your sex than any other? Does not
+even Madame de Stael exalt the fine earnestness of the German feeling
+towards you, infinitely above the system of French gallantry?--that
+flimsy veil of conventional good-breeding, under which we seek to
+disguise the demoralization of one sex, and the virtual slavery of the
+other? Have I not heard you say, that it is the present fashion among
+the poets, artists, and writers of Germany, to defer in all things to
+the middle ages? Are not the maxims and sentiments of chivalry ready on
+their lips, the forms and symbols of the old chivalrous times to be
+traced in every department of literature and art among them?
+
+ALDA.
+
+All this is true; and I will believe that all this is something more
+than mere theory, when I see the Germans less slovenly in their
+interior, and less egotistical in their domestic relations. The theme is
+unwelcome, unpleasant, ungraceful,--in fact, I can scarcely persuade
+myself to say one word against those high-minded, benevolent, admirable,
+and "most-thinking people;" so I will not dwell upon it: but I must
+confess that the personal negligence of the men, and the forbearance of
+the women on this point, astonished me. I longed to remind these
+worshippers of the age of chivalry of that advice of St. Louis to his
+son--"Il faut etre toujours propre et bien proprement habille, afin
+d'etre _mieux aime de sa femme_;" the really good-natured and well-bred
+Germans will, I am sure, forgive this passing remark, and allow its
+truth: they _did_ at once agree with me, that the tavern-life of the men,
+more particularly the clever professional men in the south of Germany,
+(another remnant, I presume, either of the age of chivalry, or the
+Buerschen-sitten--I know not which,) was calculated to retard the social
+improvement and refinement of both sexes. And, apropos to chivalry,
+the fact is, that the institutions of a generous but barbarous period,
+invented to shield our helplessness, when women were exposed to every
+hardship, every outrage, have been much abused, and must be considerably
+modified to suit a very different state of society. That affectation of
+poetical homage, which your strength paid to our weakness, when the laws
+were not sufficient to defend us, we would now gladly exchange for more
+real honour, more real protection, more equal rights. I speak thus,
+knowing that, however open to perversion these expressions may be, _you_
+will not misapprehend me; you know that I am no vulgar, vehement arguer
+about the "rights of women;" and, from my habitual tone of feeling and
+thought, the last to covet any of your masculine privileges.
+
+MEDON.
+
+I do perfectly understand you; but, pray what are our strictly masculine
+privileges, that you should covet them? Fighting! getting drunk! and
+keeping a mistress!--I beg your pardon if I shock your delicacy; but
+certainly, upon the score of masculine privileges, the less that is said
+the better: there are nations in which it is a masculine privilege to
+sit and smoke, while women draw the plough. It was some time ago,--and
+now, in some countries, it is still a masculine privilege to cultivate
+the mind at all; and in Germany, apparently, it is still a masculine
+privilege to publish a book without losing _caste_ in society; whereas
+here, in England, we have fallen into the opposite extreme; female
+authorship is in danger of becoming a fashion,--which Heaven avert! I
+should be sorry to see you women taking the pen you have hitherto so
+honoured, in the same spirit in which you used to make filigree, cobble
+shoes, and paint velvet.
+
+ALDA.
+
+It is too true that mere vanity and fashion have lately made some women
+authoresses;--more write for money, and by this employment of their
+talents earn their own independence, add to the comforts of a parent,
+or supply the extravagance of a husband. Some, who are unhappy in their
+domestic relations, yet endowed with all that feminine craving after
+sympathy, which was intended to be the charm of our sex, the blessing of
+yours, and somehow or other has been turned to the bane of both, look
+abroad for what they find not at home; fling into the wide world the
+irrepressible activity of an overflowing mind and heart, which can
+find no other unforbidden issue,--and to such "fame is love disguised."
+Some write from the mere energy of intellect and will; some few from
+the pure wish to do good, and to add to the stock of happiness and
+the progress of thought; and many from all these motives combined in
+different degrees.
+
+MEDON.
+
+And have none of these motives produced authoresses in Germany?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Yes; but fashion and vanity, and the love of excitement, have not
+as yet tempted the German women to print their effusions; their most
+distinguished authoresses have become so, either from real enthusiasm or
+from necessity; and in the lighter departments of literature they boast
+at present some brilliant names. I will run over a few.
+
+There is Helmina von Chezy--but before I speak of _her_, I should tell
+you of her famous grandmother, Anna Louisa Karshin, though _she_
+belonged to the last century. The Karshin was the daughter of a poor
+innkeeper and brewer, in a little village of Silesia. She spent her
+early years in herding cows. She learned to read by stealth, by stealth
+she became a poetess; was first married to a boorish sulky weaver,
+secondly to a drunken tailor, and suffered for years every extremity of
+poverty and misery; at one time she travelled about the neighbouring
+country, the first example of an itinerant poetess, declaiming her own
+verses, and always ready with an ode or a sonnet to celebrate a wedding,
+or hail a birthday. In this strange profession she excited much
+astonishment--went through some singular, but not disreputable
+adventures--and earned considerable sums of money, which her husband
+spent in drink and profligacy. Gifted with as much energy as genius,
+she struggled through all, and gradually became known to several of the
+critics and poets of the last century, particularly Count Stolberg and
+Gleim, and obtained the title of the German Sappho. She found means to
+reach Berlin, where she worked her way up to distinction, and supported
+herself, two children, and an orphan brother, by her talents. She was
+recommended to Frederick the Great as worthy of a pension, and--would
+you believe it?--that _munificent_ patron of his country's genius, sent
+her a gratuity of two dollars, in a piece of paper. This extraordinary
+and spirited woman, who had probably subsisted for half her life on
+charity, instantly returned them to the niggardly despot, after writing
+in the envelope four lines impromptu, which are yet repeated in Germany.
+I am not quite sure that I remember them accurately, and it is no matter,
+for they have not much either of poetry or point.
+
+  "Zwey Thaler sind zu wenig;
+  Zwey Thaler macht kein Glueck;
+  Zwey Thaler gebt kein Koenig;
+  Fritz, hier send ich sie zurueck."
+
+
+She died in 1791, and a selection of her poems was published in the
+following year.
+
+The granddaughter of the Karshin, the more celebrated Helmina von Chezy,
+is likewise a poetess; her principal work is a tale of chivalry, in
+verse, _Die drei Weissen Rosen_, (The three White Roses) which was
+published in 18--, and she wrote the opera of Euryanthe, for Weber to
+set to music. Her songs and lighter poems are, I am told, exceedingly
+beautiful.
+
+Caroline Pichler, of Vienna, I need only mention. I believe her
+historical romances have been translated into half-a-dozen languages.
+The Siege of Vienna is reckoned her best.
+
+Madame Schoppenhauer, the daughter of a senator of Dantzic, is
+celebrated for her novels, travels, and works on art. She resided for
+many years at Weimar, where she drew round her a brilliant literary
+circle, which the talents of her daughter farther adorned. Since
+Goethe's death she has fixed her residence at Bonn, where it is probable
+the remainder of her life will be spent. One of the best of her novels,
+"Die Tante," has been translated by Madame de Montolieu, under the title
+of "La Tante et la Niece." Another very pretty little book of hers,
+"Ausflucht an dem Rhein," I should like to see translated. Beside being
+an excellent writer on art, Madame Schoppenhauer is herself no mean
+artist. Moreover, she is a kind-hearted, excellent old lady, with a few
+old lady-like prejudices about England and the English, which I forgave
+her,--the more easily as I had to thank her in my own person for many
+and kind attentions.
+
+Madame von Helvig, of Weimar, (born Amalia von Imhoff,) was the friend
+of Schiller, under whose auspices her first poems were published. Her
+rare knowledge of languages, her learning and critical taste in works of
+arts, have distinguished her almost as much as her genius for poetry.
+
+The second wife of the Baron de la Motte-Fouquet, was a very accomplished
+woman, and the author of several poems and romances.
+
+Frederica Brun, (born Muenter,) the daughter of a learned ecclesiastic
+of Gotha, is celebrated for her prose writings, and particularly her
+travels in Italy, where she resided at different periods. Madame Brun
+was a friend of Madame de Stael, who mentions her in her de l'Allemagne,
+and describes the extraordinary talents for classical pantomime
+possessed by her daughter Ida Brun.
+
+Louisa Brachmann is, I believe, more renowned for her melancholy death
+than her poetical talents; both together have procured her the name of
+the "German Sappho." The wretched woman threw herself into the river
+at Halle, and perished, as it was said, for the sake of some faithless
+Phaon. This was in 1822, when she must have been between forty and
+fifty; and pray observe, I do not notice this fact of her age in
+ridicule. A woman's heart may overflow _inwardly_ for long, long years,
+till at last the accumulated sorrow bursts the bounds of reason, and
+then all at once we see the result of causes to which none gave heed,
+and of secret agonies to which none gave comfort--in folly, madness,
+destruction. Whatever might have been the cause,--thus she died. Her
+works in prose and verse may be found in every bookseller's shop in
+Germany. There is also a life of this unhappy and gifted woman by
+professor Schutz.
+
+Fanny Tarnow is one of the most remarkable and most fertile of all the
+modern German authoresses. Her genius was developed by misfortune and
+suffering: while yet an infant, she fell from a window two stories
+high, and was taken up, to the amazement of the assistants, without
+any apparent injury, except a few bruises; but all the vital functions
+suffered, and during ten or twelve years she was extended on a couch,
+neither joining in any of the amusements of childhood, nor subjected
+to the usual routine of female education. She educated herself. She
+read incessantly, and, as it was her only pleasure, books of every
+description, good and bad, were furnished her without restraint. She
+was about eleven years old when she made her first _known_ poetical
+attempt, inspired by her own feelings and situation. It was a dialogue
+between herself and the angel of death. In her seventeenth year she
+was sufficiently recovered to take charge of her father's family, after
+he had lost, by some sudden misfortune, his whole property. He held
+subsequently, a small office under government, the duties of which were
+principally performed by his admirable daughter. Her first writings were
+anonymous, and for a long time her name was unknown. Her most celebrated
+novel, the "Thekla," was published in 1815; and from this time she has
+enjoyed a high and public reputation. Fanny Tarnow resides, or did
+reside, in Dresden.
+
+I have yet another name here, and not the least interesting, that of
+Johanna von Weissenthurn, one of the most popular dramatic writers in
+Germany. She was educated for the stage, even from infancy, her parents
+and relations being, I believe, strolling players. She lived, for many
+years, a various life of toil, and adventure, and excitement; such,
+perhaps, as Goethe describes in the Wilhelm Meister; a life which does
+sometimes blunt the nicer feelings, but is sure to develop talent
+where it exists. Johanna at length rose through all the grades of her
+profession, and became the first actress at the principal theatre at
+Vienna. She played in the "Phoedra," before Napoleon, when he occupied
+the Austrian capital in 1806, and the conqueror sent to her, after the
+performance, a complimentary message, and a gratuity of three thousand
+francs; but her lasting reputation is founded on her dramatic works,
+which are played in every theatre in Germany. The plots, which, I
+am told, are remarkable for fancy and invention, have been borrowed,
+without acknowledgment, both by French and English playwrights. I
+was quite charmed with one of her pieces which I saw at Munich, (Die
+Erben--the Heirs,) and with another which was represented at Frankfort.
+Johanna von Weissenthurn has also written poems and tales.
+
+I have come to the end of my memoranda on this subject, and regret it
+much. I might easily give you more names, and quote second-hand the
+opinions I heard of the merits and characteristics of these authoresses;
+but I speak of nothing but what I _know_, and not being able to form
+any judgment myself, I will give none. Only it appears to me that the
+Germans themselves assign to no female writer the same rank which here
+we proudly give to Joanna Baillie and Mrs. Hemans. I could hear of none
+who had ever exercised any thing like the moral influence possessed by
+Maria Edgeworth and Harriet Martineau, in their respective departments;
+nor could learn that any German woman had yet given _public_ proof that
+the most feminine qualities were reconcilable with the highest scientific
+attainments--like Mrs. Marcet and Mrs. Somerville.
+
+MEDON.
+
+You said the other night, that you had not formed any opinion as to the
+moral and social position of the women in Germany; but you must have
+brought away some general impressions of manner and character;--frankly,
+were they favourable or unfavourable?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Frankly, they were most favourable. Remember that I am not prepared with
+any general sweeping conclusions: I cannot assure you from my own
+knowledge, that among my own sex the proportion of virtue and happiness
+is greater in Germany than in England. On the contrary--
+
+                  ----In every land
+  I saw, wherever light illumineth,
+    Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand,
+  The downward slope to death.
+
+  In every land I thought that, more or less,
+    The stronger, sterner nature overbore
+  The softer, uncontroll'd by gentleness,
+    And selfish evermore![27]
+
+
+--Why do you smile?
+
+MEDON.
+
+You amuse me with the perseverance with which you ring the changes on
+your favourite text, in prose and in verse; and yet, to adopt Voltaire's
+witty metaphor, _we_ are the hammers and _you_ the anvils all the world
+over. But is that all? You need not have gone to Germany to verify that!
+
+ALDA.
+
+No, sir; it is not _all_. In the first place, you know I have a
+sufficient contempt for our English intolerance, with regard to
+manners--
+
+MEDON.
+
+Why, yes; with reason. The influence of mere _manner_ among our
+fashionable people, and the stress laid upon it as a distinction, have
+become so vulgarized and abused, that I should be relieved even by a
+reaction which should throw us out of the insipidity of conventional
+manner into primeval rudeness.
+
+ALDA.
+
+No, no, no!--no extremes: but though so sensible to the ridicule of
+referring the social habits, opinions, customs, of other nations, to the
+arbitrary standard of our own, still I could not help falling into
+comparisons; certain distinctions between the German and the English
+women struck me involuntarily. In the highest circles a stranger finds
+society much alike every where. A court-ball--the _soiree_ of an
+ambassadress--a minister's dinner--present nearly the same physiognomy.
+It is in the second class of society, which is also every where, and in
+every sense, the best, that we behold the stamp of national character.
+I was not condemned to see my German friends always _en grande
+toilette_; I had better opportunities of judging and appreciating their
+domestic habits and manners, than most travellers enjoy.
+
+I thought the German women, of a certain rank, more _natural_ than
+we are. The moral education of an English girl is, for the most part,
+_negative_; the whole system of duty is thus presented to the mind.
+It is not "this you must do;" but always "you must not do this--you
+must not say that--you must not think so;" and if by some hardy,
+expanding nature, the question be ventured, "Why?"--the mamma or the
+governess are ready with the answer--"It is not the custom--it is not
+lady-like--it is ridiculous!" But is it wrong?--why is it wrong?--and
+then comes answer, pat--"My dear, you must not argue--young ladies
+never argue." "But, mamma, I was thinking----" "My dear, you must not
+think--go write your Italian exercise," and so on! The idea that certain
+passions, powers, tempers, feelings, interwoven with our being by our
+almighty and all-wise Creator, are to be put down by the fiat of a
+governess, or the edict of fashion, is monstrous. Those who educate
+us imagine that they have done every thing, if they have silenced
+controversy, if they have suppressed all external demonstration of an
+excess of temper or feeling; not knowing, or not reflecting, that unless
+our nature be self-governed and self-directed by an appeal to those
+higher faculties, which link us immediately with what is divine, their
+labour is lost.
+
+Now, in Germany the women are less educated to suit some particular
+fashion; the cultivation of the intellect, and the forming of the
+manners, do not so generally supersede the training of the moral
+sentiments--the affections--the impulses; the latter are not so
+habitually crushed or disguised; consequently the women appeared to me
+more natural, and to have more individual character.
+
+MEDON.
+
+But the English women pique themselves on being natural, at least they
+have the word continually in their mouths. Do you know that I once
+overheard a well-meaning mother instructing her daughter how to be
+natural? You laugh, but I assure you it is a simple fact. Now, I really
+do not object to natural insipidity, but I do object to conventional
+insipidity: I object to a rule of elegance which makes the negative the
+test of the natural. It seems hard that those who have hearts and souls
+must needs put them into a strait-waistcoat, in order to oblige those
+who choose to have none; and be guilty of the grossest affectation, to
+escape the imputation of being affected!
+
+ALDA.
+
+I think there is less of this among the Germans; more of the individual
+character is brought into the daily intercourse of society--more of the
+poetry of existence is brought to bear on the common realities of life.
+I saw a freshness of feeling--a genuine (not a taught) simplicity, which
+charmed me. Sometimes I have seen affectation, but it amused me; it
+consisted in the exaggeration of what is in itself good, not in the
+mean renunciation of our individuality--the immolation of our soul's
+truth to a mere fashion of behaviour. As Rochefoucauld called hypocrisy,
+(that last extreme of wickedness,) "_the homage which vice pays to
+virtue_;" so the _nature de convention_, that last and worst excess of
+affectation, is the homage which the artificial pays to the natural.
+
+The German women are much more engrossed by the cares of housekeeping
+than women of a similar rank of life in England. They carry this too far
+in many instances, as we do the opposite extreme. In England, with our
+false, conventional refinement, we attach an idea of vulgarity to certain
+cares and duties, in which there is nothing vulgar. To see the young and
+beautiful daughter of a lady of rank running about, busied in household
+matters, with the keys of the wine-cellar and the store-room suspended
+to her sash, would certainly surprise a young Englishwoman, who,
+meantime, is netting a purse, painting a rose, or warbling some "Dolce
+mio Bene," or "Soavi Palpiti," with the air of a nun at penance. The
+description of Werther's Charlotte, cutting bread and butter, has
+been an eternal subject of laughter among the English, among whom fine
+sentiment must be garnished out with something finer than itself; and no
+princess can be suffered to go mad, or even be in love, except in white
+satin. To any one who has lived in Germany, the union of sentiment
+and bread and butter, or of poetry with household cares, excites no
+laughter. The wife of a state minister once excused herself from going
+with me to a picture gallery, because on that day she was obliged to
+reckon up the household linen; she was one of the most charming, truly
+elegant, and accomplished women I ever met with. At another time, I
+remember that a very accomplished woman, who had herself figured in a
+court, could not do something or other--I forget what--because it was
+the "groesse Waesche," (the great wash,) an event by the way which I
+often found very mal-a-propos, and which never failed to turn a German
+household upside down. You must remember that I am not speaking of
+tradesmen and mechanics, but of people of my own, or even a superior
+rank of life. It is true that I met with cases in which the women had,
+without necessity, sunk into mere domestic drudges--women whose souls
+were in their kitchen and their household stuff--whose talk was of
+dishes and of condiments; but then the same species of women in England
+would have been, instead of busy with the idea of being useful,
+frivolous and silly, without any idea at all.
