education is small, and the life one of We looked down from the railroad car- castle. The hotel at Triberg is set on high, close to pine woods, with their great trunks springing out of beds of lovely moss, near a fine waterfall which comes plunging down out of the heart of the forest just above the town. At night it was lighted up with red and blue fires in honor of the birthday, and it was strange to see how little it took to turn the glorious nature into a very bad work of art. It looked like a vile bit of scene-painting in a low theatre. I was thankful when the glare subsided and a starlight night took gentle possession once more of the beautiful valley. doctor told us he had never seen so many rickety, ill-kept, and wretched-looking children as in Germany. How can it be otherwise? The mothers are in the fields, and cannot be looking after their babies, mending and making at home, where surely there is always enough to do for one pair of hands. As we drove along, the cripples sat by the roadside tending cows and goats, which must never be allowed to go alone, lest they should stray beyond their owners' narrow frontiers. Carts, with small wheels very far apart, most rudely put together, passed us driven by women. Hornberg proved a base imposition; the houses, once large and handsome, were now occupied by small proprietors, who could not keep them up-close, unwholesome, tumbledown, and melancholy, they crowded round a stream, stinking in spite of its rapid current, with the perpendicular hills too close behind them, and the castle now turned into a brewery. A monument to the only man in the district who was killed in the Franco-German war was the chief illustration of the place. We were puzzled by rows of what looked like round cakes drying in the sun. They were made of sawdust from the tanners' yards, and are used as burning slowly in the stoves. With such great abundance of wood, it showed both the poverty and the amount of cold to There had been a Bauer marriage at a The little town is tenanted by watch- We drove back next day along the lovely valley close to the stream in search of Hornberg. The women were at work, even harder if possible than in the plain below, making the second-crop hay, picking up the grass in their arms on the steep slopes and scattering it without even a fork, dragging it along the road in small handcarts, sawing wood, etc., etc. The number of deformed, lame, humpbacked people is very great. An English As we passed over the plain high up on the top of the mountain next day, whole families, even to the smallest children, were out on the wet, undrained meadows gathering in the hay. In summer they often start thus at three in the morning with only a little bad coffee and bread, sending back a little girl for a second supply in the day, and work till night on this unsubstantial diet. A good deal of brandy, however, is drunk on these occasions. These upper regions look like a great sponge, and their waters feed the two great rivers of Europe, the Danube and the Rhine, one part going to the Black Sea, the other to the German Ocean, from this not very lofty watershed. Constanz is a quaint old place, standing close to the boundaries of six countries which meet on the lake. The Inseln hotel was once a monastery, with a gar den reaching down to the water, and many guests were sitting under the trees. The dining-room is the old chapel with a double row of columns, sadly disfigured by paper and hangings, however, and we slept in a east, to the Jungfrau in the south-west. corridor where once had been the monks' | reaching from the Tyrolese ranges in the cells. At night the hall filled with a great meeting of Roman Catholic deputies from all parts of Germany, Belgium, even Holland. H- went down amongst them; he was civilly asked if he were Catholic, but, when he acknowledged himself not one of the faithful, he was still given a place of honor near the president where he could hear. The principal topic, after exhortations to unity and much mutual praise, consisted in rejoicing over the relaxation of the Falk Laws and hopes that Bismarck would do more in the same direction. I looked on through an opening high up in the eastern wall, through which probably the sick monks assisted at the service. The town is a well-to-do place, full of memories of past greatness and past struggles. You may stand on the stone which marks the place where John Huss was burned, and look out of the windows of the hall where the great Council sat which decided between the rival claims of three popes but the fires are dead which burned so fiercely within its walls, and the worthy gentlemen in frock-coats collected in the Inseln hotel served to show more clearly how far we have drifted. There is a curious old MS. in the library where the events of the fifteenth century are depicted in long processions, and the men-at-arms, the priests and cardinals, the women, the cooks, the prince, the bishops, and the kaiser all appear "in their habits as they lived." There is nothing in the long series which has remained the same. The knights in armor, the prince bishops, the ladies in tall pointed head-gear, even the Holy Roman Empire itself, are all gone; only the little