lighted up with a brilliant scarlet tinge. The islands in the bay looked like so many dolphins basking there." Evidently the tide was full, and the sky brilliant. But when the present writer tried to see the same scene, it was presented in a much more ordinary and much sadder aspect. Croagh Patrick was hooded with cloud to within a third of his height from the earth; the "bay was all sand and seaweed; Clare Island was dun-colored; and the smaller islets in the bay were like so many livid (not red) herrings. And we suspect that is the scene presented far oftener than the one which met our great satirist's eye. For brilliant days on the west coast of Ireland are, if not rare, at least never to be counted on: while the sea, which is the very life of these deep inlets and fords, is always off duty for by far the greater part of the day. It is only on the jutting points and extreme promontories, where, even at low tide, the Atlantic breaks upon the cliffs, that you can depend even on the "melancholy ocean" for doing its duty, and not leaving a far more melancholy memorial of itself to divide, without also uniting, the opposite shores. And there is something that adds to the sense both of romance and of desolation in the almost numberless ruins of abbeys which dot the most striking points of the west coast of Ireland. Almost wherever you go, you find beside the banks of seaweed, and perhaps within a stone's throw of the stranded hulls of ships waiting for the tide, some venerable, ivied ruin, with the fragment of a nave or a chancel, and a low cloister some four feet high, running over rows of ancient tombs, to which is probably attached a modern graveyard wherein one or two flaunting monuments of the present generation rise up to jar the solemn impression of the place. But this is not all which mars the effect proper to such ruins. There is almost sure to be, not only desolation, but something to mark neglect. In one ruined abbey the fine old window is half built up with rubble to keep out the sheep. In almost all, the nettles vie with the ivy in clothing the ruined walls: while piles of rubbish lie wherever there has been a recent fall. It is hardly possible to forget that most of these ruins are the property of Protestants in a Roman Catholic country, many of whom almost feel it a duty to let the signs of neglect appear. A story is told of one such proprietor, that, when an offer was made to him by a lover of the ancient architecture to purchase one of these still stately ruins with a view to its restoration, he was curtly answered by the Orangeman in possession that he would see the noble amateur damned first. Certainly there is none of the tenderness shown to these ruins which you see in England, where the proprietors know that the past belonged to their own forefathers. The wail of the waves, and the melancholy cry of the seagulls as they flit to and fro over the ruins, have their charm. But you are constantly reminded of Shelley's fine description of the desolation of Venice, in his "Lines written among the Euganean Hills :" only that the desolation and visible neglect of churches produces, perhaps, an even more melancholy impression than the desolation and visible neglect of palaces: "A less drear ruin then than now, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep O'er the waters of his path." Do the people themselves seem to be affected by these melancholy influences of nature and of history, as Mr. Disraeli, mockingly or not, half intimated? In some parts certainly in the neighborhood of the town of Donegal, for instance, you meet with a population uniformly despondent, and sometimes almost morose. There the Irish reputation for colloquialism seems a legend of the remote past. The very drivers of the jaunting-cars sit in moody silence, except when they urge on their horses by a peculiar vowel-cry between a wail and an inarticulate sound of disgust, which resembles nothing so much as the shrill bleat of a lost lamb in the mountains, - a cry which seems born of blinding mist and wildernesses of bog. Thereabouts the very inns seem like asylums into which you are received sadly and as a matter of duty while the aged waiters (nowhere do you find waiters so aged as in Ireland so aged are they that we have occasionally observed that the time which nerve-impressions normally take to travel to the brain is something like treble in their case) gently but firmly press you to go away almost as soon as you have arrived. Evidently they think you are laboring under some profound illusion in going there at all, which they are only doing their duty in attempting to remove. The But we cannot say that as a general rule the people of Ireland seem to find theirs a "melancholy ocean." character of the people differs in a very marked way in closely neighboring regions; and you will find the vivacious, humorous, half-cultivated air of amused self-criticism among the carmen and boatmen of one county not fifty miles distant from a gloomy, taciturn, and almost sullen, peasantry, who will hardly acknowledge a greeting, or laugh aloud once through all the bustle of a country fair. And when the Irish are not melancholy, their cheerfulness is certainly very attractive, from the singular air of selfknowledge, of cultivated banter directed against their own infirmities, which, even among the peasantry, it displays. A poor boatman, analyzing and quizzing his own litigiousness, and actually explaining to his fare how he not only went to law when he knew himself to be in the wrong, but appealed from a decision against him which he knew to be just, purely for the sake of the pleasure of the game, would not be easily met with on the Thames or at an English watering-place. Then, too, the people's humor has a much quainter flavor, and has more in it of nicety of