+
+MEDON.
+
+And whether a woman put her soul into an apple tart, or a new bonnet,
+signifies little, if there be no capacity there for any thing better.
+I hate mere fine ladies; but equally avoid those who seem born to
+"suckle fools and chronicle small beer." The accomplishments which
+embellish social life--the cultivation which raises you to a companionship
+with men--I cannot spare these to make mere nurses and housewifes, as I
+conceive the generality of the German women aim to be, and which I have
+been told the opinions of the men approve.
+
+ALDA.
+
+As to what we term accomplishments, there was certainly much less
+exhibition and parade of them in society; they formed less an established
+and necessary part of education than with us; but, of really accomplished,
+well-informed women, believe me I found no deficiency--far otherwise:
+if the inclination or the talent existed, means and opportunity were
+not wanting for mental culture of a very high species. I met with fewer
+women who drew badly, sang tolerably, or rather intolerably, scratched
+the harp, and quoted Metastasio; but I met with quite as many women who,
+without pretension, were finished musicians, painted like artists,
+possessed an extensive acquaintance with their own literature, and an
+uncommon knowledge of languages; and were, besides, very good housewives
+after the German fashion. More or less acquaintance with the French
+language was a matter of course, but English was preferred: every where
+I met with women who had cultivated with success, not our language
+merely, but our literature. Shakspeare, whether studied in English, or
+in some of their excellent translations, I found a species of household
+god, whose very name was breathed with reverence, as if it were that of
+a supernatural being. Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott, and Campbell,
+are familiar names. Wordsworth and Shelley are beginning to be known,
+but they are pronounced more difficult of comprehension than Shakspeare
+himself; yet I met with a German lady who could repeat Coleridge's
+"Ancient Mariner" by heart. Of our great modern poets, Crabbe appeared
+the least understood and appreciated in Germany, for the obvious reason,
+that his subjects and portraits are almost exclusively national. There
+are, however, several German editions of his works. The men read him as
+a study. The only German lady I met with who had read his works through,
+pronounced them "not poetry." Bulwer is exceedingly popular among the
+women; so is Moore. Some of those who most admired the latter, gave as
+one reason that "his English style was so easy."
+
+MEDON.
+
+Of all our poets, Moore should seem the least allied to a German taste.
+Shall I confess to you? He reminds me perpetually of Prince Potemkin's
+larder, in which you could always have _petits-pates_ and champagne,
+_ad libitum_, but never a morsel of bread or a drop of water!
+
+ALDA.
+
+The simile is e'en too wickedly just; but I except his Irish ballads:
+by the way, I was pleased to find some of our beautiful Irish melodies
+almost naturalized in Germany, and sung either with Moore's words, or
+German versions of them. I remember that at Stift-Neuberg I heard the
+air of Ally Croker sung to an excellent translation of Moore's words,[28]
+and with as much of the national spirit and feeling as if we had been on
+the banks of the Shannon instead of the banks of the Neckar. The singer,
+an amateur, and a most extraordinary musical genius, who had joined our
+circle from Heidelberg, did not understand, or at least did not speak,
+English; yet there was no Irish, or Scotch, or English air which he had
+not at the ends of his fingers; and when he struck up, "Of noble race
+was Shenkin," it was as if all the souls of all the Welsh harpers since
+High-born Hoel had inspired him. This gifted person was, however, of your
+sex, and our discourse, at present, is of mine.
+
+I heard an English lady, who had resided for some time in Germany,
+remark, that the "German mothers _spoiled_ their children terribly;" in
+other words, the children lived more habitually with the mothers, were
+under little restraint, and behaved in the drawing-room much as if they
+were in the nursery, and were treated, as they grew up, on more equal
+terms.
+
+That high exterior polish, those brilliant conversational talents, which
+I have seen in many English and French women, must be rare among the
+Germans: they are too simple, and too much in earnest. The trifling
+of a polished French woman is often most graceful; the trifling of an
+Englishwoman gracious and graceful; but the trifling of a German woman
+is, in comparison, heavy work; to use a common expression, it is not
+_in them_. I met with _one_ satirical woman. You know I once ventured
+to assert that no woman is _naturally_ satirical, and to touch upon the
+causes which foster this artificial vice--and here was a case in point.
+It was that of a mind which had originally been a piece of nature's
+noblest handiwork, first bruised, then gradually festered by the action
+of all evil influences.
+
+MEDON.
+
+And, "lilies that fester are far worse than weeds," so singeth the poet;
+but do you make the cause also the excuse? How many minds have endured
+the most withering influences of misery and mischief, if not untouched,
+at least uninjured--unembittered!
+
+ALDA.
+
+I grant you: but before we assume the power of judging, of computing the
+degree of virtue in the latter case, of vice in the former, we should
+look to the original conformation of the human being--the material
+exposed to these influences. Fire hardens the clay and dissolves the
+metal. This plate of tempered steel, on which I am going to etch, shall
+corrode, effervesce, be absolutely decomposed by the action of a few
+drops of nitrous acid, which has no effect whatever on this lump of wax.
+Now, carry this analogy into the consideration of the human character--it
+will spare us a long argument.
+
+As to the chapter of coquettes--
+
+MEDON.
+
+Ah! _glissez, mortel, n'appuyez pas!_
+
+ALDA.
+
+And why not?--Don't you know that I meditate, with the assistance of
+certain _professorins_, a complete Natural History of Coquettes, (in
+quarto,) which shall rival the famous Dutch treatise on Butterflies,
+in heaven knows how many folio volumes? In the first part of this
+stupendous work we intend to treat systematically of every known
+species, from the _coquetterie instinctive_, which may be termed the
+wild genus, indigenous in all females, up to the _coquetterie calculee
+et philosophique_, the most refined specimen reared in the hot-bed of
+artificial life. In the second part, we shall treat the whole history of
+_Coquetterie_, from that first pretty experiment of dear Mamma Eve, when
+she turned away from Adam,
+
+  "----As conscious of her worth,
+  That would be woo'd and not unsought be won,"
+
+
+down to--to--how shall I avoid being personal?--down to the Lady Adeline
+Amundevilles of our own day. With some women _coquetterie_ is an instinct;
+with others, an amusement; with others, a pursuit; with others, a science.
+With the German women it is a passion: they play the coquette as they do
+every thing else, with sentiment, with good faith, with enthusiasm.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Why then it is no longer _coquetterie_--it is love!
+
+ALDA.
+
+I beg your pardon; it is something very different. True, perhaps, "that
+thin partitions do the bounds divide;" but, to a nice observer, the
+division is not the less complete. In short, you can imagine nothing
+more distinct than an English coquette and a German coquette; in the
+first case, one is reminded of Dryden's fanciful simile--
+
+  "So cold herself, while she such warmth express'd,
+  'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream!"
+
+
+But, in the latter case, it is Diana bending the bow, and brandishing
+the darts of Cupid; and with an unsuspicious _gaucherie_, which now and
+then turns the point against her own bosom.
+
+I observed, and I verified my own observations, by the information of
+some intelligent medical men, that there is less ill-health among the
+superior rank of women, in Germany, than with us; all that class of
+diseases, which we call nervous, which in England have increased,
+and are increasing in such a fearful ratio, are far less prevalent;
+doubtless, because the habits of social life are more natural. The use
+of noxious stimulants among the better class of women is almost unknown,
+and rare among the very lowest classes--would to heaven we could say
+the same! No where, not even at Munich, one of the most profligate of
+the German capitals, was I ever shocked by the exhibition of female
+suffering and depravity in another form, as in the theatres and the
+streets of London.
+
+I have been asked twenty times since my return to England, whether the
+German women are not very _exaltee_--very romantic? I could only answer,
+that they appeared to me less calculating, less the slaves of artificial
+manners and modes of thinking; more imaginative, more governed by
+natural feeling, more enthusiastic in love and religion, than with us.
+If this is what my English friends term _exaltee_, I certainly cannot
+think the German women would have reason to be offended by the
+application of the word to them, however satirically meant. Perhaps it
+may be from necessity, that they are generally more simple in their
+tastes, and more frugal in their expenses; they had certainly a most
+formidable idea of the extravagance of fashionable English women, and
+of our luxurious habits. I believe that they are sometimes difficult of
+access, and apparently inhospitable, because they suspect us of scoffing
+at their simplicity, at the homeliness of their accommodations, and
+their housewively occupations. For my own part I slipped so quietly
+and naturally into all their social and domestic habits, and cared so
+little about the differences and distinctions, which some of the English
+thought it fine to be always remarking and lamenting, that my German
+friends used to express their surprise, by saying--"Savez vous, ma
+chere, que vous ne me faites pas de tout l'effet d'une Anglaise!"--an
+odd species of compliment, but certainly meant as such. It is true
+that I was sometimes a little tired of the everlasting knitting and
+cross-stitch; and it is true I may at times have felt the want of
+certain external luxuries, with which we are habitually pampered in this
+prodigal land, till they become necessaries; but I would be well content
+to exchange them all a thousand times over, for the cheap mental and
+social pleasures--the easy intercourse of German life.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Apropos to German romance. I met with a striking instance of it even in
+my short and rapid journey across part of the country. A lady of birth
+and rank, who had been _dame d'honneur_ in the court of a sovereign
+princess, (a princess by the way of very equivocal reputation,) on
+the death of a lover, to whom she had been betrothed, devoted herself
+thenceforth to the service of the sick in the hospitals; she could not
+enter a religious order, being a Protestant, but she fulfilled all the
+offices of a vowed Sister of Charity. When she applied to the physician
+for leave to attend the hospital at ----, he used every endeavour to
+dissuade her from her undertaking--all in vain! Then he tried to disgust
+her by imposing, in the first instance, duties the most fearful and
+revolting to a delicate woman; she stood this test, and persisted. It is
+now five years since I saw her; perhaps she may by this time be tired of
+her charitable, or rather her romantic, self-devotion.
+
+ALDA.
+
+No, _that_ she is not. I know to whom you allude. She follows steadily
+and quietly the same pious vocation in which she has persevered for
+fifteen years, and in which she seems resolved to die.
+
+Now, in return for your story, though I knew it all before, I will tell
+you another; but lest you should suspect me of absolute invention and
+romancing, I must tell you how I came by it.
+
+I was travelling from Weimar to Frankfort, and had stopped at a little
+town, one or two stages beyond Fulda; I was standing at the window of
+the inn, which was opposite to the post-house, and looking at a crowd
+of travellers who had just been disgorged from a huge Eil-wagen or
+post-coach, which was standing there. Among them was one female, who,
+before I was aware, fixed my attention. Although closely enveloped in a
+winter dress from head to foot, her height, and the easy decision with
+which she moved, showed that her figure was fine and well-proportioned;
+and as the wind blew aside her black veil, I had a glimpse of features
+which still farther excited my curiosity. I had time to consider her,
+as she alighted and walked over to the inn alone. She entered at once
+the room--it was a sort of public saloon--in which I was; summoned the
+waiter, whom she addressed in a good-humoured, but rather familiar
+style, and ordered breakfast; not a cup of chocolate or _caffee au
+lait_, as became a heroine, for you see I was resolved that she should
+be one, but a very substantial German breakfast--soup, a cutlet, and a
+pint (eine halbe flasche) of good wine: it was then about ten o'clock.
+While this was preparing, she threw off her travelling accoutrements;
+first a dark cloak, richly lined with fur; one or two shawls; a sort
+of pelisse, or rather surtout, reaching to the knees, with long loose
+sleeves, such as you may see in the prints of Tartar or Muscovite
+costumes; this was made of beautiful Indian shawl, lined with blue
+silk, and trimmed with sables: under these splendid and multifarious
+coverings she wore a dress of deep mourning. Her figure, when displayed,
+excited my admiration: it was one of the most perfect I ever beheld.
+Her feet, hands, and head, were small in proportion to her figure; her
+face was not so striking--it was pretty, rather than handsome; her small
+mouth closed firmly, so as to give a marked and singular expression
+of resolution and decision, to a physiognomy otherwise frank and
+good-humoured. Her eyes, also small, were of a dark hazel, bright,
+and with long blonde eyelashes. Her abundant fair hair was plaited in
+several bands, and fastened on the top of her head, in the fashion
+of the German peasant girls. Her voice would have been deemed rather
+high-pitched, for "ears polite," but it was not deficient in melody; and
+though her expression was grave, and even sad, upon our first encounter,
+I soon found that mirth, and not sadness, was the natural character of
+her mind, as of her countenance. When any thing ridiculous occurred,
+she burst at once into a laugh--such a merry, musical peal, that it was
+impossible not to sympathize in it. Her whole appearance and manner gave
+me the idea of a farmer's buxom daughter: nothing could be more distinct
+from our notions of the lady-like, yet nothing could be more free from
+impropriety, more expressive of native innocence and modesty; but the
+splendour of her dress did not exactly suit with her deportment--it
+puzzled me. I observed, when she drew off her glove, that she wore a
+number of silver rings of a peculiar fashion, and among them a fine
+diamond. She walked up and down while her breakfast was preparing,
+seemingly lost in painful meditations; but when it appeared, she sat
+down and did justice to it, as one who had been many hours without food.
+While she was thus engaged, the conducteur of the Eil-wagen and one
+of the passengers came in, and spoke to her with interest and respect.
+Soon afterwards came the mistress of the inn, (who had never deigned to
+notice me, for it is not the fashion in Germany;) she came with an offer
+of particular services, and from the conversation I gathered, to my
+astonishment, that this young creature--she seemed not more than two or
+three and twenty--was on her way home, alone and unprotected, from--can
+you imagine?--even from the wilds of Siberia! But then what had brought
+her there? I listened, in hopes of discovering, but they all spoke so
+fast that I could make out nothing more. Afterwards, I had occasion to
+go over to a little shop to make some purchase. On my return, I found
+her crying bitterly, and my maid, also in tears, was comforting her with
+great volubility. Now, though my _having_ in German, like Orlando's
+beard, was not considerable, and my heroine spoke still less French, I
+could not help assisting in the task of consolation--never, certainly,
+were my curiosity and interest more strongly excited! Subsequently we
+met at Frankfort, where she was lodged in the same hotel, and I was
+enabled to offer her a seat in my vehicle to Mayence. Thus, I had
+opportunities of hearing her whole history related at different times,
+and in parts and parcels; and I will now endeavour to give it to you
+in a connected form. I may possibly make some mistake with regard
+to the order of events, but I promise you faithfully, that where my
+recollection of names, or dates, or circumstances, may fail me, I will
+not, like Mademoiselle de Montpensier, make use of my imagination
+to supply the defects of my memory. You shall have, if not the whole
+truth, at least as much of it as I can remember, and with no fictitious
+interpolations and improvements. Of the animation of voice and manner,
+the vivid eloquence, the graphic spirit, the quick transitions of
+feeling, and the grace and vivacity of gesture and action with which
+the relation was made to me by this fine untutored child of nature,
+I can give you no idea--it was altogether a study of character, I shall
+never forget.
+
+My heroine--truly and in every sense does she deserve the name--was the
+daughter of a rich brewer and wine merchant of Deuxponts.[29] She was
+one of five children, two much older and two much younger than herself.
+Her eldest brother was called Henri: he had early displayed such
+uncommon talents, and such a decided inclination for study, that his
+father was determined to give him all the advantages of a learned
+education, and sent him to the university of Erlangen, in Bavaria,
+whence he returned to his family, with the highest testimonies of his
+talents and good conduct. His father now destined him for the clerical
+profession, with which his own wishes accorded. His sister fondly
+dwelt upon his praises, and described him, perhaps with all a sister's
+partiality, as being not only the pride of his family, but of all his
+fellow-citizens, "tall, and handsome, and good," of a most benevolent
+enthusiastic temper, and devoted to his studies. When he had been at
+home for some time, he attracted the notice of one of the princes in the
+north of Germany, with whom he travelled, I believe, in the capacity
+of secretary. The name of the prince, and the particulars of this
+part of his life, have escaped me; but it appeared that, through the
+recommendation of this powerful patron, he became professor of theology
+in a university of Courland, I think at Riga, or somewhere near it, for
+the name of this city was continually recurring in her narrative. Henri
+was at this time about eight-and-twenty.
+
+While here, it was his fate to fall passionately in love with the
+daughter of a rich Jew merchant. His religious zeal mingled with his
+love; he was as anxious to convert his mistress as to possess her--and,
+in fact, the first was a necessary preliminary to the second; the
+consequences were all in the usual style of such matters. The relations
+discovered the correspondence, and the young Jewess was forbidden to see
+or to speak to her lover. They met in secret. What arguments he might
+use to convert this modern Jessica, I know not, but they prevailed. She
+declared herself convinced, and consented to fly with him beyond the
+frontiers, into Silesia, to be baptized, and to become his wife.