crescents of bread which one of the bakers is holding out remain the same; the Hornchen have held their own amidst all the change. One day, rowing in a boat on the bril liant blue-green water, the whole panorama of white, snowy points against the pearly sky shone out, perfectly distinct, yet with a distinction quite untranslatable by paints and paper made by hands, in its ethereal hues and subtle gradations of color, and one felt deeply how utterly powerless art is before certain aspects of nature. A boat lay in front, with men drawing up their great nets, having toiled all night and taken nothing of the splendid lake trout - the whole as it were hung between transparent sea and sky. As we looked across in the radiant, still evening at a great blind asylum in an old palace on the eastern shore, the gracious mistress told of the Frauen Verein of the duchy, and how all the isolated efforts after good were by it gathered together and assisted to work for common objects, and to play into each other's hands. It must be a great help in the organization of wise charity, and the utilization in a general plan of the desultory attempts of obscure workers. The number of institutions for education and for the wise assistance of every species of distress established by the present sovereigns of the little realm is very remarkable. The next day we were steaming down the lake to Lindau in a storm of wind and rain, blotting out every vestige of the mountains with the capriciousness of the hill weather. It was bright again, however, for our journey upwards, the little railway to avoid tunnels twisting and turning curiously, and showing the views to perfection. Mouse-colored cows, musical with bells, were followed everywhere by women and girls with red handkerchiefs on their heads, and whips in their hands to keep them in the narrow paths of virtue - and very narrow these were There is a lovely little island in the when the subdivision was great. We saw lake, where, on the top of a high wooded four ploughs, with two horses each, on bank, stands a great Schloss, built round four adjacent strips about forty feet three sides of a square, which once be- across; the shares were wooden, with a longed to a now extinct order of knight-narrow sheath of iron, an inch or two hood, where a true home has been made, beautiful within and without, and a terraced garden won from the potato-fields. The rooms all open on long galleries, full of carved and inlaid armoires, pictures, armor, porcelain, and plants. From the windows the wooded promontories of the lake are seen far below, backed by a splendid view of the Alps, peak beyond peak, the long procession, when the shy mountains allow themselves to be seen, wide, to give them an edge. When we reached the summit level, a lovely little lake filled up the valley, with long, tranquil reflections of the flat, red roofs, laden with stones, of a village, crowned by a brown-red, bulbous-headed church tower on a long stalk, and precipitous rocks crowding in upon it. In front the hay was thrown over upright stakes about six feet high with three cross-bars at right angles, planted in rows, so that the fields seemed studded with gigantic spindles. | is true, and two copies of the "Tribune" Here it was left till dry enough to stack. and the Louvre picture. It was impossiThe upland meadows were lilac with au- ble not to feel how entirely the form of tumnal crocuses, showing how wet they the face, the expression, the whole manlay, and any large scheme of drainage ner of feeling and thought had been was evidently impossible for want of co- borrowed by the greater pupil from his operation among the small owners. The master. He has made such admirable grass of Parnassus grew like daisies on use of his borrowed wealth that he has the rough places by the rail when we justified his use of it; but, in spite of the reached the forest ground above. This warning in "The Vicar of Wakefield," I belongs to the State or to large proprie- felt inclined to "praise Pietro Perugino tors; no peasant ever possesses any with all my might, as the originator of the woodland, as he cannot wait to realize, Madonna type. Only, to value Raphael and must have year by year returns aright, his frescoes, not his easel pictures indeed, month by month-in order to alone, must be always considered. live. In some places the narrow strips of grass, about three feet wide, dividing the small properties, were so many and so near together that they amounted to a good-sized field in a very few miles. The station at Munich was bright with the electric light, "tramways" (sic in English) were in the streets, and all the newest improvements. The new buildings are very ugly, however, and with a set determination about them to be æsthetic and didactic, which was a little aggravating and pedantic. The Alte Pinacothek, nevertheless, is a charming collection, if with no picture of world-wide importance, unless it be the "Four Temperaments" of Albert Durer, with a most truculent St. Paul grasping a sword as if he meant to use it on us in earnest. The portraits, to me, are always among the most telling results of art; the men and women, so long dead, living to all time. Rubens's wives in every variety