shade, than that of any English peasantry. For instance, a gentleman calling to a lagging dog to follow, was shouted to by a poor lad, "Sure it's I will promote her for your honor," where the word "promote was used with even a classical nicety of discrimination (but assuredly not in any common English sense), in its strict meaning of "cause to move forward." And then, quite apart from humor, the people seem to form clearer ideas to themselves of their own tastes and wishes than ours of the same rank. For instance, the present writer was much struck by the remark of a poor workman on the Connemara marble knick-knacks, who, when asked why he did not continue to carve the bog-oak into ornaments for his customers as he once did, replied that it was simply because it would very much diminish the happiness of his life to do so: that he was proud and fond of his work in the one material, and had no liking for the other. The "melancholy ocean certainly by no means uniformly makes a melancholy people. The gloom of the Irish people, when you find it, is like their skies, often sullen, but never hard. It is the gloom which goes with moral timidity and self-distrust, the gloom which arises from the blows of destiny among a people who, except when they have lineage to rely on, are apt to lean upon fortune, and despond where fortune is adverse. It is gloom of temperament and not of self-will; and gives way as suddenly beneath the influence of a breaking sunbeam as does the gloom of their liquid atmosphere, and their soft, cloudpiled skies. THE LITTLE CRIPPLES AT MUNICH. I was living in Munich some twenty years ago, with a dear friend, since dead, then a studiosus with the great Kaulbach of the "Babel" and "Hunnen Schlacht" epics. The laureate of mythic terrors had been minded to enact Æsop for a time, and make the world indebted for many a long laugh over his visible embodiment of the life and reign of" Reynard the Fox." That history was not yet published; but its fame had already spread abroad among sympathetic cognoscenti, and the magis'er's Bohemian court. Down by fair Loch Starnberg, where the Alps stand afar, guarding the sleeping waters from the winds fierce from buffetings with the snow-peaks, the magister resided that summer; and it occurred to my friend, and other studiovi, that it would be a famous joke to get a lot of masks of the chief characters in "Reynard," incontinently appear with them at the cottage by the lake, and give the magister a zoological ovation. The idea was adopted by acclamation. Every one's friend, Count P, poet, musician, painter, caricaturist, volunteered the text and choruses. Then for the masks. Some of the men set to work to accomplish their own metempsychosis. For the rest, the difficulty remained, till somebody, suddenly inspired, cried, "Why not let the little cripples make them?" "What do you mean?" said a young Berliner, suspecting persiflage. "Mean? The Krippelhafter Knaben, in the Asylum down by the Isar: they are wonderful chaps; equal to any thing that is to be made out of paper and glue." My friend was constituted "Mask Committee;" and I accompanied him on his official visit. We found the Asylum, a fine old house, that must have seen gay doings two centuries ago. The director, Herr Mayer, received us. My friend stated his business, gave the sketches of the desired masks, and was delighted to find the director at once enter into the humor of the thing. A clever draughtsman, too, Herr Mayer. We had forgotten two or three of the heads; but, from my friend's hints, he scribbled down notes for them, and they ultimately proved among the best. He showed us a quantity of the work done by the boys: masks and properties for theatres, and every conceivable kind of elegant toys in papier maché. "Some of the boys," he added, "are veritable little cobolds; but, with an artistic outlet for the spirit, good instead of evil comes of it." Herr Mayer invited us to revisit the institution; but it was long ere I could do so. The masks were made; "the parts" learned; a glorious May morning dawned; and omnes, each with a duplicate head, and packet of paper lanterns, started for a sixteenmile tramp to the lake. There, in the forest behind the magister's cottage, a throne and canopy of state were improvised, garlands wound, flags set waving, lanterns hung ready. A monstrous fox's head was laid at our hero's feet, with due ceremony; and he, en bon prince, said he “would be delighted" to appear as Kaulbach, Rex Vulpinus, in the evening. The magister's beautiful frau conjured a bevy of pretty girls out of the earth; pittores et scriptores came, whence I know not, to enact our Greek chorus; and by evening a merrier party was assembled under the beechtrees than I can hope ever to see again. The great king sat enthroned, a fox-bush his sceptre; his lieges crows, cats paid homage in rhymes worthy of Thomas Ingoldsby. A rookery overhead got up an indignationmeeting at the laughter and noise we made. The bright eyes of the dryads in muslin shone through the glinting lights, laughing the sentimental moon out of countenance. How many of our fiercest carnivori got their claws forever clipped, somehow, under the trees that night! But all this concerns us not, here: the paper lanterns have long since burned out; some of the bright eyes will shine on earth no more; and the masks, after some carnival roystering, went the way of human cuticle. Their ghost leads me back to my story. lions, This summer, finding myself in the Bavarian capital once more, I resolved to pay that long-promised visit to the "Krippelhafter Knaben Austalt." Certain facts and figures regarding it I may perhaps as well note down here, though I did not learn them until after my visit. In 1832, a private gentleman, Herr von Kurtz, having had his interest aroused in the forlorn