+
+Apparently their plans were not well-arranged, or were betrayed; for
+they were pursued by her relations and the police, and overtaken before
+they reached the frontiers. The young man was accused of carrying off
+his Jewish love by force, and this, I believe, at Riga, where the Jews
+are protected, is a capital crime. The affair was brought before the
+tribunal, and the accused defended himself by declaring that the girl
+had fled with him by her own free will; that she was a Christian, and
+his betrothed bride, as they had exchanged rings, or had gone through
+some similar ceremony. The father Jew denied this on the part of his
+daughter, and Henri desired to be confronted with the lady who was thus
+said to have turned his accuser. Her family made many difficulties, but
+by the order of the judge she was obliged to appear. She was brought
+into the court of justice pale, trembling, and supported by her father
+and others of her kindred. The judge demanded whether it was by her own
+will that she had fled with Henri Ambos? She answered in a faint voice,
+"_No_." Had then violence been used to carry her off? "_Yes._" Was she
+a Christian? "_No._" Did she regard Henri as her affianced husband?
+"_No._"
+
+On hearing these replies, so different from the truth,--from all he
+could have anticipated, the unfortunate young man appeared for a few
+minutes stupified; then, as if seized with a sudden frenzy, he made a
+desperate effort to rush upon the young Jewess. On being prevented, he
+drew a knife from his pocket, which he attempted to plunge into his own
+bosom, but it was wrested from him; in the scuffle he was wounded in
+the hands and face, and the young lady swooned away. The sight of his
+mistress insensible, and his own blood flowing, restored the lover to
+his senses. He became sullenly calm, offered not another word in his own
+defence, refused to answer any questions, and was immediately conveyed
+to prison.
+
+These particulars came to the knowledge of his family after the lapse of
+many months, but of his subsequent fate they could learn nothing. Neither
+his sentence nor his punishment could be ascertained; and although
+one of his relations went to Riga, for the purpose of obtaining some
+information--some redress--he returned without having effected either
+of the purposes of his journey. Whether Henri had died of his wounds,
+or languished in a perpetual dungeon, remained a mystery.
+
+Six years thus passed away. His father died: his mother, who persisted
+in hoping, while all others despaired, lingered on in heart-wearing
+suspense. At length, in the beginning of last year, (1833,) a travelling
+merchant passed through the city of Deuxponts, and inquired for the
+family of Ambos. He informed them that in the preceding year he had
+seen and spoken to a man in rags, with a long beard, who was working in
+fetters with other criminals, near the fortress of Barinska, in Siberia;
+who described himself as Henri Ambos, a pastor of the Lutheran church,
+unjustly condemned, and besought him with tears, and the most urgent
+supplications, to convey some tidings of him to his unhappy parents, and
+beseech them to use every means to obtain his liberation.
+
+You must imagine--for I cannot describe as she described--the feelings
+which this intelligence excited. A family counsel was held, and it
+was determined at once that application should be made to the police
+authorities at St. Petersburgh, to ascertain beyond a doubt the fate
+of poor Henri--that a petition in his favour must be presented to the
+Emperor of Russia; but who was to present it? The second brother offered
+himself, but he had a wife and two children; the wife protested that she
+should die if her husband left her, and would not hear of his going;
+besides, he was the only remaining hope of his mother's family. The
+sister then said that she would undertake the journey, and argued that
+as a woman she had more chance of success in such an affair than her
+brother. The mother acquiesced. There was, in truth, no alternative; and
+being amply furnished with the means, this generous, affectionate, and
+strong-minded girl, set off alone, on her long and perilous journey.
+"When my mother gave me her blessing," said she, "I made a vow to God
+and my own heart, that I would not return alive without the pardon of
+my brother. I feared nothing; I had nothing to live for. I had health
+and strength, and I had not a doubt of my own success, because I was
+_resolved_ to succeed; but ah! _liebe madame!_ what a fate was mine! and
+how am I returning to my mother!--my poor old mother!" Here she burst
+into tears, and threw herself back in the carriage; after a few minutes
+she resumed her narrative.
+
+She reached the city of Riga without mischance. There she collected the
+necessary documents relative to her brother's character and conduct,
+with all the circumstances of his trial, and had them properly attested.
+Furnished with these papers, she proceeded to St. Petersburgh, where she
+arrived safely in the beginning of June, 1833. She had been furnished with
+several letters of recommendation, and particularly with one to a German
+ecclesiastic, of whom she spoke with the most grateful enthusiasm, by the
+title of M. le Pasteur. She met with the utmost difficulty in obtaining
+from the police the official return of her brother's condemnation, place
+of exile, punishment, &c.; but at length, by almost incredible boldness,
+perseverance, and address, she was in possession of these, and with the
+assistance of her good friend the pastor, she drew up a petition to the
+emperor. With this she waited on the minister of the interior, to whom,
+with great difficulty, and after many applications, she obtained access.
+He treated her with great harshness, and absolutely refused to deliver
+the petition. She threw herself on her knees, and added tears to
+entreaties; but he was inexorable, and added brutally--"Your brother
+was a _mauvais sujet_; he _ought_ not to be pardoned, and if I were the
+emperor I would not pardon him." She rose from her knees, and stretching
+her arms towards heaven, exclaimed with fervour--"I call God to witness
+that my brother was innocent! and I thank God that you are not the
+emperor, for I can still hope!" The minister, in a rage, said--"Do you
+dare to speak thus to me! Do you know who I am?" "Yes," she replied;
+"you are his excellency the minister C----; but what of that? you are
+a cruel man! but I put my trust in God and the emperor; and then," said
+she, "I left him, without even a curtsey, though he followed me to the
+door, speaking very loud and very angrily."
+
+Her suit being rejected by all the ministers, (for even those who
+were most gentle, and who allowed the hardship of the case, still
+refused to interfere, or deliver her petition,) she resolved to do,
+what she had been dissuaded from attempting in the first instance--to
+appeal to the emperor in person: but it was in vain she lavished
+hundreds of dollars in bribes to the inferior officers; in vain she
+beset the imperial suite, at reviews, at the theatre, on the way to
+the church: invariably beaten back by the guards, or the attendants,
+she could not penetrate to the emperor's presence. After spending six
+weeks in daily ineffectual attempts of this kind, hoping every morning,
+and almost despairing every evening--threatened by the police, and
+spurned by the officials--Providence raised her up a friend in one of
+her own sex. Among some ladies of rank, who became interested in her
+story, and invited her to their houses, was a Countess Elise, something
+or other, whose name I am sorry I did not write down. One day, on seeing
+her young _protegee_ overwhelmed with grief, and almost in despair, she
+said, with emotion, "I cannot dare to present your petition myself, I
+might be sent off to Siberia, or at least banished the court; but all I
+can do I will. I will lend you my equipage and servants. I will dress
+you in one of my robes; you shall drive to the palace the next levee
+day, and obtain an audience under my name; when once in the presence of
+the emperor you must manage for yourself. If I risk thus much, will you
+venture the rest?" "And what," said I, "was your answer?" "Oh!" she
+replied, "I could not answer; but I threw myself at her feet, and kissed
+the hem of her gown!" I asked her whether she had not feared to risk the
+safety of her generous friend? She replied, "That thought did strike
+me--but what would you have?--I cast it from me. I was _resolved_ to
+have my brother's pardon--I would have sacrificed my own life to obtain
+it--and, God forgive me, I thought little of what it might cost another."
+
+This plan was soon arranged, and at the time appointed my resolute
+heroine drove up to the palace in a splendid equipage, preceded by a
+running footman, with three laced laquais in full dress, mounted
+behind. She was announced as the Countess Elise ----, who supplicated
+a particular audience of his majesty. The doors flew open, and in a few
+minutes she was in the presence of the emperor, who advanced one or
+two steps to meet her, with an air of gallantry, but suddenly started
+back----
+
+Here I could not help asking her, whether in that moment she did not
+feel her heart sink?
+
+"No," said she firmly; "on the contrary, I felt my heart beat quicker
+and higher!--I sprang forward and knelt at his feet, exclaiming, with
+clasped hands--'Pardon, imperial majesty!--Pardon!'" "Who are you?" said
+the emperor, astonished; "and what can I do for you?" He spoke gently,
+more gently than any of his ministers, and overcome, even by my own
+hopes, I burst into a flood of tears, and said--"May it please your
+imperial majesty, I am not Countess Elise ----, I am only the sister of
+the unfortunate Henri Ambos, who has been condemned on false accusation.
+O pardon!--pardon! Here are the papers--the proofs. O imperial
+majesty!--pardon my poor brother!" I held out the petition and the
+papers, and at the same time, prostrate on my knees, I seized the skirt
+of his embroidered coat, and pressed it to my lips. The emperor said,
+"Rise--rise!" but I would not rise; I still held out my papers, resolved
+not to rise till he had taken them. At last the emperor, who seemed much
+moved, extended one hand towards me, and took the papers with the other,
+saying--"Rise, mademoiselle--I command you to rise." I ventured to kiss
+his hand, and said, with tears, "I pray of your majesty to read that
+paper." He said, "I will read it." I then rose from the ground, and stood
+watching him while he unfolded the petition and read it. His countenance
+changed, and he exclaimed once or twice, "Is it possible?--This is
+dreadful!" When he had finished, he folded the paper, and without
+any observation, said at once--"Mademoiselle Ambos, your brother is
+pardoned." The words rung in my ears, and I again flung myself at his
+feet, saying--and yet I scarce know what I said--"Your imperial majesty
+is a god upon earth; do you indeed pardon my brother? Your ministers
+would never suffer me to approach you; and even yet I fear----!" He
+said, "Fear nothing: you have my promise." He then raised me from the
+ground, and conducted me himself to the door. I tried to thank and bless
+him, but could not; he held out his hand for me to kiss, and then bowed
+his head as I left the room. "Ach ja! the emperor is a good man,--ein
+schoener, feiner, Mann! but he does not know how cruel his ministers are,
+and all the evil they do, and all the justice they refuse, in his name!"
+
+I have given you this scene as nearly as possible in her own words.
+She not only related it, but almost acted it over again; she imitated
+alternately, her own and the emperor's voice and manner; and such was
+the vivacity of her description that I seemed to hear and behold both,
+and was more profoundly moved than by any scenic representation I can
+remember.
+
+On her return she received the congratulations of her benefactress, the
+Countess Elise, and of her good friend the pastor, but both advised her
+to keep her audience and the emperor's promise a profound secret. She
+was the more inclined to this; because, after the first burst of joyous
+emotion, her spirits sank. Recollecting the pains that had been taken to
+shut her from the emperor's presence, she feared some unforeseen obstacle,
+or even some knavery on the part of the officers of government. She
+described her sufferings during the next few days, as fearful; her
+agitation, her previous fatigues, and the terrible suspense, apparently
+threw her into a fever, or acted on her excited nerves so as to produce
+a species of delirium, though, of course, she would not admit this.
+After assuring me very gravely that she did not believe in ghosts, she
+told me that one night, after her interview with the emperor, she was
+reading in bed, being unable to sleep; and on raising her eyes from her
+book she saw the figure of her brother, standing at the other end of the
+room; she exclaimed, "My God, Henri! is that you!" but without making
+any reply, the form approached nearer and nearer to the bed, keeping
+its melancholy eyes fixed on her's, till it came quite close to the bed
+side, and laid a cold heavy hand upon her.
+
+MEDON.
+
+The night-mare, evidently.
+
+ALDA.
+
+Without doubt; but her own impression was as of a reality. The figure,
+after looking at her sadly for some minutes, during which she had no
+power either to move or speak, turned away; she then made a desperate
+effort to call out to the daughter of her hostess, who slept in the next
+room--"Luise! Luise!" Luise ran in to her. "Do you not see my brother
+standing there?" she exclaimed with horror, and pointing to the other
+end of the room, whither the image, conjured up by her excited fancy and
+fevered nerves, appeared to have receded. The frightened, staring Luise,
+answered, "Yes." "You see," said she, appealing to me--"that though I
+might be cheated by my own senses, I could not doubt those of another. I
+thought to myself, _then_, my poor Henri is dead, and God has permitted
+him to visit me. This idea pursued me all that night, and the next day;
+but on the following day, which was Monday, just five days after I had
+seen the Emperor, a _laquais_, in the imperial livery, came to my lodging,
+and put into my hands a packet, with the "Emperor's _compliments_ to
+Mademoiselle Ambos." It was the pardon for my brother, with the Emperor's
+seal and signature: then I forgot every thing but joy!"
+
+Those mean, official animals, who had before spurned her, now pressed
+upon her with offers of service, and even the Minister C---- offered to
+expedite the pardon himself to Siberia, _in order to save her trouble_;
+but she would not suffer the precious paper out of her hands: she
+determined to carry it herself--to be herself the bearer of glad
+ tidings:--she had resolved that none but herself should take off those
+fetters, the very description of which had entered her soul; so, having
+made her arrangements as quickly as possible, she set off for Moscow,
+where she arrived in three days. According to her description, the
+town in Siberia, to the governor of which she carried an official
+recommendation, was nine thousand versts beyond Moscow; and the fortress
+to which the wretched malefactors were exiled was at a great distance
+beyond that. I could not well make out the situation of either, and,
+unluckily, I had no map with me but a road map of Germany, and it was
+evident that my heroine was no geographer. She told me that, after
+leaving Moscow, she travelled post seven days and seven nights, only
+sleeping in the carriage. She then reposed for two days, and then posted
+on for another seven days and nights.
+
+MEDON.
+
+Alone?
+
+ALDA.
+
+Alone! and wholly unprotected, except by her own innocence and energy,
+and a few lines of recommendation, which had been given to her at St.
+Petersburgh. The roads were every where excellent, the post-houses at
+regular distances, the travelling rapid; but often, for hundreds of miles,
+
+there were no accommodations of any kind--scarce a human habitation.
+She even suffered from hunger, not being prepared to travel for so many
+hours together without meeting with any food she could touch without
+disgust. She described, with great truth and eloquence, her own
+sensations as she was whirled rapidly over those wide, silent, solitary,
+and apparently endless plains. "Sometimes," said she, "my head seemed
+to turn--I could not believe that it was a waking reality--I could not
+believe that it was myself. Alone, in a strange land,--so many hundred
+leagues from my own home, and driven along as if through the air, with a
+rapidity so different from any thing I had been used to, that it almost
+took away my breath."
+
+"Did you ever feel fear?" I asked.
+
+"Ach ja! when I waked sometimes in the carriage, in the middle of the
+night, wondering at myself, and unable immediately to collect my thoughts.
+Never at any other time."
+
+I asked her if she had ever met with insult? She said she had twice met
+with "wicked men;" but she had felt no alarm--she knew how to protect
+herself; and as she said this, her countenance assumed an expression
+which showed that it was not a mere boast. Altogether, she described her
+journey as being _grausam_, (horrible,) in the highest degree, and,
+indeed, even the recollection of it made her shudder; but at the time
+there was the anticipation of an unspeakable happiness, which made all
+fatigues light, and all dangers indifferent.
+
+At length, in the beginning of August, she arrived at the end of her
+journey, and was courteously received by the commandant of the fortress.
+She presented the pardon with a hand which trembled with impatience and
+joy, too great to be restrained, almost to be borne. The officer looked
+very grave, and took, she thought, a long time to read the paper, which
+consisted only of six or eight lines. At last he stammered out, "I am
+sorry--but the Henri Ambos mentioned in this paper--_is dead_!" Poor
+girl! she fell to the earth.
+
+When she reached this part of her story she burst into a fresh flood
+of tears, wrung her hands, and for some time could utter nothing but
+passionate exclamations of grief. "Ach! lieber Gott! was fuer ein
+schreckliches Schicksal war das meine!" "What a horrible fate was mine!
+I had come thus far to find--not my brother--_nur ein Grab_!" (only a
+grave!) she repeated several times, with an accent of despair. The
+unfortunate man had died a year before. The fetters in which he worked
+had caused an ulcer in his leg, which he neglected, and, after some
+weeks of horrid suffering, death released him. The task-work, for nearly
+five years, of this accomplished, and even learned man, in the prime of
+his life and mental powers, had been to break stones upon the road,
+chained hand and foot, and confounded with the lowest malefactors.
+
+In giving you thus conscientiously, the mere outline of this story,
+I have spared you all comments. I see, by those indignant strides
+majestical, that you are making comments to yourself; but sit down and
+be quiet, if you can: I have not much more to tell!
+
+She found, on inquiry, that some papers and letters, which her unhappy
+brother had drawn up by stealth, in the hope of being able at some time
+to convey them to his friends, were in the possession of one of the
+officers, who readily gave them up to her; and with these she returned,
+half broken-hearted, to St. Petersburgh. If her former journey, when
+hope cheered her on the way, had been so fearful, what must have been
+her return? I was not surprised to hear that, on her arrival, she was
+seized with a dangerous illness, and was for many weeks confined to her
+bed.
+
+Her story excited much commiseration; and a very general interest and
+curiosity was excited about herself. She told me that a great many
+persons of rank invited her to their houses, and made her rich presents,
+among which were the splendid shawls and the ring, which had caught my
+attention, and excited my surprise, in the first instance. The Emperor
+expressed a wish to see her, and very graciously spoke a few words of
+condolence. "But they could not bring my brother back to life!" said
+she, expressively. He even presented her to the Empress. "And what,"
+I asked, "did the Empress say to you?" "_Nothing_; but she looked
+_so_,"--drawing herself up.
+
+On receiving her brother's pardon from the Emperor, she had written
+home to her family; but she confessed that since that time she had not
+written--she had not courage to inflict a blow which might possibly
+affect her mother's life; and yet the idea of being obliged to _tell_
+what she dared not write, seemed to strike her with terror.
+
+But the strangest event of this strange story remains to be told; and
+I will try to give it in her own simple words.