of fine clothing, which yet did not swamp the faces, a Frank Hals, many Vandykes, particularly an Antwerp burgomaster and his wife, etc., which are magnificent. The old German masters in the smaller rooms are extremely fine, many of whose names are hardly known in Englandthe "Master of the Lyvers berchen Passion," Van der Weyden, Master Wilhelm, etc. The faces are a little flatly painted, without much shadow, but the extraor dinary amount and variety of expression, the working out of detail, whether of feature or dress, with loving feeling and care, every stroke telling, the colors as brilliant as the day they were laid on four hundred years ago, are all most remarkable. In "The Marriage of the Virgin," the faces of the bystanders show every possible shade of doubt and curiosity, reverence and belief: you feel as if assisting at an act which really happened to real people, not before a set of academical models, bones and flesh in a sort of "general way," with clothes on. After this we went to the other buildings to look at the new pictures. It is a melancholy sight, admirable rooms full of enormous works by the best men of the Munich school. Good color was not to be expected, perhaps, but there was hope that drawing, Rubens is here even more lavish of thought, and feeling might serve in its flesh and blood than usual in the "Last absence. The effect is one of absolute Judgment," where a little soul, at least, despair as to the chances of modern art one would think, is required; but there is this all that the encouragement of a are some studies of his for this picture in whole kingdom for two generations can a room behind, which are glorious in their do? that the best of schools, of lectures, sway and rush of souls the lines which of lessons on anatomy and color can the downward sweeps of the damned take, bring forth? The enormous canvases, who are here in great majority, are per- the acres of paint, are without a spark of fectly wonderful; the blessed do not seem genius. It seems to have been supposed to have been so much to his taste, and that the big is equivalent with the great, are far inferior. Two of the finest Peru- and "The Deluge," some fifty feet wide ginos out of Italy are here. One of them and forty feet high, greets one at the enrepresents a visit paid by the Virgin to trance. The fear of being drowned is St. Bernard. It is not a vision she is not a lofty sentiment, and when repeated walking in on her feet with attendant in seventy or eighty figures of entirely ladies, and his face, as he looks up and unknown people it is monotonously unreceives his charming visitor with a ten-pleasant; there is no perspective, and the der joy, is very touching. By it hung a men at the top of the hill, forty feet above picture of Raphael's, an indifferent one it the spectators, are as big as those in front. There is more pathos in the small | streaming along the road from the Murdark six inches of the Marc Antonio etch-nau station, all full. It is a purely pasing, than in the whole field. Next comes toral district, with little corn, but hay"The Destruction of Jerusalem," by Kaul- fields running in and out of the forest on bach, which is quite as large. Above in the sides of the valley, which seems to the sky is a great rush of angels flying be closed by the great Zugspite, ten about without any earthly or heavenly thousand feet high, at the end. The vilmotive visible; the earth below is not a lage is built utterly regardless of any place at all, odds and ends of temples and sort of order; the houses up and down, courts and houses lying about "all no- to and fro and across, with only cartways how." They could only be seen from a in any direction - unmade tracks here standpoint in the air, but, buildings are and there among the cottages. The material things, and must have had some place was full of strangers standing about connection, some perspective. A man is looking at the arrivals. Nearly seven killing himself in front, like a bad actor, thousand people slept that night in the and heaps of people are lying about dying dwellings intended for thirteen hundred,"permiscuous," not from the swords of half at least on straw, - but it was a dry the Roman soldiers, for they have not yet night with a bright moon. The village taken the town, and certainly not from was endimanché to receive its guests, the hunger, for the lumps of arms and legs older men with silver buttons as large as are much too fat and comfortable. It is crown-pieces on their redingotes and a farrago of absurdities. Then comes an waistcoats, high boots, and pointed felt "Ascension." How any man should dare hats with a feather and flower in them. to try and re-say what has been said by One beautiful girl wore a flat black hat, such great masters in their greatest works, a dark-green gown over a red and black without having a single new idea of any striped petticoat, red stockings, a green kind to add to the stock, is almost impos- velvet bodice and silver ornaments: sible to conceive. strong, well-made, modest, she was a pretty sight. But even here costume is dying out fast. There are many portraits, gigantic in size, wooden, affected, heavy, dismal dolls, "striking an attitude," in elaborate