+
+She left Petersburgh in October, and proceeded to Riga, where those
+who had known her brother received her with interest and kindness, and
+sympathized in her affliction. "But," said she, "there was one thing
+I had resolved to do, which yet remained undone. I was resolved to
+see the woman who had been the original cause of all my poor brother's
+misfortunes. I thought if once I could say to her, 'Your falsehood has
+done this!' I should be satisfied; but my brother's friends dissuaded
+me from this idea. They said it was better not; that it could do my
+poor Henri no good; that it was wrong; that it was unchristian; and
+I submitted. I left Riga with a voiturier. I had reached Pojer, on
+the Prussian frontiers, and there I stopped at the Douane, to have my
+packages searched. The chief officer looked at the address on my trunk,
+and exclaimed, with surprise, 'Mademoiselle Ambos! Are you any relation
+of the Professor Henri Ambos?'--'I am his sister.' 'Good God! I was the
+intimate friend of your brother! What has become of him?' I then told
+him all I have now told you, liebe madame!--and when I came to an end,
+this good man burst into tears, and for some time we wept together. The
+kutscher, (driver,) who was standing by, heard all this conversation,
+and when I turned round, he was crying too. My brother's friend pressed
+on me offers of service and hospitality, but I could not delay; for,
+besides that my impatience to reach home increased every hour, I had
+not much money in my purse. Of three thousand dollars, which I had
+taken with me to St. Petersburgh, very little remained, so I bade him
+farewell, and I proceeded. At the next town, where my kutscher stopped
+to feed his horses, he came to the door of my caleche, and said, 'You
+have just missed seeing the Jew lady, whom your brother was in love
+with; that caleche which passed us by just now, and changed horses here,
+contained Mademoiselle S----, her sister, and her sister's husband!'
+Good God! imagine my surprise! I could not believe my fortune: it seemed
+that Providence had delivered her into my hands, and I was resolved
+that she should not escape me. I knew they would be delayed at the
+Custom-house. I ordered the man to turn, and drive back as fast as
+possible, promising him a reward of a dollar if he overtook them.
+On reaching the Custom-house, I saw a caleche standing at a little
+distance. I felt myself tremble, and my heart beat so--but not with
+fear. I went up to the caleche--two ladies were sitting in it. I
+addressed the one who was the most beautiful, and said, 'Are you
+Mademoiselle Emilie S----?' I suppose I must have looked very strange,
+and wild, and resolute, for she replied, with a frightened manner--'I
+am; who are you, and what do you want with me?' I said, 'I am the sister
+of Henri Ambos, whom you murdered!' She shrieked out; the men came
+running from the house; but I held fast the carriage-door, and said,
+'I am not come to hurt you, but you are the murderess of my brother,
+Henri Ambos. He loved you, and your falsehood has killed him. May God
+punish you for it! May his ghost pursue you to the end of your life!' I
+remember no more. I was like one mad. I have just a recollection of her
+ghastly, terrified look, and her eyes wide open, staring at me. I fell
+into fits; and they carried me into the house of my brother's friend,
+and laid me on a bed. When I recovered my senses, the caleche and
+all were gone. When I reached Berlin, all this appeared to me so
+miraculous--so like a dream--I could not trust to my own recollection,
+and I wrote to the officer of Customs, to beg he would attest that it
+was really true, and what I had said when I was out of my senses, and
+what _she_ had said; and at Leipsic I received his letter, which I will
+show you." And at Mayence she showed me this letter, and a number of
+other documents; her brother's pardon, with the Emperor's signature;
+a letter of the Countess Elise ----; a most touching letter from her
+unfortunate brother; (over this she wept much;) and a variety of other
+papers, all proving the truth of her story, even to the minutest
+particulars. The next morning we were to part. I was going down the
+Rhine, and she was to proceed to Deuxponts, which she expected to reach
+in two days. As she had travelled from Berlin almost without rest,
+except the night we had spent at Frankfort, she appeared to me ready to
+sink with fatigue; but she would not bid me farewell that night, although
+I told her I should be obliged to set off at six the next morning; but
+kissing my hand, with many expressions of gratitude, she said she would
+be awake and visit me in my room to bid me a last adieu. As there was
+only a very narrow passage between the two rooms, she left her door a
+little open that she might hear me rise. However, on the following
+morning she did not appear. When dressed, I went on tiptoe into her
+room, and found her lying in a deep calm sleep, her arm over her head.
+I looked at her for some minutes, and thought I had never seen a finer
+creature. I then turned, with a whispered blessing and adieu, and went
+on my way.
+
+This is all I can tell you. If at the time I had not been travelling
+_against_ time, and with a mind most fully and painfully occupied,
+I believe I should have been tempted to accompany my heroine to
+Deuxponts--at least I should have retained her narrative more accurately.
+Not having made any memoranda till many days afterwards, all the names
+have escaped my recollection; but if you have any doubts of the general
+truth of this story, I will at least give you the means of verifying it.
+Here is her name, in her own handwriting, on one of the leaves of my
+pocket-book--you can read the German character;
+
+  =Bety Ambos von Zweibruken.=
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+MEMORANDA AT MUNICH, NUREMBURG, AND DRESDEN.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+MEMORANDA AT MUNICH.
+
+
+SEPT. 28th.--A week at Munich! and nothing done! nothing seen! My first
+_excursions_ I made to-day--from my bed to the sofa--from the sofa to
+the window. Every one told me to be prepared against the caprices of the
+climate, but I did not imagine that it would take a week or a fortnight
+to be _acclimatee_.
+
+What could induce the princes of Bavaria to plant their capital in the
+midst of these wide, marshy, bleak, barren plains, and upon this rough
+unmanageable torrent,--"the Isar rolling rapidly,"--when they might have
+seated themselves by the majestic Danube? The Tyrolean Alps stretching
+south and west, either form a barrier against the most genial airs of
+heaven, or if a stray zephyr find his way from Italy, his poor little
+wings are frozen to his back among the mountain snows, and he drops
+shivering among us, wrapt in a misty cloud. I never saw such fogs:
+they are as dense and as white as a fleece, and look, and feel too,
+like rarefied snow;--but as no one else complains, I think it must be
+indisposition which makes me so peevish and so chilly. Sitting at the
+window being my best amusement, I do not like to find the only objects
+which are to give me a foretaste of the splendour of Munich, quite
+veiled from sight, and shrouded in mist, even for a few morning hours.
+
+I am lodged in the Max-Joseph's-Platz, opposite to the theatre: a
+situation at once airy, quiet, and cheerful.
+
+The theatre is in itself a beautiful object; the portico, of the
+Corinthian order, is supported by eight pillars; the ascent is by a
+noble flight of steps, with four gigantic bronze candelabras at the
+corners; and nothing, at least to my unlearned eyes, could be more
+elegant--more purely classical and Greek, than the whole, were it not
+for the hideous roof _upon the roof_,--one pediment, as it were, riding
+on the back of the other. Some internal arrangement of the theatre may
+render this deformity necessary, but it _is_ a deformity, and one that
+annoys me whenever I look at it.
+
+On the right, I have the new palace, which forms one side of the square:
+a long range of plain, almost rustic, architecture; altogether a striking,
+but rather a pleasing contrast, to the luxuriant grace of the theatre.
+Just now, when I looked out, what a beautiful scene! The full moon,
+rising over the theatre, lights up half the white columns, and half are
+lost in shade. The performances are just over; (half-past nine!) crowds
+of people emerging from the portico into the brilliant moonshine, (many
+of them military, in glittering accoutrements,) descend the steps, and
+spread themselves through the square, single, or in various groups;
+carriages are drawing up and drawing off,--and all this gay confusion is
+without the least noise or tumult. Except the occasional low roll of the
+carriage-wheels over the well-gravelled road, I hear no sound, though
+within a few yards of the spot. It looks like some lovely optical or
+scenic illusion; a moving picture, magnified.
+
+_Oct. 4th._--To my great consternation--summoned in form before the
+police, and condemned to pay a fine of ten florins for having omitted to
+fill up specifically a certain paper which had been placed in my hands
+on my arrival. In the first place, I did not understand it; secondly,
+I never thought about it; and thirdly, I had been too ill to attend to
+it. I made a show of resistance, but it was all in vain, of course;--my
+permission to reside here is limited to six weeks, but may be renewed.
+
+Last night I was induced, but only upon great persuasion, to venture
+over to the theatre. I had been tantalised _so_ long by looking at the
+exterior! Then it was a pleasant evening--broad daylight; and the whole
+theatre being heated by stoves to an even regulated warmth according to
+the season, I was assured that once within the doors there would be no
+danger of fresh indisposition from draughts or cold.
+
+Entering the box, my first glance was of course at the stage. The
+drop-scene, or curtain, a well painted copy of Guido's Aurora, pleased
+me infinitely more than the beautiful drop-curtain at Manheim: _that_
+was very elegant, but this is more than elegant. It harmonized with the
+place, and in my own mind it touched certain chords of association,
+which had long been silent. It was as if the orchestre had suddenly
+welcomed me with some delicious, often-heard, and well-remembered piece
+of music: the effect upon the senses was similar--nor can I describe
+it;--but, surprised and charmed, I kept my eyes fixed for some minutes
+upon the picture: the light being thrown full upon it, while the rest
+of the theatre was comparatively in deep shade, like all the foreign
+theatres, rendered it more effective. The rest of the decorations
+corresponded in splendour; the two colossal muses, as Caryatides
+supporting the king's state box, the noble columns of white and gold,
+and the Caryatides on each side of the proscenium, were all in fine
+taste. The size and proportions of the interior seemed most happily
+calculated for seeing and hearing. On the whole, I never beheld a
+theatre which so entirely _satisfied_ me--no one more easily pleased,
+and no one less easily satisfied!
+
+When I looked down on the _parterre_, I beheld a motley assemblage in
+various costumes: there were a great number of the military; there were
+the well-dressed daughters of people of some condition, in the French
+fashion of two or three years back; there were girls in the Tyrolean
+costume, with their scarlet boddices and silver chains; and the women of
+Munich, with their odd little two-horned caps of rich gold or silver
+brocade,--forming altogether a singular spectacle. As for the scenery,
+it was very well, but would bear no comparison to Stanfield's glorious
+illusions.
+
+The inducement held out to me to-night was to see Ferdinand Eslair play
+the Duke of Alva in "Egmont." Eslair, formerly one of the first actors
+at Manheim, when Manheim boasted the first theatre in Germany, is
+esteemed the finest tragedian here, and the Duke of Alva is one of his
+best characters. It appeared to me a superb piece of acting; so quietly
+stern, so fearfully hard and composed: it was a fine conception cast in
+bronze:--in this consisted its beauty and truth as a whole. Some of his
+_silent_ passages, and his by-play, were admirable. He gave us, in the
+scene with Egmont, an exact living transcript of Titian's famous picture
+of the Duke of Alva; the dress, the attitude, the position of the
+helmet and the glove on the table beside him, every thing was so well
+calculated, at once so unobtrusive and so unexpected, that it was like
+a recognition. Egmont was well played by Racke, but did not strike me
+so much. Mademoiselle Schoeller, who plays the young heroines here, is a
+pupil of Madame Schroeder, (the German Siddons,) and promises well; but
+she wants development; she wants the power, the passion, the tenderness,
+the energy of Claerchen. Claerchen is a plebeian girl, but an impassioned
+and devoted woman--she is a sort of Flemish Juliet. There is the same
+truth of nature and passion, the same impress of intense and luxuriant
+life--but then it is a different life--it is a Rubens compared to a
+Titian--and such Claerchen ought to be. Now to give all the internal
+power and poetry, yet preserve all the external simplicity and homeliness
+of the character,--to give all the _abandon_, yet preserve all the
+delicacy,--to give the delicacy, yet keep clear of all super-refinement,
+and in the concentrated despair of her last scene (where she poisons
+herself) to be calm without being cold, and profoundly tragic without
+the usual tragedy airs, must be difficult--exceedingly difficult; in
+short, to play Claerchen, as I conceive the character ought to be played,
+would require a young actress, uniting sufficient genius to conceive
+it aright, with sufficient delicacy and judgment not to colour it too
+highly: there was no danger of the latter mistake with Mademoiselle
+Schoeller, in whose hands Claerchen became a mere pretty affectionate
+girl. In that lovely scene with Egmont in the third act, which might
+be contrasted with Juliet's balcony scene, as a test of the powers of a
+young actress, Mademoiselle Schoeller was timid even to feebleness; the
+change of manner, when Claerchen substitutes the tender familiarity of
+the second person singular (Du) for the tone of respect in which she
+before addressed her lover, should have been felt and marked, so as to
+have been _felt_ and _remarked_: but this was not the case. In short,
+I was disappointed by this scene.
+
+The Flemish costumes were correct and beautiful. The Prince of Orange,
+in particular, looked as if he had just walked out of one of Vandyke's
+pictures.
+
+After seeing this fine tragedy--surely enough for one evening's
+amusement--I was at home and in bed by half-past ten. They manage these
+things better here than in England.
+
+_Friday._--Dinner at the French ambassador's _five_ o'clock. I mark
+this, because extraordinarily late at Munich. The plebeian dinner hour
+is twelve, or earlier; the general hour, one; the genteel hour, two;
+the fashionable hour, _three_; but five is super-elegant--in the very
+extreme of finery--like a nine o'clock dinner in London. There were
+present some French and Austrians of high rank, who had all visited
+England; and the conversation turning on our English aristocratic
+society--the only society they knew any thing about--I had another proof
+of the ridicule with which foreigners treat our assumption of superior
+morality and domestic happiness. But the person who fixed my attention
+was Leo von Klenze, the celebrated architect, and deservedly a favourite
+of the king, who has, I believe, bestowed on him the superfluous honours
+of nobility. With the others, I had no sympathies--with him a thousand,
+though he knew it not. I looked at him with curiosity--with interest.
+I liked his plain, but marked and clever countenance, and his easy
+manners. I felt an unconscious desire to be agreeable, and longed to
+make him talk; but I knew that this was not the place or the moment for
+us to see each other to the greatest advantage. We had, however, some
+little conversation--a kind of beginning. He told me at dinner that the
+Glypthothek, (the gallery of sculpture here,) was planned and built by
+the present king, when only prince royal, and the expenses liquidated
+from his private purse, out of his yearly savings. He spoke with modesty
+of himself--with gratitude and admiration of the king, of whose talent,
+vivacity, impatience, and enthusiasm for art and artists I had already
+heard some characteristic anecdotes.
+
+After coffee, part of the company dispersed to the opera, or elsewhere;
+others remained to lounge and converse. After the opera, we re-assembled
+with additions, and then tea, and cards, and talk, till past eleven.
+Madame de Vaudreuil receives almost every evening, and this seems to be
+the general routine.
+
+_Oct. 6._--They are now celebrating here the _Volksfest_, (literally the
+"_people's feast_,") or annual fair of Munich, and this has been a grand
+day of festivity. There have been races, a military review, &c.; but,
+except the race-horses in their embroidered trappings, which were led
+past my window, and a long cavalcade of royal carriages and crowds of
+people, in gay and grotesque costumes, hurrying by, I have seen nothing,
+being obliged to keep my room; so I listened to the firing of the cannon,
+and the shouts of the populace, and thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Oct. 8._--First visit to the Glypthothek--just returned--my imagination,
+still filled with "the blaze, the splendour, and the symmetry,"--excited
+as I never thought it could be again excited after seeing the Vatican;
+but this is the Vatican in miniature. Can it be possible that this
+glorious edifice was planned by a young prince, and erected out of his
+yearly savings? I am wonder-struck! I was not prepared for any thing so
+spacious, so magnificent, so perfect in taste and arrangement.
+
+I do not yet know the exact measurement of the building; but it contains
+twelve galleries, the smallest about fifty, and the largest about one
+hundred and thirty feet in length. It consists of a square, built round
+an open central court, and the approach is by a noble portico of eight
+Ionic columns, raised on a flight of steps. As it stands in an open
+space, a little out of the town, with trees planted on either side, the
+effect is very imposing and beautiful. There are no exterior windows,
+they all open into the central court.
+
+From the portico we enter a hall, paved with marble. Over the principal
+door is the name of the king, and the date of the erection. Two side
+doors lead to the galleries. Over the door on the left there is an
+inscription to the honour of Leo von Klenze, the architect of the
+building. Over the door on the right, is the name of Peter Cornelius,
+the painter, by whom the frescos were designed and chiefly executed.
+Thus the king, with a noble magnanimity, uniting truth and justice,
+has associated in his glory those to whom he chiefly owes it--and this
+charmed me. It is in much finer feeling, much higher taste, than those
+eternal (no, not _eternal_!) great N's of that imperial egotist, Napoleon,
+whose vulgar appetite for vulgar fame would allow no participation.
+
+I walked slowly through the galleries so excited by the feeling of
+admiration, that I could make no minute or particular observations. The
+floors are all paved with marbles of various colours--the walls, to a
+certain height, are stuccoed in imitation of grey or dark green marble,
+so as to throw out the sculpture, and give it the full effect. The
+utmost luxury of ornament has been lavished on the walls and ceilings,
+some in painting, some in relief; but in each, the subjects and
+ornaments are appropriate to the situation, and as each gallery has
+been originally adapted to its destination, every where the effect to be
+produced has been judiciously studied. The light is not too great, nor
+too generally diffused--it is poured in from high semicircular windows
+on one side only, so as to throw the sculpture into beautiful relief.
+Two lofty and spacious halls are richly painted in fresco, with subjects
+from the Greek mythology, and the whole building would contain, I
+suppose, six times, or ten times, the number of works of art now there;
+at the same time all are so arranged that there appears no obvious
+deficiency. The collection was begun only in 1808, and since that time
+the king has contrived to make some invaluable acquisitions. I found
+here many of the most far-famed relics of ancient art, many that I had
+already seen in Italy; for instance, the Egina marbles, the Barberini
+Faun, the Barberini Muse, or Apollo, the Leucothoe, the Medusa Rondanini
+above all, the Ilioneus; but I cannot now dwell on these. I must go
+again and again before I can methodise my impressions and recollections.
+
+_Oct. 11._--Yesterday and to-day, at the Glypthothek, where the cushioned
+seats, though rather more classical than comfortable, enabled me to
+lounge away the time, unwearied in body as in mind.
+
+The arrangement of the galleries is such as to form not only a splendid
+exhibition and school of art, but a regular progressive history of the
+rise and decline of sculpture. Thus we step from the vestibule into
+the Egyptian gallery, of which the principal treasure is the colossal
+Antinous of Rossoantico, with the attributes of Osiris.
+
+I admired in this room the exquisite beauty and propriety of the
+basso-relievo over the door, designed and modelled by Schwanthaler. It
+is of course intended to be symbolical of the birth of art among the
+Egyptians. Isis discovers the body of her lost husband Osiris, concealed
+in a sarcophagus: she strikes it with the mystic wand, and he stands
+revealed, and restored to her. The imitation of the Egyptian style
+is perfect.
+
+From the Egyptian, we step into the Etruscan gallery, of which the
+ceiling is painted in the most vivid and beautiful colours. The third
+room contains the famous Egina marbles, which I had seen at Rome when
+Thorwaldson was engaged in restoring them. To appreciate the classical
+beauty and propriety of the arrangement of these singular relics, we
+must call to mind their history, their subject, and their original
+destination. Thus AEacus, the first king of the Island of AEgina, was
+the son of Jupiter, or rather Zeus, (for the Greek designations are
+infinitely more elegant and expressive than the Roman.) The temple
+was dedicated to Zeus, and the groups which adorned the pediments
+represented the history of the two branches of the AEacidae, descended
+from Telamon and Peleus, sons of AEacus. On two long tables or stands
+of marble, supported by griffins, imitated from those which originally
+ornamented the temple, are ranged the two groups of figures: neither
+group is quite entire. Of that which represents the fight of Telamon
+and Hercules with Laomedon, King of Troy, there are only five figures
+remaining; and of the other group, the conflict for the body of
+Patroclus, there are ten figures. Along the walls, on tables of marble,
+are ranged a variety of fragments from the same temple, which must have
+been splendidly rich in sculpture, within and without. On the ceiling of
+this room, the four AEacidae, AEacus, Peleus, Achilles, and Neoptolemus,
+are represented in relief, by Schwanthaler. There is also a small model
+of the western front of the temple restored, and painted as it is proved
+to have been originally; (for instance, the field of the Tympanum was of
+a sky blue.) This model is fixed in the wall opposite to the window. It
+is extremely curious and interesting, but I thought not well placed as
+an ornament.[30]
+
+I remember asking W----, who has been in every part of the world, what
+was the most beautiful scene he had ever beheld, taking natural beauty
+and poetical associations together? He replied, after a little thought,
+"A sunset from the temple of AEgina;"--and I can conceive this. Lord
+Byron introduces it into his Grecian Sunset--but as an object--
+
+  "On old AEgina's steep and Idra's Isle,
+  The god of gladness sheds his parting smile."
+
+
+From the AEgina gallery we enter the Hall of Apollo. The ceiling of this
+room, splendidly decorated in white and gold, represents the emblems
+of the four principal cities of Greece, viz. the Athenian owl, the
+winged-horse of Corinth, the Chimera of Sicyon, and the wolf of Argos.
+
+The chief glory of this apartment is that celebrated colossal statue,
+once known as the Barberini muse, now considered by antiquarians as an
+Apollo, and supposed to be the work of Ageladas, the master of Phidias.
+It is certainly older than the sculptures of the Parthenon. In its
+severe massy grandeur, there is something of the heaviness and formality
+of the most ancient Greek school, and in point of style it forms a link
+between the AEgina marbles and the Elgin marbles. It should seem that the
+eyes of this statue were once represented by gems--the orifices remain,
+surrounded by a ring of bronze.
+
+In the same room are those two sublime busts which almost take away
+one's breath--the colossal head of Pallas, resembling that of the
+Minerva of Velletri, now in the Vatican; and the Achilles.
+
+The next room is the Hall of Bacchus. The ceiling is richly ornamented
+with all the festive emblems of the god, in white and gold relief. In
+the centre we have that wondrous statue, the gigantic Sleeping Satyr,
+called by some the Barberini Faun. Antiquaries and connoisseurs refer
+this work either to Scopas or Praxiteles, and, from the situation in
+which it was discovered, suppose it to have once ornamented the tomb
+of Adrian. I cannot tell how this may be, but here we behold with
+astonishment the grotesque, the elegant, and the sublime mingled
+together, and each in perfection: _how_, I know not; but I feel it
+is so. I once saw a drawing of this statue, which gave me the idea of
+something coarse and heavy; whereas, in the original, the delicate beauty
+of the workmanship, and the inimitable sleepy abandonment of the attitude,
+soften the effect of the colossal forms. I would place this statue
+immediately after the Elgin marbles; it is, with all its excellence,
+a degree lower in style.
+
+In this gallery I found the famous head of the laughing faun, called
+from the greenish stain on the cheek, the fauno colla macchia, and
+also a sarcophagus, representing in the most exquisite sculpture, the
+marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne. The blending of the idea of death with
+the fullness of life, and even with the most luxuriant and festive
+associations of life, is common among the Greeks, and, from one or two
+known instances, appears to have been carried to an extreme which makes
+one shrink; still, any thing rather than our detestable death's head and
+cross bones! In nature, and in poetry, death is beautiful. It is the
+diseases and vices of artificial life which have rendered it lamentable,
+terrible, disgusting.
+
+Fixed in the wall, opposite to the window, there is a bas relief of
+amazing beauty--the marriage of Neptune and Amphitrite. It is a piece
+of lyric poetry.
+
+The Hall of Niobe contains few objects; but among them some of the most
+perfect specimens of Grecian art; and first, the ILIONEUS.
+
+It was because the Grecian sculptors were themselves poets and creators,
+that "marble grew divine" beneath their hands, and became so instinct
+with the indestructible spirit of life, that their half-defaced ruins
+retain their immortality: else how should we stand shivering with
+awe before those tremendous fragments--the sister Fates in the Elgin
+marbles! Or, how should I, who am incapable of estimating the technical
+perfection of art, stand entranced--as to-day I stood--before the
+Ilioneus? It was not merely admiration; it was the overpowering
+sentiment of harmonious and pathetic beauty running along every
+nerve--such a feeling as music has sometimes awakened. I suppose the
+Ilioneus stands alone, like the Torso of the Vatican--the _ne plus
+ultra_ of grace, as the latter is of grandeur.
+
+The first time I ever saw a cast of this divine statue was in the
+vestibule of Goethe's house, at Weimar. It immediately fixed my
+attention. Afterwards I saw another in Dannecker's studio, and from him
+I learned its history. It was discovered about ten years ago at Prague,
+in the possession of a stone-mason, and is supposed to have formed part
+of the collection of ancient works of art which the Emperor Rodolph
+collected in Italy about 1600.[31] A certain Dr. Barth purchased it
+for a trifle, and brought it to Vienna, where Dannecker happened to
+be at that time, and was called upon with others to pronounce on its
+merits and value. It was at once attributed to the hand, either of
+Praxiteles or Scopas, and on farther and minute examination, the style,
+the proportions, and the evident purport of the figure, have decided
+that it belongs to the group of Niobe and her children. It has attained
+the appellation of Ilioneus, which Ovid gives to the youngest of her
+sons. It represents a youth kneeling. The head and arms are wanting;
+but the supplicatory expression of the attitude, the turn of the body,
+so deprecating, so imploring; the bloom of adolescence, which seems
+absolutely shed over the cold marble, the unequalled delicacy and
+elegance of the whole, touched me unspeakably.
+
+The King of Bavaria is said to have paid for this exquisite relic 15,000
+florins--a large sum for a little potentate; but for the object itself,
+its value is not to be computed by money. Its weight in gold were poor
+in comparison.
+
+In the same room is the Medusa Rondanini, the common model of almost all
+the Medusa heads, but certainly not equal to the sublime colossal mask
+at Cologne. There is also an antique duplicate of the Mercury of the
+Belvidere; another of the Venus of Cnidos; another (most beautiful)
+of one of the sons of Niobe, recumbent, lifeless; and some other
+master-pieces.
+
+These six rooms occupy one side of the building, and contain altogether
+one hundred and forty-seven specimens of ancient art.
+
+I do not quite understand Flaxman's division of ancient art into three
+periods--the heroic age, the philosophic age, and the age of perfection.
+Perhaps if he had lived to correct his essays, he would have made
+this more clear. According to his distinction, would not the group of
+the Niobe belong to the age of perfection?--and the Parthenon to the
+philosophic age? which, allowing his definition of the two styles, I
+cannot grant. I suppose these six galleries include a period of about
+seven hundred years; (putting the dateless antiquity of some of the
+Egyptian relics out of the question.) We begin with the heavy motionless
+forms, "looking tranquillity," which yet have often a certain dignity;
+then the stiff hard elaborate figures of the earliest Greek school, with
+their curled heads and perpendicular draperies, in some of which dawns
+the first feeling of vigour and grace, as in the AEgina marbles; the
+next is the union of grandeur and elegance; and the next is the utmost
+poetical refinement. I recollect that somewhere in Boswell's life of
+Johnson, a conversation is recorded as taking place at the table of Sir
+Joshua Reynolds; in the course of which Sir Joshua remarked, that it
+was impossible to conceive what the ancient writers meant, when they
+represented sculpture as having passed its zenith when the Apollo and
+the Laocoon were produced. None of the great scholars or artists then
+present could explain the mystery--now no longer a mystery. When Sir
+Joshua made this remark, the Elgin marbles were unknown in England.
+
+Between this range of galleries, and a corresponding range on the
+opposite side, are two immense halls, called the Fest-Saale, or banqueting
+halls, and as yet containing no sculpture. Here the painter Cornelius
+has found "ample space and verge enough" for his grand conceptions, and
+the subjects are appropriate to the general destination of the whole
+building. The frescos in the first hall, (Goetter-Saal, or hall of the
+gods,) present a magnificent view of the whole Greek mythology.
+
+Whatever may be thought of the conception and execution of certain
+parts, on minute examination the grand, yet simple arrangement of the
+whole design addresses itself to the understanding, while the splendour
+of colour, and variety of the grouping, seize on the imagination:
+certainly, when we look round, the first feeling is not critical. But
+this beautiful, progressive, and pictorial development of the old
+mythology, as it must have been the result of profound learning and
+study, ought to be considered methodically to understand all its merit;
+for instance, in the centre of the roof we have the primeval god, Eros,
+in four compartments; first, with the dolphin, representing water;
+secondly, with the eagle, representing light or fire; thirdly, with the
+peacock, representing air; and lastly, with Cerberus, representing
+earth. Disposed around these primeval elements, we have the seasons of
+the year, and the day. The spring, as Psyche, is followed by the history
+of Aurora, (the morning,) in four compartments. The summer, as Ceres,
+is followed by the noon, i. e. the history of Helios or Apollo, in four
+compartments. The autumn, as Bacchus; and then evening, expressed in the
+history of Diana. Winter, as Saturn, and the history of night, and the
+divinities which preside over it. These twenty-four compartments, of
+various forms and sizes, compose the ceiling, intermingled with ornaments
+of rich and rare device, and appropriate arabesques, combining, with
+much fancy and invention, all the classical emblems and allegories, such
+as satyrs, fauns, syrens, dryads, Graces, Furies, &c. &c.
+
+But the grand summary is reserved for the walls. On one side is
+represented the kingdom of Olympus, with Jove in his state, the assemblage
+of the gods, and the apotheosis of Psyche. The opposite side represents
+the domain of Pluto, with the infernal gods, and the story of Orpheus.
+The third side, over against the window, is the triumph of Neptune and
+Amphitrite, surrounded by the sea-gods.
+
+The figures in these three frescos are colossal, about eight feet in
+height. The colouring of the flesh is a little too red and dingy, and
+in some of the attitudes I thought that the energy was strained into
+contortion; but through the whole there is a grand poetic feeling. All
+the designs are by Peter Cornelius, executed by himself, with the aid of
+professor Zimmerman, Schlotthauer, Heinrich Hess, and a number of pupils
+and assistants.
+
+There are also along the frieze some beautiful bas-reliefs; and over the
+two doors are two alto-relievos by Schwanthaler, the one representing
+Cupid and Psyche in each others arms, the symbol of immortal love: the
+other, the re-union of Ceres and Proserpine, emblematical of eternal
+life after death. This is all I can remember, except that the painting
+of this hall occupied six years, and was finished in 1826.
+
+_Oct. 11._--A small vestibule divides the two great halls. This is
+painted with the history of Prometheus and Pandora; but, owing to the
+unavoidable disposition of the light, much of the beauty is lost.
+
+From this vestibule we enter the second great banqueting hall, or the
+Hall of the Trojans, painted like the former in fresco, and on the
+same enormous scale, but with a different distribution of the parts.
+It represents chiefly the history of those demigods and heroes who
+contended in the Trojan war. Thus, in the centre of the ceiling we have
+first the original cause of the war, the marriage of Peleus and Thetis,
+and the appearance of the goddess of Discord, with her fatal apple.
+Around this are the twelve gods who were present at the feast, modelled
+in relief by Schwanthaler. Then follow twelve compartments, containing
+the most striking scenes of the Iliad, divided and adorned by the most
+rich and fanciful arabesques, combining the exploits or histories of
+the Grecian heroes, which are not included in the Iliad. The figures in
+these compartments are the size of life. On the walls we have the three
+principal incidents of the Trojan war; first, the wrath of Achilles;
+secondly, opposite to the window, the fight for the body of Patrocles,
+and Achilles shouting to the warriors. There is wonderful energy and
+movement in this picture. The third is the destruction of Troy. The
+figure of Hecuba sitting in motionless horror and despair, with her
+dishevelled grey hair, her daughters clinging to her;--the beautiful
+attitudes of Polyxena and Cassandra; the silent remorse of Helen; the
+wild fury of the conquerors, and the vigour and splendour of the whole
+painting, render this composition exceedingly striking:--I did not
+quite like the figure of Priam. All these designs are by Cornelius, and
+executed partly by him, and partly under his direction by Zimmermann,
+Schlotthauer, and their pupils. The arabesques are by Eugene Neureuther:
+and there are two admirable and spirited bas-reliefs by Schwanthaler--one
+representing the battle of the ships, and the other the combat of Achilles
+with the river gods.
+
+The paintings in this hall were finished in 1830.
+
+We then enter the range of galleries, devoted to the later Greek, and
+the Roman sculpture. The first, corresponding in size and situation with
+the Hall of Niobe, contains nothing peculiarly interesting, except the
+famous figure of the young warrior anointing himself after the bath, and
+called the Alexander.
+
+The next gallery is the Roman Hall, about one hundred and thirty feet
+in length, and forms a glorious _coup d'oeil_. The utmost luxury of
+architectural decoration has been lavished on the ceilings; and the
+effect of the marble pavement, with the disposition of the busts,
+candelabrae, altars, as seen in perspective, is truly and tastefully
+magnificent. I particularly admired the ceiling, which is divided into
+three domes, adorned with bas-reliefs, taken from the Roman history and
+manners: these were designed by Schwanthaler. I cannot remember any
+thing remarkable in this gallery; or rather, there were too many things
+deserving of notice, for me to note all. The standing Agrippina has,
+however, dwelt on my mind; and an exceeding fine bust of Octavius Caesar,
+crowned with the oak leaves.
+
+A small room contains the sculpture in coloured marble, porphyry, and
+bronze; and the last is the hall of modern sculpture. In the centre of
+the ceiling is a phoenix, rising from its ashes, and around it the heads
+of four distinguished sculptors--Nicolo da Pisa, the restorer of the art
+in the fourteenth century; Michael Angelo, Canova, and Thorwaldson.
+
+Two of the most celebrated productions of modern sculpture are
+here:--the Paris of Canova, and the Adonis of Thorwaldson. As they are
+placed near to each other, and the aim is alike in both to exhibit the
+utmost perfection of youthful and effeminate beauty, the merits of the
+two artists were fairly brought into comparison. Thorwaldson's statue
+reminded me of the Antinous; Canova's recalled the young Apollo. I
+hardly know which to prefer as a conception; but the material and
+workmanship of the Paris pleased me most. The marble of Thorwaldson's
+statue, though faultless in purity of tint, has a coarse _gritty_ grain,
+and glitters disagreeably in certain lights, as if it were spar or
+lump-sugar; whereas the smooth close compact grain of Canova's marble,
+which is something of a creamy white, seemed to me infinitely preferable
+to the eye. This, however, is hyper-criticism: in both, the feeling is
+classically and beautifully true. The soft melancholy of the countenance
+and attitude of Adonis, as if anticipative of his early death, and the
+languid self-sufficiency of Paris, appeared to me equally admirable.
+There is also in this room a duplicate by Canova of his Venus, in the
+Pitti palace; a girl tying her sandal, by Rodolph Schadow--a pendant,
+I presume, to his charming Filatrice, now at Chatsworth; and some fine
+busts. I looked round in vain for a single specimen of English art.
+I thought it just possible that some work of Flaxman, or Chantrey, or
+Gibson, might have found its way hither--but no!--
+
+_Oct. 12._--Last night to the opera with a pleasant party; but, tired
+and over-excited with my morning at the Glyptothek, I wanted soothing,
+and was not in a humour for the noisy florid music of Wilhelm Tell.