gowns and coats. That the immediate neighborhood of the wonders of the old masters should have had so little influence is astonishing. The landscapes are raw, hard, and conventional, with the same curious absence of reality and truth, done apparently after a recipe, like an apothecary's mixture, with no relation whatever to the rendering of natural effects before the eyes of the painter. Wandering from room to room dismally after something to admire, the only things in the least interesting were some small pictures of old German streets and buildings, which were given with a great detail of honest carethe color quietly good, like that of a Dutch picture. When they touch plain brick and mortar, with no temptation to angels, and poetry, and saints, or lakes, or mountains, the painters seem to recover some of the patient reference to what is, which all painting must submit to render, to make the imaginative part of any value. Meantime H- had gone to Ammergau, to see the last representation but one of the Passion-play which will take place for ten years. Who can say what will then be the state of Europe? The last performance was interrupted by the Franco-German war. He found from fifty to sixty carriages and peasant carts H found his way to Joseph Maier's cottage, a timbered house with overhanging roof. He is a woodcarver, as was his predecessor in the Christus part, and the crucifixes which he produces have, perhaps, assisted his conception of the character. He said the fatigue of the last scene was extremely trying. He is a remarkable-looking man even in his peasant's dress, and was much occupied with preparing for the next day's representation.* He is sometimes so plagued by visits from admirers that his wife said she had to lock him up in the kitchen to defend him. H- then climbed up a rough, boggy, dirty hill, where the peasants were kneeling and praying round a great marble "Crucifixion," given by the king of Bavaria. The village was full of shrines at every turn the Virgin and many saints, and in one place Christ and the Père éternel, side by side, only to be distinguished by the globe in the Father's hands. The play, as is well known, is a survival of the mysteries and miracle-plays which were performed all over Europe in the Middle Ages, and which came to an end when a greater feeling of refinement been published, by which it appears that Maier's share *The accounts of the Ammergau receipts have just was £50 for thirty-nine representations-small enough. in the world took offence at the buffoon- | Joseph Maier is an admirable personifi. - it would have been thought fine on any stage. The scene, too, with Mary Magdalene after the resurrection, was beautiful, but it would artistically have been better to have ended with the climax of the crucifixion, though perhaps the moral teaching required the latter scenes. About half the audience were peasants, sitting on the unsheltered benches; the rest comprised strangers from all countries and of all ranks, the queen of Wirtemberg, the grand duchess of Baden, a grand duke of Russia, who were there on that day. Many of very opposite shades of faith were there, who had come doubtful of the advisability of the representation, yet who all agreed after secing it that it was a great help in realizing the life of the Savfour as a whole, and in putting reality into the Bible narrations of scenes from which the meaning has sometimes been almost trodden out by continual repetition. The crucifixion is a most difficult ordeal to go through. Maier is supported by nails between the fingers there is a slight shelf on which the feet rest, and the tricot round his body is fixed to the cross, but nothing of this is visible. He remains uplifted for at least twenty minutes, during the scenes with his mother, St. John, the thieves, and the soldiers. The actors are selected by a committee of village householders, at a solemn meeting in church on the last week of the year before the play. The principal parts are easily settled, as there are few equal to them; but there are hundreds of minor characters - everybody wishes to act, and the selection is a troublesome affair. The fiat of the little parliament is, however, never resisted. The women and children are accustomed to take part in the ceremonies of the Church, and the chief actors are trained. But with all explanations the vivid presentation The taking down from the cross is of such scenes by poor Tyrolese peas- copied exactly from Rubens's great picture ants, who for ten years have gained at Antwerp, but the cloth fell aside a little, their living by wood-carving, and will do and H- saw the feet of the dead man so again for the next decade, is most moving to help him down the ladder, remarkable. The reverence, the delicacy which was a pity, as otherwise the illusion of treatment, make it truly the religious was perfect. The play was too long - it exercise which it is evident that they con- lasted three and a half hours in the mornsider it. None but those of good charac-ing and four in the afternoon - but no ter are allowed to join, and the effect on one seemed weary; the peasants are not the morals of the village is excellent. so blasé as civilized folk, and it is an |