+It is an opera which, as it becomes familiar, tires, and does not
+attach--just like some clever people I have met with. Pellegrini (not
+the Pelligrini we had in England, but a fixture here, and their best
+male singer--a fine _basso cantante_) acted Tell. I say _acted_, because
+he did not merely sing his part--he acted it, and well; so well, that
+once I felt my eyes moisten. Madame Spitzeder sang in Matilda von
+Hapsburg tolerably. Their first tenor, Bayer, I do not like; his
+intonation is defective. The decorations and dresses are beautiful. As
+for the dancing, it is not fair to say any thing about it. Unfortunately
+the first bars of the Tyrolienne brought Taglioni before my mind's eye,
+and who or what could stand the comparison? How she leapt like a stag!
+bounded like a young faun! floated like the swan-down on the air! Yet
+even Taglioni, though she makes the nearest approach to it, does not
+complete my idea of a poetical dancer; but as she improved upon Herbelet,
+we may find another to improve upon _her_. One more such _artist_--I use
+the word in the general and German sense, not in the French meaning--one
+more such artist, who should bring modesty, and sense, and feeling, into
+this lovely and most desecrated art, might do something to retrieve
+it--might introduce the necessity for dancers having heads as well as
+heels, and in time revolutionize the whole _corps de ballet_.
+
+_Wednesday._--This morning, M. Herman Stuntz, the King's chapel-master,
+called on me. I had heard of him as a fine composer, and also much of
+his opera, produced for the Scala at Milan, the Costantino il Grande.
+I was pleased to find him not a musician only, like most musicians, but
+intelligent and enthusiastic on other subjects, and with that childlike
+simplicity of mind and manner, so often combined with talent. We touched
+upon every thing from the high sublime to the deep absurd--ran round the
+whole circle of art in a sort of touch-and-go style, and his _naivete_
+and originality pleased me more and more. He said some true and
+delightful things about music; but would insist that of all languages
+the English is the most difficult to ally to musical sounds--infinitely
+worse than German. He complained of the shut mouth, the _claquement
+des dents_, and the predominance of aspirates in our pronunciation.
+I objected to the guttural sounds, and the open mouths, and the _yaw
+yaw_ of the Germans. Then followed an animated discussion on vocal sounds
+and musical expression, and we parted, I believe, mutually pleased.
+
+The father of Stuntz is a Swiss--a man of letters, an enthusiast, a
+philosopher, an artist; in short, a most extraordinary and eccentric
+character. He entirely educated his two children, of whom the son,
+Herman Stuntz, takes a high rank as a composer; and the daughter is a
+distinguished female artist, but, being nobly married, she now only
+paints pictures to give them away, and those who possess them are, with
+reason, extremely proud of the possession.
+
+In the evening, Madame Meric, _prima-donna aus London_, as the
+play-bills set forth, made her first appearance in the Gazza Ladra. She
+is engaged here for a limited time, and takes the _gast-rolles_--that
+is, she plays the first parts as a matter of course--in short, she is a
+STAR. The regular prima-donna is Madame Scheckner-Wagen. Meric has talent,
+voice, style, and unwearied industry; but she has not _genius_, neither
+is her organ first-rate. Comparisons in some cases are unjust as well as
+odious. Yet was it my fault that I remembered in the same part the syren
+Sontag, and the enchantress Malibran? Meric, besides being a fine singer,
+is an amiable woman;--married to an extravagant, dissipated husband, and
+working to provide for her child--a common fate among the women of her
+profession.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+----Sat up late reading, for the third or fourth time, a chance volume
+of Madame Roland's works. What a complete French woman! but then, what
+a mind! how large in capacity! how stored with knowledge! how strong
+in conscious truth! how finely toned! how soft, and yet how firm! What
+wonderful industry united to the quickest talent! Some things written
+at eighteen and twenty have most surprised me; some passages in the
+"Vie privee," and the "Appel," have most charmed me. She is not very
+eloquent, and I should think had not a playful or poetic fancy. There
+is an almost total want of imagery in her style; but great power,
+unaffected elegance, with a sort of negligence at times, which adds to
+its beauty. Then, to remember that all I have just read was written in
+a prison, in daily, hourly expectation of death! but _that_ excites more
+interest than surprise, for a situation of strong excitement of mind
+and passion, with external repose and solitude, must be favourable to
+this development of the faculties, where there is character as well as
+talent. Some of her disclosures are a little too _naive_. I am amused
+by the quantity of feminine vanity which is mixed up with all this
+loftiness of spirit, this real independence of soul. Madame de Stael had
+not _more_ vanity, whatever they may say; but it was less balanced by
+self-esteem--it required more sympathy. Then we have those two admirable
+women * * and * *. What exquisite feminine vanity is there! Yet, happily,
+in both instances how far removed from all ill-nature and presumption,
+and how unconsciously betrayed! I should think Joanna Baillie, among our
+great women, must be most exempt from this failing, perhaps, because, of
+all the five, she has the most profound sense of religion. Lavater said,
+that "the characteristic of _every_ woman's physiognomy was vanity."
+A phrenologist would say that it was the characteristic of every woman's
+head. How far, then, may a woman be vain with a good grace and betray
+it without ridicule? By vanity, I mean _now_, a great wish to please,
+mingled with a consciousness of the powers of pleasing, and not what
+Madame Roland describes,--"cette ambition constante, ce soin perpetuel
+d'occuper de soi, et de paraitre autre ou meilleur que l'on n'est en
+effet," for this is diseased vanity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Martius[32] lent me two pretty little volumes of "Poems, by Louis
+I. king of Bavaria," the present king--the first royal author we have
+had, I believe, since Frederic of Prussia--the best since James I. of
+Scotland. These poems are chiefly lyrical, consisting of odes, sonnets,
+epigrams. Some are addressed to the queen, others to his children, others
+to different ladies of the court, whom he is said to have particularly
+admired, and a great number were composed during his tour in Italy in
+1817. Of the merit of these poems I cannot judge; and when I appealed to
+two different critics, both accomplished men, one assured me they were
+admirable; the other shrugged up his shoulders--"Que voulez vous? c'est
+un Roi!" The earnest feeling and taste in some of these little poems
+pleased me exceedingly--of that alone I could judge: for instance, there
+is an address to the German artists, which contains the following
+beautiful lines: he is speaking of art--
+
+  "In der Stille muss es sich gestalten,
+  Wenn es kraeftig wirkend soll ersteh'n;
+  Aus dem Herzen nur kann sich entfalten,
+  Das was wahrhaft wird zum Herzen geh'n.
+
+  Ja! ihr nehmet es aus reinen Tiefen,
+  Fromm und einfach, wie die Vorweit war,
+  Weckend die Gefuehle, welche schliefen,
+  Ehrend zeugt's von Euch und immerdar.
+
+  Sklavisch an das Alte euch zu halten,
+  Eures Strebens Zweck ist dieses nicht
+  Seyd gefasst von himmlischen Gewalten,
+  Dringet rastlos zu dem hehren Licht!"
+
+
+Which may be thus literally rendered--
+
+    "To rise into vigorous, active influence, it (art) must spring
+    up and develop itself in secrecy and in silence; out of the
+    heart alone can that unfold itself which shall truly go to the
+    heart again.
+
+    "Yes! pious and simple as the old world was, ye draw it (art)
+    from the same pure depths, awakening the feelings which slumber!
+    and it shall bear honourable witness of ye--and for ever!
+
+    "Slavishly to cling to antiquity, this is not the end of your
+    labours! Be ye, therefore, upheld by heavenly power; press on,
+    and rest not, to the high and holy light!"
+
+
+Methinks this magnificent prince deserves, even more than his ancestor,
+Maximilian I., to be styled the Lorenzo de' Medici of Bavaria. The power
+to patronize, the sentiment to feel, the genius to celebrate art, are
+rarely united, even in individuals. He must be a noble being--a genius
+_born in the purple_, on whose laurels there rests not a bloodstain,
+perhaps not even a tear!
+
+This is a holiday. I was sitting at my window, translating some of these
+poems, when I saw a crowd round the doors of the new palace; for it is
+a day of public admission. Curiosity tempted me to join this crowd;--no
+sooner thought than done. I had M. de Klenze's general order for
+admittance in my pocket-book, but wished to see how this was managed,
+and mingled with the crowd, which was waiting to be admitted _en masse_.
+I was at once recognized as a stranger, and every one with simple
+civility made way for me. Groups of about twenty or thirty people were
+admitted at a time, at intervals of a quarter of an hour, and each group
+placed under the guidance of one of the workmen as cicerone. He led
+them through the unfinished apartments, explaining to his open-mouthed
+auditors the destination of each room, the subjects of the pictures on
+the walls and ceilings, &c. &c. There were peasants from the south,
+in their singular dresses, mechanics and girls of Munich, soldiers,
+travelling students. I was much amused. While the cicerone held
+forth, some merely wondered with foolish faces, some admired, some
+looked intelligent, and asked various questions, which were readily
+answered--all seemed pleased. Every thing was done in order: two
+groups were never in the same apartment; but as one went out, another
+entered. Thus many hundreds of these poor people were gratified in the
+course of the day. It seemed to me a wise as well as benevolent policy
+in the king thus to appeal to the sympathy, and gratify the pride, of
+his subjects of all classes, by allowing them--inviting them, to take an
+interest in his magnificent undertakings, to consider them _national_
+as well as royal. I am informed that these works are carried on without
+any demands on the Staatskasse, (the public treasury,) and without
+any additional taxes: so far from it, that the Bavarian House of
+Representatives curtailed the supplies by 300,000 florins only last
+year, and refused the king an addition to the civil list, which he had
+requested for the travelling expenses of two of his sons. The king is
+said to be economical in the _extreme_ in his domestic expenses, and not
+very generous in money to those around him--unlike his open-hearted,
+open-handed father, Max-Joseph; in short, there are grumblers here as
+elsewhere, but strangers and posterity will not sympathize with them.
+
+This is the fourth time I have seen this splendid and truly royal
+palace, but will make no memoranda till I have gone over the whole with
+Leo von Klenze. He has promised to be my cicerone himself, and I feel
+the full value of the compliment. Count V---- told me last night, that
+he (De Klenze) has made for this building alone upwards of seven hundred
+drawings and designs with his own hand.
+
+_Oct. 13._--Called on my English friends, the C * * s, and found them
+pleasantly settled in a beautiful furnished lodging near the Hofgarten,
+for which they pay twenty-four florins (or about two pounds) a month.
+We had some conversation about music, (they are all musicians,) and the
+opera, and Malibran, whom they have lately seen in Italy; and Pasta,
+whom they had visited at Como; and they confirmed what Mr. J. M. Stuntz
+and M. K. had all told me of her benevolence and excellent character.
+I could not find that any new genius had arisen in Italy to share the
+glory of our three queens of the lyrical drama,--Pasta, Malibran, and
+Schroeder Devrient. Other singers have more or less talent and feeling,
+more or less compass of voice, facility, or agility; but these three
+women possess _genius_, and stamp on every thing they do their own
+individual character. Of the three, Pasta is the grandest and most
+finished artist; Malibran the most versatile in power and passion; while
+Schroeder Devrient has that energy of heart and soul--that capacity for
+exciting, and being excited, which gives her such unbounded command
+over the feelings and senses of her audience.[33] So far we were agreed;
+but as the conversation went on, I was doomed to listen to a torrent
+of commonplace and sarcastic criticism on the private habits of these
+and other women of the same profession: one was accused of vulgarity,
+another of bad temper, and another of violence and caprice: one was
+suspected of a _penchant_ for porter, another had been heard to swear,
+or--something very like it. Even pretty lady-like Sontag was reproached
+with some trifling breach of mere conventional manner,--she had used her
+fingers where she should have taken a spoon, or some such nonsense.
+My God! to think of the situation of these women! and then to look
+upon _those_ women, who, fenced in from infancy by all the restraints,
+the refinements, the comforts, the precepts of good society,--the one
+arranging a new cap, the other embroidering a purse, the third reading
+a novel, all satisfied with petty occupations and amusements, "far, far
+removed from want and grief and fear,"--now sitting in judgment, and
+passing sentence of excommunication on others of their sex, who have
+been steeped in excitement from childhood, their nerves for ever in a
+state of tension between severest application and maddening flattery;
+cast on the world without chart or compass--with energies misdirected,
+passions uncontrolled, and all the inflammable and imaginative part of
+their being cultivated into excess as a part of their profession--of
+their material! O when will there be charity in the world? When will
+human beings, women especially, show mercy and justice to each other,
+and not judge of results, without a reference to causes? and when will
+reflection upon these causes lead to their removal? They are evils which
+press upon few, but are reflected on many, inasmuch as they degrade art
+and the pursuit of art;--but all can sneer, and few can think.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I begin at length to feel my way among the pictures here. Hitherto
+I have been bewildered. I have lounged away morning after morning
+at the gallery of the Hofgarten, at Schleissheim, and at the Duc
+de Leuchtenberg's; and returned home with dazzled eyes and a mind
+overflowing, like one "oppressed with wealth, and with abundance
+sad," unable to recall or to methodize my own impressions.
+
+Professor Zimmermann tells me that the king of Bavaria possesses
+upwards of three thousand pictures: of these about seventeen hundred
+are at Schleissheim; nine hundred in the Munich gallery; and the rest
+distributed through various palaces. The national gallery, or Pinakothek,
+which is now building under the direction of Leo von Klenze, is destined
+to contain a selection from these multifarious treasures, of which the
+present arrangement is only temporary.
+
+The king of Bavaria unites in his own person the three branches of
+the House of Wittelsbach: the palatines of the Rhine, the dukes of
+Deuxponts, and the electors of Bavaria, all sovereign houses, and
+descended from Otto von Wittelsbach, who received the investiture of the
+dukedom of Bavaria in 1180. Thus it is that the celebrated gallery once
+at Dusseldorf, formed under the auspices of the elector John William;
+the various collections at Manheim, Deuxponts, and Heidelberg, are now
+concentrated at Munich, where, from the days of Duke Albert V. (1550)
+up to the present time, works of art have been gradually accumulated
+by successive princes.
+
+Somebody calls the gallery at Munich, the court of Rubens; and Sir
+Joshua Reynolds says that no one should judge of Rubens who had not
+studied him at Antwerp and Dusseldorf. I begin to feel the truth of
+this. My devoted worship of the Italian school of art rendered me
+long--I will not say _blind_ to the merits of the Flemish painters--for
+that were to be "sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing!" but, in
+truth, without that full feeling of their power which I have since
+acquired.
+
+Certainly we have in these days mean ideas about painting--mean and
+false ideas! It has become a mere object of luxury and connoisseurship,
+or _virtu_: unless it be addressed to our personal vanity, or to the
+puerile taste for ornament, show, furniture,--it is nothing. The noble
+art which was once recognized as the priestess of nature, as a great
+moral power capable of acting on the senses and the imagination of
+assembled human beings--as such applied by the lawgivers of Greece, and
+by the clergy of the Roman Catholic church,--how is it now vulgarized
+in its objects! how narrowed in its application! And if it be said,
+that in the present state of society, in these calculating, money-making,
+political, intellectual times, we are acted upon by far different
+influences, rendering us infinitely less sensible to the power of
+painting, then I think it is _not true_, and that the cultivated
+susceptibility to other moral or poetical excitements--as politics or
+literature--does not render us less sensible to the moral influence
+of painting; on the contrary: but she has fallen from her high estate,
+and there are none to raise her. The public--the national spirit, is
+wanting; individual patronage is confined, is misdirected, is arbitrary,
+demanding of the artist any thing rather than the highest and purest
+intellectual application of his art, and affording nor space nor
+opportunity for him to address himself to the grand universal passions,
+principles, and interests of human nature! Suppose a Michael Angelo
+to be born to us in England: we should not, perhaps, set him to make
+a statue of snow, but where or how would his gigantic genius, which
+revelled in the great deeps of passion and imagination, find scope for
+action? He would struggle and gasp like a stranded Leviathan!
+
+But this is digressing: the question is, may not the moral effect of
+painting be still counted on, if the painter be himself imbued with the
+right spirit?[34]
+
+There is, in the academy at Antwerp, a picture by Rubens, which represents
+St. Theresa kneeling before Christ, and interceding for the souls in
+purgatory. The treatment of the subject is exceedingly simple; the
+upper part of the picture is occupied by the Redeemer, with his usual
+attributes, and the saint, habited as a nun. In the lower part of the
+picture, instead of a confused mob of tormented souls, and flames, and
+devils with pitchforks, the painter has represented a few heads as if
+rising from below. I remember those of Adam, Eve, and Mary Magdalene. I
+remember--and never shall forget--the expression of each! The extremity
+of misery in the countenance of Adam; the averted, disconsolate, repentant
+wretchedness of Eve, who hides her face in her hair; the mixture of agony,
+supplication, hope, in the face of the Magdalene, while a cherub of pity
+extends his hand to her, as if to aid her to rise, and at the same
+time turns an imploring look towards the Saviour. As I gazed upon this
+picture, a feeling sank deep into my heart, which did not pass away with
+the tears it made to flow, but has ever since remained there, and has
+become an abiding principle of action. This is only one instance out of
+many, of the _moral_ effect which has been produced by painting.
+
+To me it is amusing, and it cannot but be interesting and instructive to
+the philosopher and artist, to observe how various people, uninitiated
+into any of the technicalities of art, unable to appreciate the amount
+of difficulties overcome, are affected by pictures and sculpture. But
+in forming our judgment, our taste in art, it is unsafe to listen to
+opinions springing from this vague kind of enthusiasm; for in painting,
+as in music--"just as the soul is pitched, the _eye_ is pleased."
+
+I amuse myself in the gallery here with watching the countenances of
+those who look at the pictures. I see that the uneducated eye is caught
+by subjects in which the individual mind sympathizes, and the educated
+taste seeks abstract excellence. Which has the most enjoyment? The last,
+I think. Sensibility, imagination, and quick perception of form and
+colour, are not alone necessary to feel a work of art; there must be the
+power of association; the mind trained to habitual sympathy with the
+beautiful and the good; the knowledge of the meaning, and the
+comprehension of the object of the artist.
+
+In the gallery here there are eighty-eight pictures of Rubens--some
+among the very finest he ever painted; for instance, that splendid
+picture, Castor and Pollux carrying off the daughters of Leucippus, so
+full of rich life and movement; the destruction of Sennacherib's host;
+Rubens and his wife, full lengths, seated in a garden; that wonderful
+picture of the defeat of the Amazons; the meeting of Jacob and Laban;
+the picture of the Earl of Arundel and his wife, with other figures,
+full lengths;[35] and a series of the designs for the large paintings
+of the history of Marie de' Medici, now in the Louvre. His group of boys
+with fruits and flowers, exhibits the richest, loveliest combination
+of colours ever presented to the eye; and on that wonderful picture of
+the fallen (or rather _falling_) angels, he has lavished such endless
+variety of form, attitude, and expression, that it would take a day to
+study it. It is not a large picture: the eye, or rather the imagination,
+easily takes in the general effect of tumult, horror, destruction, but
+the understanding dwells on the detail with still increasing astonishment
+and admiration. These are a few that struck me, but it is quite in vain
+to attempt to particularize.
+
+One may begin by disliking Rubens in general, (I think I did,) but one
+must end by standing before him in ecstacy and wonder. It is true, that
+always luxuriant, he is often gross and sensual--he can sometimes be
+brutally so. His bacchanalian scenes are not like those of Poussin,
+classical, godlike debauchery, but the abandoned drunken revelry of
+animals--the very sublime of brute licentiousness; and painted with a
+breadth of style, a magnificent luxuriance of colour, which renders them
+more revolting. The _physique_ predominates in all his pictures, and not
+only to grossness, even to ferocity. His picture here of the slaughter
+of the Innocents, makes me sick--it has absolutely polluted my
+imagination. Surely this is not the vocation of high art.--And as for
+his martyrdoms--they are worse than Spagnoletto's.
+
+For all this, he is the TITAN of painting: his creations are "of the earth
+and earthy," but he has called down fire and light from heaven, wherewith
+to animate and to illumine them.
+
+Rubens is just such a painter as Dryden is a poet, and _vice versa_:
+his women are just like Dryden's women, gross, exaggerated, unrefined
+animals: his men, like Dryden's men, grand, thinking, acting animals.
+Like Dryden, he could clothe his genius in thunder, dip his pencil in
+the lightning and the sunbeams of heaven, and rush fearlessly upon a
+subject which others had trembled to approach. In both we see a singular
+and extraordinary combination of the plainest, coarsest realities of
+life, with the loftiest imagery, the most luxurious tints of poetry.
+Both had the same passion for allegory, and managed it with equal
+success. "The thoughts that breathe and words that burn" of Dryden, may
+be compared to the living, moving forms, the glowing, melting, dazzling
+hues of Rubens, under whose pencil
+
+                "Desires and adorations,
+  Winged persuasions and wild destinies,
+  Splendours, and glooms, and glimmering incarnations
+  Of hopes, and fears, and twilight fantasies,--"
+
+
+took form and being--became palpable existences: and yet with all this
+inventive power, this love of allegorical fiction, it is _life_, the
+spirit of animal life, diffused through and over their works; it is the
+blending of the plain reasoning with splendid creative powers;--of
+wonderful fertility of conception with more wonderful facility of
+execution; it is the combination of truth, and grandeur, and masculine
+vigour, with a general coarseness of taste, which may be said to
+characterise both these great men. Neither are, or can be, favourites
+of the women, for the same reasons.
+
+There must have been something analogous in the genius of Rubens and
+Titian. The distinction was of climate and country. They appear to
+have looked at nature under the same aspect, but it was a different
+nature,--the difference between Flanders and Venice. They were both
+painters of flesh and blood: by nature, poets; by conformation,
+colourists; by temperament and education, magnificent spirits, scholars,
+and gentlemen, lovers of pleasure and of fame. The superior sentiment
+and grace, the refinement and elevation of Titian he owed to the poetical
+and chivalrous spirit of his age and country. The delicacy of taste
+which reigned in the Italian literature of that period influenced the
+arts of design. As to the colouring--we see in the pictures of Rubens
+the broad daylight effects of a northern climate, and in those of
+Titian, the burning fervid sun of a southern clime, necessarily modified
+by shade, before the objects could be seen: hence the difference between
+the _glow_ of Rubens, and the _glow_ of Titian: the first "i' the colours
+of the rainbow lived," and the other bathed himself in the evening sky;
+the one dazzles, the other warms. I can bring before my fancy at this
+moment, the Helen Forman of Rubens, and Titian's "La Manto;" the "man
+with a hawk" of Rubens, and Titian's "Falconer;" can any thing in heaven
+or earth be more opposed? Yet in all alike, is it not the intense feeling
+of life and individual nature which charms, which fixes us? I know not
+which I admire most; but I adore Titian--his men are all made for power,
+and his women for love.
+
+And Rembrandt--king of shadows!
+
+                ----Earth-born
+  And sky-engendered--son of mysteries!
+
+
+was not he a poet? He reminds me often of the Prince Sorcerer, nurtured
+"in the cave of Domdaniel, under the roots of the sea."[36] Such an
+enchanted "den of darkness" was his mill and its skylight to him;
+and there, magician-like, he brooded over half-seen forms, and his
+imagination framed strange spells out of elemental light and shade.
+Thence he brought his unearthly shadows; his dreamy splendours; his
+supernatural gleams; his gems flashing and sparkling with internal
+light; his lustrous glooms; his wreaths of flaming and embossed gold;
+his wicked wizard-like heads--turbaned, wrinkled, seared, dusky; pale
+with forbidden studies--solemn with thoughtful pain--keen with the
+hunger of avarice--and furrowed with an eternity of years! I have seen
+pictures of his in which the shadowy background is absolutely peopled
+with life. At first all seems palpable darkness, apparent vacancy; but
+figure after figure emerges--another and another; they glide into view,
+they take shape and colour, as if they grew out of the canvass even
+while we gaze; we rub our eyes, and wonder whether it be the painter's
+work or our own fancy!
+
+Of all the great painters Rembrandt is perhaps least understood; the
+admiration bestowed on him, the enormous prices given for his pictures,
+is in general a fashion--a mere matter of convention--like the price of
+a diamond. To feel Rembrandt truly, it is not enough to be an artist or
+an amateur picture-fancier--one should be something of a poet too.
+
+There are nineteen of his pictures here; of these "Jesus teaching the
+doctors in the temple," though a small picture, impressed me with
+awe,--the portraits of the painter Flinck and his wife, with wonder.
+All are ill-hung, with their backs against the light--for them the worst
+possible situation.
+
+Van Dyck is here in all his glory: there are thirty-nine of his pictures.
+The celebrated full-length, "the burgomaster's wife in black," so often
+engraved, does not equal, in its inexpressible, unobtrusive elegance,
+the "Lady Wharton," at Devonshire House.[37] Then we have Wallenstein
+with his ample kingly brow; fierce Tilly; the head of Snyders; the lovely
+head of the painter's wife, Maria Ruthven,--sweet-looking, delicate,
+golden-haired, and holding the theorbo, (she excelled in music, I
+believe,) and virgins, holy families, and other scriptural subjects.
+His famous picture of Susanna does not strike me much.
+
+The four apostles of Albert Durer--wonderful! In expression, in calm
+religious majesty, in suavity of pencilling, and the grand, pure style
+of the heads and drapery, quite like Raffaelle. I compared, yesterday,
+the three portraits--that of Raffaelle, by himself; (the famous head
+once in the Altaviti palace, and engraved by Morghen;) Albert Durer, by
+himself; and Giorgione, by himself. Raffaelle is the least handsome, and
+rather disappointed me; the eyes, in particular, rather project, and
+have an expression which is not pleasing; the mouth and the brow are
+full of power and passion. Albert Durer is beautiful, like the old
+heads of our Saviour; and the predominant expression is calm, dignified,
+intellectual, with a tinge of melancholy. This picture was painted
+at the age of twenty-eight: he was then suffering from that bitter
+domestic curse, a shrewish, avaricious wife, who finally broke his heart.
+Giorgione is not handsome, but it is a sublime head, with such a large
+intellectual development, such a profound expression of sentiment!
+Giorgione died of a faithless mistress, as Albert Durer died of a
+scolding wife.[38]
+
+By Paris Bordone, of Trevigi, there is a head of a Venetian lady, in
+a dress of crimson velvet, with dark splendid eyes which tell a whole
+history. By Murillo, there are eight pictures--not one in his most
+elevated style, but all perfect miracles of painting and of nature.
+There are thirty-three pictures of Vander Werff, a number sufficient to
+make one's blood run cold. One, a Magdalene, is of the size of life; the
+only large picture by this elegant, elaborate, soulless painter I ever
+saw: he is to me detestable.
+
+By Joseph Vernet there are two delicious landscapes, a morning and an
+evening. I cannot farther particularize; but there are specimens of
+almost every known painter; those, however, of Titian, Correggio, Julio
+Romano, and Nicolo Poussin, are very few and not of a very high class,
+while those of the early German painters, and the Dutch, and the Flemish
+schools, are first-rate.
+
+There is one English picture--Wilkie's "Opening of the Will:" it is very
+much admired here, and looked upon as a sort of curiosity. I wish the
+artists of the two countries were better known to each other: both would
+benefit by such an intercourse.
+
+At the palace of Schleissheim[39] there are nearly two thousand pictures:
+of these some hundreds are positively _bad_; some hundreds are curious
+and valuable, as illustrating the history and progress of art; some few
+are really and intrinsically admirable.
+
+But the grand attraction here is the far-famed Boisseree Gallery, which
+is arranged at Schleissheim, until the Pinakothek is ready for its
+reception. This is the collection about which so many volumes have been
+written, and which has excited such a general enthusiasm throughout
+Germany. This enthusiasm, as a fashion, a mania, is beginning to subside,
+but the impress it has left upon art, and the tone it has given to the
+pursuit, the feeling of art, will not so soon pass away. The gallery
+derives its name from two brothers, Sulpitz and Melchior Boisseree,[40]
+who, with a friend (Bertram) were employed for many years in collecting
+from various convents, and old churches, and obscure collections of
+family relics, the productions of the early painters of Germany, from
+William of Cologne, called by the Germans "Meister Wilhelm," down to
+Albert Durer and Holbein.
+
+The productions of the Greek or Byzantine painters found their way
+into Germany, as into Italy, in the thirteenth century, and Wilhelm of
+Cologne appeared to have been the Cimabue of the north--the founder of
+that school of painting called the _Byzantine-Niederrheinische_, or
+Flemish school, and the precursor of Rubens, as Cimabue was the
+precursor of Michael Angelo.
+
+Out of this stiff, and rude, and barbarous style of art, arose and
+spread the Alt-Deutsche, or Gothic school of painting, which produced
+successively, Van Eyck, (1370,) Hemling, Wohlgemuth,[41] Martin Schoen,
+Mabuse, Johan Schoreel, Lucas Kranach, Kulmbach, Albert Altorffer, Hans
+Asper, Johan von Mechlem, Behem, Albert Durer, and the two Holbeins. I
+mention here only those artists whose pictures fixed my attention; there
+are many others, and many pictures by unknown authors. Albert Durer was
+born exactly one hundred years after Van Eyck.
+
+The Boisseree gallery contains about three hundred and fifty pictures;
+but I did not count them; and no official catalogue has yet been
+published. The subjects are generally sacred; the figures are heads of
+saints, and scenes from Scripture. A few are portraits; and there are
+a few, but very few, subjects from profane history. The painters whose
+works I at once distinguished from all others, were Van Eyck, Johan
+Schoreel, Hemling, and Lucas Kranach. I can truly say that the two
+pictures of Van Eyck, representing St. Luke painting the portrait of
+the Virgin, and the offering of the three kings; and that of Johan
+Schoreel, representing the death of the Virgin Mary, perfectly amazed
+me. I remember also several wondrous heads by Lucas Kranach; one by
+Behem, called, I know not why, "Helena:" and a picture of Christ and the
+little children, differing from all the rest in style, with something of
+the Italian grace of drawing, and suavity of colour. The artist, Sedlar,
+had studied in Lombardy, probably under Correggio; (one of the children
+certainly might call Correggio father.) The date on this extraordinary
+production is 1530. Of the painter I know nothing. The general and
+striking faults, or rather deficiencies of the old German school of
+art, are easily enumerated. The most flagrant violations of taste and
+costume,[42] bad drawing of the figure and extremities, faulty perspective;
+stiff, hard meagre composition, negligence or ignorance of all effect of
+chiaro-scuro. But what, then, is the secret of the interest which these
+old painters inspire, of the enthusiasm they excite, even in these
+cultivated days? It arises from a perception of the _mind_ they brought
+to bear upon their subjects, the simplicity and integrity of feeling
+with which they worked, and the elaborate marvellous beauty of the
+execution of parts. I could give no idea in words of the intense nature
+and expression in some of the heads, of the grand feeling united to the
+most finished delicacy in the conception and painting of _countenance_,
+of the dazzling splendour of colouring in the draperies, and the richness
+of fancy in the ornaments and accessories.
+
+But I _do_ fear that the just admiration excited by this kind of
+excellence, and a great deal of national enthusiasm, has misled the
+modern German artists to a false, at least an exaggerated estimate, and
+an injudicious imitation, of their favourite models. It has produced or
+encouraged that general hardness of manner, that tendency to violent
+colour, and high glazy finish, which interfere too often with the
+beauty, and feeling, and effect of their compositions, at least in the
+eyes of those who are accustomed to the free broad style of English
+art.[43]
+
+_Thursday Evening._--At the theatre. Schiller's "Braut von Messina."
+This was the first time I had ever seen the tragic choruses brought on
+the stage, in the genuine style of the Greek drama; and the deep sonorous
+voice and measured recitation (I could almost say _recitative_) of
+Eslair, who was at the head of the chorus of Don Manuel--the emphatic
+lines being repeated or echoed by his followers--as well as the peculiar
+style of the whole representation, impressed me with a kind of solemn
+terror. It was wholly different from any thing I had ever witnessed,
+and was rather like a poem declaimed on the stage, than what we are
+accustomed to call a play. I was fortunate in seeing Madame Schroeder
+in Donna Isabella, for she does not often perform, and it is one of
+the finest parts of this grand actress. Don Manuel and Don Caesar were
+played by Forst and Schunke--both were young, very well looking, and
+good actors. Beatrice was played by Madll. Shoeller. The costumes were
+beautiful, and all the arrangements of the stage contrived with the most
+poetical effect. One scene in the first act, where Donna Isabella stands
+between her two sons, a hand on the shoulder of each, beseeching them to
+be reconciled; while they remain silent, turning from each other with
+folded arms, and dark averted faces;--the chorusses drawn up on each
+side, all dressed alike, all precisely in the same attitude, leaning on
+their shields, with lowering looks fixed on the group in the centre, was
+admirably managed; and, from the effect that it produced, made me feel
+that uniformity may be one element of the sublime. Afterwards, a very
+lively soiree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Friday._--The Hofgarten at Munich is a square, planted with trees, and
+gravelled, and serving as a public promenade. On one side is the royal
+palace; opposite to it, the picture gallery; on the east, the king's
+riding house, and on the west, a long arcade, open towards the garden
+which connects the palace and the picture gallery; under this arcade are
+shops, cafes, restaurateurs, &c. as in the _Palais Royal_ at Paris.
+
+But what distinguishes this arcade from all others, is the peculiar style
+of decoration. It is painted in fresco by the young artists who studied
+under Cornelius. There is, first, a series of sixteen compartments, about
+eleven feet in length, containing subjects from the history of Bavaria.
+They are all by various artists, and of course of different degrees of
+merit, generally better in the composition than the painting, but some
+have great vigour and animation in both respects.
+
+For instance, Otho von Wittelsbach receiving from the emperor, Frederic
+Barbarossa, the investiture of the dukedom of Bavaria in 1180, painted
+by Zimmermann.
+
+The marriage of Otho the Illustrious, to Agnes, Countess Palatine of the
+Rhine, in 1225, painted by my friend, Wilhelm Roeckel, of Schleissheim,
+to whom I am indebted for many polite attentions.
+
+The engagement between Louis the Severe, of Bavaria, and the fierce
+fiery Ottocar, king of Bohemia, upon the bridge at Muehldorf, in 1258,
+painted by Stuermer of Berlin. This is very animated and terrific. I
+think the artist had Rubens' defeat of the Amazons full in his mind.
+
+The victory of the emperor, Louis of Bavaria, over Frederic of Austria,
+his competitor for the empire in 1322, painted by Hermann of Dresden.
+
+The storming of Godesberg, when the unfortunate Archbishop Gerard, and
+Agnes of Mansfield had taken refuge there in 1583,[44] painted by Gassen
+of Coblentz.
+
+Maximilian I. in 1623, invested with the forfeit electorate of the
+Palatine Frederic V.[45] painted by Eberle of Dusseldorf.
+
+Maximilian Joseph I. father of the present king, bestowing on his people
+a new constitution and representative government in 1818, painted by
+Monten of Dusseldorf.
+
+These have dwelt on my memory. Over all the pictures, the name of the
+subject and the date are inscribed in large gold letters, so that those
+who walk may read. The costumes and manners of each epoch have been
+attended to with the most scrupulous accuracy; and I see every day
+groups of soldiers, and of the common people, with their children,
+standing before these paintings, spelling the titles, and discussing
+the various subjects represented. The further end of the arcade is
+painted with a series of Italian scenes, selected by the king after
+his return from Italy, and executed by Rottmann of Heidelberg, a young
+landscape-painter of great merit, as De Klenze assures me, and he is
+a judge of _genius_. Under each picture is a distich, composed by the
+king himself. These are in distemper, I believe: freely, but rather
+hastily executed, and cold and ineffective in colour, perhaps the fault
+of the vehicle. The ceilings and pillars are also gaily painted with
+arabesques, and other ornaments; and at the upper end there is a grand
+seated figure, looking magnificent and contemplative, and calling
+herself BAVARIA. This is well painted by Kaulbach.
+
+I walk through these arcades once or twice every day, as I have several
+friends lodged over them; and can seldom arrive at the end without
+pausing two or three times.
+
+I learn that the king's passion for building, and the forced
+encouragement given to the enlargement and decoration of his capital,
+has been carried to an excess, and, like all extremes, has proved
+mischievous, at least for the time. He has rendered it too much a
+fashion among his subjects, who are suffering from rash speculations
+of this kind. Many beautiful edifices in the Ludwig's Strasse, and the
+neighbourhood of the Maximilian's Platz, and the Karoline's Platz,
+remain untenanted. A suite of beautiful unfurnished apartments, and even
+a pretty house in the finest part of Munich may be had for a trifle.
+Some of these new houses are enormous. Madame M. told me that she has
+her whole establishment on one floor, but then she has twenty-three
+rooms.
+
+Though the country round Munich is flat and ugly, a few hours' journey
+brings us into the very midst of the Tyrolian Alps. In June or July all
+the people fly to the mountains, and baths, and lakes in South Bavaria,
+and rusticate among the most glorious scenery in the world. "Come to
+us," said my friend, Luise K----; "come to us in the summer months,
+_and we will play at Arcadia_."
+
+And truly, when I listened to her description of her mountain life, and
+all its tranquil, primitive pleasures, and all the beauty and grandeur
+which lie beyond that giant-barrier which lifts itself against the
+evening sky, and when I looked into those clear affectionate eyes--"dieser
+Blick voll Treu und Gute," and beheld the expression of a settled
+happiness, the light of a heart at peace with itself and all the world,
+reflected on the countenances of her children--a recollection of the
+unquiet destiny which drives me in an opposite direction came over me--
+
+  Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
+  Upon a wheel of fire, which mine own tears
+  Do scald like molten lead.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+IBOTSON & PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDA
+
+_To Page 179, Vol._ i.
+
+
+Therese Huber, who died in 1829, was a woman every way remarkable, in
+her domestic history, in her position, her writings, and her character.
+She was employed by Cotta to edit his famous "Morgenblatt," in her time
+the most esteemed and the most influential of the literary periodicals
+of Germany, and which she conducted for many years with extraordinary
+energy and success; she wrote also several romances, published under her
+husband's name, and long attributed to him even by her most intimate
+friends. Therese Huber is distinguished by a profound knowledge of her
+own sex, and by her just and admirable views of our destination and
+situation in society. Some of her private letters have been published,
+since her death, with those of Caroline Woltmann, in the "Deutsche
+Briefe," and they place in yet stronger light the fine original powers
+of this gifted woman.
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+  Page   2, line 16, _for_ great, _read_ green.
+        43  --   14, _for_ altamen, _read_ attamen.
+        46  --    5, omit _patrician_.
+        47  --    2, _for_ 'vengeful, _read_ revengeful.
+        95  --    2, _for_ Haitsinger, _read_ Haitzinger.
+        95  --   12, _for_ tiefe, _read_ tief.
+        95  --   21, _for_ Becher, _read_ Becker.
+       147  --    2, in the note, _for_ Hienrich, _read_ Heinrich.
+       147  --    3, in the note, _for_ Wladimer, _read_ Wladimir.
+       181  --    1, _for_ first, _read_ second.
+       184  --   17, _for_ Erden, _read_ Erben.
+       193  --    5, _for_ wsaeche, _read_ waesche.
+       197  --   14, _after_ since, _insert_ "High-born Hoel."
+       211  --    9, _for_ Elangau, _read_ Erlangen.
+       230  --   10, _for_ liebe, _read_ lieber.
+       230  --   11, _for_ schrecklich Schichsal, _read_ schreckliches
+                     Schicksal.
+       230  --   13, _for_ grab, _read_ Grab.
+       252  --   19, _for_ twelve, _read_ eight.
+       270  --   16, _for_ Neurather, _read_ Neureuther.
+       291  --    1, in the note, _for_ par, _read_ pas; and _for_ pas
+                     _read_ par.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+[Footnote 1: In Goethe's Iphigenia.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Over another iron door was writt,
+
+  _Be not too bold._
+
+FAIRY QUEEN, Book iii. Canto XI.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See Wordsworth's Poems.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Two celebrated antique gems which adorn the relics of the
+Three Kings.]
+
+[Footnote 5: It is nearly twice the size of the famous and well known
+Medusa Rondinelli, now in the Glyptothek at Munich.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Professor Wallraff died on the 18th of March, 1824.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Amongst others, Jean Paul, in the "Heidelberger Jahrbuecher
+der Literatur," 1815.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Since the above passage was written, Mrs. Austin has
+favoured me with the following note: "Goethe admired, but did not like,
+still less esteem, Madame de Stael. He begins a sentence about her
+thus--'As she had no idea what duty meant,' &c.
+
+"However, after relating a scene which took place at Weimar, he adds,
+'Whatever we may say or think of her, her visit was certainly followed
+by very important results. Her work upon Germany, which owed its rise
+to social conversations, is to be regarded as a mighty engine which at
+once made a wide breach in that Chinese wall of antiquated prejudices,
+which divided us from France; so that the people across the Rhine,
+and afterwards those across the channel, at length came to a nearer
+knowledge of us; whence we may look to obtain a living influence over
+the distant west. Let us, therefore, bless that conflict of national
+peculiarities which annoyed us at the time, and seemed by no means
+profitable.'"--_Tag- und Jahres Hefte_, vol. 31, last edit.
+
+To that WOMAN who had sufficient strength of mind to break through a
+"Chinese wall of antiquated prejudices," surely something may be
+forgiven.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Johanna Schopenhauer, well known in Germany for her
+romances and her works on art. Her little book, "Johan van Eyk und seine
+Nachfolger," has become the manual of those who study the old German
+schools of painting.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Or Gebhard, for so the name is spelt in the German
+histories.]
+
+[Footnote 11: For the story of Archbishop Gebhard and Agnes de Mansfeld,
+see Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War, and Coxe's History of
+the House of Austria.]
+
+[Footnote 12: The gardens and plantations round the castle are a
+favourite promenade of the citizens of Heidelberg, and there are in
+summer bands of music, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 13: When Gustavus Adolphus took Mayence, during the same
+war, he presented the whole of the valuable library to his chancellor,
+Oxenstiern; the chancellor sent it to Sweden, intending to bestow it on
+one of the colleges; but the vessel in which it was embarked foundered
+in the Baltic sea, and the whole went to the bottom.]
+
+[Footnote 14: M. Passavant is a landscape-painter of Frankfort, an
+intelligent, accomplished man, and one of the few German artists who
+had a tolerably correct idea of the state of art in England. He is the
+author of "Kunstreise durch England und Belgium."]
+
+[Footnote 15: She was cotemporary with Cleopatra, (B. C. 33,) and was
+particularly celebrated for her busts in ivory. The Romans raised a
+statue to her honour, which was in the Guistiniani collection.--V. PLINY.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Lucas Kranach (1472) was one of the most celebrated of the
+old German painters; from a principle of gratitude and attachment, he
+shared the imprisonment of the elector John Frederic, during five years.]
+
+[Footnote 17: In September, 1833.]
+
+[Footnote 18: His own expression.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Dannecker has been ennobled; his proper titles run
+thus--Johan Heinrich von Dannecker, Hofrath, (court counsellor,) knight
+of the orders of the Wurtemburg crown, and of Wladimir, and professor
+of sculpture at Stuttgardt.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Rauch is knight of the Red Eagle, and member of the
+senate.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Christian Rauch was born in 1777, and Christian Frederic
+Tieck in 1776.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Formerly Madame Jageman, the principal actress of the
+theatre at Weimar. Her talents were developed under the auspices of
+Goethe and Schiller. She was the original Thekla of the Wallenstein, and
+the original Princess Leonora of the Tasso. In these two characters she
+has never yet been equalled. The quietness, amounting to passiveness, in
+the _external_ delineation of the Princess in Tasso, affords so little
+_material_ for the stage, that Madame Wolff, then the first actress,
+preferred the character of Leonora Sanvitale, and Madame Jageman was
+supposed to derogate in accepting that of the Princess. Such is the
+consummate, but evanescent delicacy of the conception, that Goethe never
+expected to see it developed on the stage; and at the rehearsal he threw
+himself back in his chair, and shut his eyes, that the image which lived
+in his imagination might not be profaned by any tasteless exaggeration
+of action or expression. He soon opened them, however, and before the
+rehearsal was finished, started off the chair, and nearly embraced the
+actress. She looked and felt the part as only a woman of exceeding
+taste and delicacy would have done; the very tone of her mind, and the
+character of her beauty, fitted her to represent the fair, gentle,
+fragile, but dignified Leonora.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Lessing.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Characteristics of Goethe, vol. i. p. 29.]
+
+[Footnote 25: I believe it was in allusion to this distinction, and her
+own noble birth, that her father-in-law used to call her playfully,
+"_die kleine Ahnfrau_," (the little ancestress.)]
+
+[Footnote 26: M. Besle, otherwise the Comte de Stendhal, and, I believe,
+he has half a dozen other _aliases_.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Alfred Tennyson.]
+
+[Footnote 28: "Thro' Erin's isle, to sport awhile," &c.]
+
+[Footnote 29: In the German maps, Zweibruecken; the capital of those
+provinces of the kingdom of Bavaria, which lie on the left bank of
+the Rhine.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The entire grouping of these figures is from the design
+of Mr. Robert Cockerell, one of the original discoverers, who in
+ascertaining their relative position has been guided in some measure
+by the situation in which their fragments were found strewed in front
+of the temple, and overwhelmed with masses of the frieze and pediment;
+but has been much more indebted to his own artist-like feeling, and
+architectural skill. He is of opinion that the western pediment
+contained several other figures besides the ten which have been
+restored.]
+
+[Footnote 31: The character of the Emperor Rodolph would be one of the
+most interesting speculations in philosophical history. He was evidently
+a fine artist, degraded into a bad sovereign--a man whose constructive
+and imaginative genius was misplaced upon a throne. The melancholy, and
+incipient madness which hovered over him, was possibly the result of the
+natural faculties suppressed or perverted.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The celebrated traveller, natural philosopher, and botanist.
+He has the direction of most of the scientific institutions at
+Munich.]
+
+[Footnote 33: I remember Madame Devrient, in describing the effect which
+music had upon herself, pressing her hand upon her bosom, and saying,
+with simple but profound feeling, "_Ah! cela use la vie!_"]
+
+[Footnote 34: "A l'exposition de Paris (1822) on a vu un millier de
+tableaux representant des sujets de l'Ecritoire Sainte, peints par des
+peintres qui n'y croient pas du tout: admires et juges par des gens qui
+n'y croient pas beaucoup, et enfin payes par des gens qui, apparemment,
+n'y croient pas, non plus.
+
+"L'on cherche apres cela le pourquoi de la decadence de l'art!"]
+
+[Footnote 35: Of this celebrated picture, Sir Joshua Reynolds says,
+that it is miscalled, and certainly does _not_ contain the portraits
+of the Earl and Countess of Arundel. Perhaps he is mistaken. It appears
+that the Earl of Arundel, of James the First's time, (the collector of
+the Arundelian marbles,) with his Countess, sat to Rubens in 1620, and
+that "Robin the Dwarf" was introduced into this picture, which was not
+painted in England, but at Brussels. Rubens was at this time at the
+height of his reputation, and when requested to paint the portrait of
+the Countess of Arundel, he replied, "Although I have refused to execute
+the portraits of many princes and noblemen, especially of his lordship's
+rank yet from the Earl I am bound to receive the honour he does me
+in commanding my services, regarding him as I do, in the light of
+an evangelist to the world of art, and the great supporter of our
+profession."--(See Tierney's History and Antiquities of the Castle and
+Town of Arundel.)]
+
+[Footnote 36: In Southey's Thalaba.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Now removed with the other Vandykes to Chatsworth.]
+
+[Footnote 38: See a curious letter of Pirkheimer on the death of Albert
+Durer, quoted in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 21. "In Albert I have
+truly lost one of the best friends I had in the whole world, and nothing
+grieves me deeper than that he should have died so painful a death,
+which, under God's providence, I can ascribe to nobody but his huswife,
+who gnawed into his very heart, and so tormented him that he departed
+hence the sooner; for he was dried up to a faggot, and might nowhere
+seek him a jovial humour or go to his friends." (After much more,
+reflecting on this intolerable woman, he concludes with edifying
+_naivete_;) "She and her sister are not queans; they are, I doubt not,
+in the number of honest, devout, and altogether God-fearing women, but
+a man might better have a quean who was otherwise kindly, than such a
+gnawing, suspicious, quarrelsome, _good_ woman, with whom he can have
+no peace or quiet neither by day nor by night."]
+
+[Footnote 39: Schleissheim is a country palace of the king of Bavaria,
+about six miles from Munich; it has originally been a beautiful
+building, but is not now inhabited, and looks forlorn and dilapidated.
+The pictures are distributed, without any attempt at arrangement,
+through forty-five rooms.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Natives, I believe, of Cologne.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Albert Durer was the scholar of Wohlgemuth.]
+
+[Footnote 42: I particularly recollect a picture, containing many
+hundred figures, all painted with the elaborate finish of a miniature,
+and representing the victory of Alexander over Darius. All the Persians
+are dressed like Turks, while Alexander and his host are armed to the
+teeth, in the full costume of chivalry, with heraldic banners, displaying
+the different devices of the old Germanic nobles, the cross, the black
+eagle, &c. &c.]
+
+[Footnote 43: The observations of Mr. Phillips, (Lectures on the History
+and Principles of Painting,) on Giotto, and the earliest Italian school,
+apply in a great measure to the early German painters, and I cannot
+refuse myself the pleasure of quoting them.--"As it appears to me, that
+painting at the present time, is swerving among us from the true point
+of interest, tending to ornament, to the loss of truth and sentiment, I
+think I cannot do better than endeavour to restrain the encroachment of
+so insidious a foe, to prevent, if possible, our advance in so erroneous
+and fatal a course, by showing how strong is the influence of art
+where truth and simplicity prevail; and that, where no ornament is
+to be found--nay, where imperfections are numerous; where drawing is
+frequently defective, perspective violated, colouring employed without
+science, and chiaro-scuro rarely, if ever thought of. The natural
+question then is, what can excite so much interest in pictures, where
+so much is wanting to render them perfect? I answer, that which leads
+to the forgetfulness of the want of those interesting and desirable
+qualities in the pictures of Giotto, is the excitation caused by their
+fulness of feeling--well-directed, ardent, concentrated feeling! by
+which his mind was engaged in comprehending the points most worthy of
+display in the subject he undertook to represent, and led to the
+clearness and intelligence with which he has selected them; add to this
+the simplicity and ability with which he has displayed that feeling."
+* * * "This is the first true step in the natural system of the art, or
+of the application of it, and this was Giotto's more especially. The rest
+is useful, as it assists the influence of this, the _indispensable_.
+This, to continue the figure, taken from the stage, (in a previous part
+of the Lecture,) is as Garrick acting Macbeth or Lear in a tie-wig and
+a general's uniform of his day; the passion and the character reaching
+men's hearts, notwithstanding the absurd costume. If the art be found
+thus strong to attract the mind, to excite feeling and thought, and to
+engage the heart, by the mere force of unadorned truth in the important
+points, and without the aid of the valuable auxiliaries I have above
+alluded to, is it not manifest that in its basis it is correct? and that
+the utmost force of historical painting is to be sought by continual
+emendation of this system, maintaining the spirit of its simplicity,
+supplying its wants, calling in the aid of those auxiliaries within
+reasonable bounds, not permitting them to usurp the throne of taste and
+attraction, but rather requiring them to assist in humbler guise to
+maintain and strengthen the legitimate authority of feeling.
+
+After reading these beautiful passages, written by a man who unites
+the acute discriminative judgment of a practical artist with the finest
+feeling of the ultimate object and aim of high poetical art, I felt
+almost tempted to expunge my own superficial and imperfect notes, (above
+written,) and should have done so, but for the hope that my deficiencies
+will induce some one more competent in taste and knowledge to take up
+the subject of the early German painters. It is certain that the modern
+historical painters of Germany are working on the principle here
+laid down by Mr. Phillips, particularly Overbeck and Wach, which they
+have derived from a study of their national school of art; but other
+enthusiasts should remember that the redeeming excellence of this school
+was feeling, and that feeling can never be a matter of mere imitation.
+I cannot understand why the omissions of ignorance should be confounded
+with the achievements of native genius, by those for whom "knowledge
+has unlocked her ample stores," and to whom the recovery of those
+"rich spoils of time," the antique marbles, must have revealed the wide
+difference between "the simplicity of elegance" and "the simplicity of
+indigence."]
+
+[Footnote 44: See p. 56.]
+
+[Footnote 45: See p. 66.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Errata as given in the original have been applied to
+the text. Other than the most exceedingly obvious typographical errors,
+all inconsistent spelling, hyphenation, diacriticals, archaic usage, etc.
+have been preserved as printed in the original. The equals signs used
+to bracket the signature at the end of part I indicate characters in a
+Fraktur typeface.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad
+with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected, by Anna Jameson
+
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