condition of poor crippled boys, resolved to be the pioneer of their ameliora tion. Unfortunately, his own means were not large; but friends came to his aid; and he had soon some rooms fitted up in his residence for the reception of a limited number of boys. With some of the number he accepted a maximum payment of ten pounds per annum. He had a tutor for their instruction in the usual branches of the public elementary schools, and gave the greater part of his own time to their instruction in various light industrial occupations. After twelve years of unobtrusive usefulness, the attention of the government was, in 1844, drawn to Herr von Kurtz's establishment. Its name and fame had spread abroad; but, having given it a firm basis, he not unwillingly consented to relinquish its management to the State; and, by an act passed the same year, the "Krippelhafter Knaben Austalt" became a public institution, received a State endowment of eighteen hundred pounds, and a regularlyappointed staff; namely, an inspector, resident director, a Protestant and Catholic chaplain, a schoolmaster, industrial master, and medical adviser; a matron, female servant, and porter, for domestic duties. The education provided was to include, besides the three R's, a glimpse into geography and history, singing and elementary drawing, religious instruction being left to the care of the visiting chaplains: pupils to pay ten pounds a year towards their maintenance; and all surplus revenue from subscriptions and bequests to be devoted to founding free scholarships. In 1850, a further donation of eighteen hundred pounds was made by the State; and at the present time the institution possesses a capital of six thousand pounds. It maintains an average yearly of twenty-six lads, at an outlay of four hundred and fifty pounds. The immediate wants of the pupils absorb but a small moiety of this: the work done by them brings in a considerable sum yearly. But the staff is necessarily an expensive one: happily capable of taking the much extended duties to be imposed on it when the larger asylum now proposed is completed. In all simplicity, I went in search of the old gray House of the Masks: to find, alas! all its little Robin Goodfellows gone, and, grayer than ever, looking abashed at its change of fortune, now harboring unphilanthropic "long swords, saddles, bridles," and such military belongings. After various inquiries, I got at last on the right track, finding that my right destination was No. 13, Staubstrasse. After a long walk, traversing the flowery twin cemeteries, and passing finally the little red-brick Franciscan Church of Sorrows, with its life-size crucifix gazing haggardly at the loiterers by the wayside, I found myself in front of No. 13, Dust Street: named so, mayhap, by the monks, as a grim glorification of their own mortifications and gray peas. A two-storied white house, No. 13, standing above a sloping grass-plot, among fuschias and standard roses: no institutional dignity about it, or sign of its destination, except it were in the accidental apparition under a window-curtain of two pale little faces, which disappeared again as suddenly. My appeal to the bell was responded to as though I had been a one-eyed Calendar, with connections among the genii of the Arabian Nights;" the garden-gate opened, untouched by visible hands, with a weird, sharp click. Taking this, however, for an invitation to enter, I entered, and was aware of a great black dog-a dog with a double nose!-bounding towards me to do the honors. He snuffed at first suspiciously through those terrific nostrils: seemed not dissatisfied with the result; and took me under his protection to the back-door, though I suggested the front entrance. A little old woman, neat as a fairy god-mother, evidently the housekeeper, appeared. I expressed my desire to see the Herr Director, if he was disengaged. Smiling benevolently, she "was sure he would rejoice:" bade me enter; and disappeared, leaving me in charge of my double-nosed friend. A few moments, and the Herr Director descended the stairs: not the Herr Mayer of my recollections, but a gentleman of some thirty-five years of age, whose face, at the first glance, might predicate an artillery-officer, or at the second, an artist. He received me in the most courteous manner: informed me my old acquaintance, his predecessor, had long left, and was now head of a famous firm for art manufactures; then added, "I shall be no less happy to show you our little place, and what our boys can do." My visit was made in the afternoon; and the director explained, as he led the way to the schoolroom, that all schooltasks were accomplished before the twelve-o'clock dinnerhour: so the boys were now busy at their manufactures, the schoolroom being turned for the time into a work-shop. I followed my guide through a door to the right, and found myself in a veritable factory, some forty feet in length, but of scarce sufficient height, and certainly failing in proper ventilation, though well-lighted by five windows. The resident master, a kindly, intelligent-looking gentleman, was in charge of some twenty-eight boys from nine to fifteen years of age, all occupied at the low, square tables standing in double rank down the room. Cardboard slips, and scraps of bright-colored paper, strewed the floor; boxes and watchcases and every possible application of Bristol-board in process of manufacture at some of the tables; at others sat little workmen, blowing an accompaniment to the singing of their wire saws, blowing the dust away, in fact, from the delicate tracery as they carved it. All were dressed in the clothes of the asylum: dark cloth trousers and waistcoat, and that most practical of working garments, a belted, stout blue linen blouse. There were boys with crutches placed against their seats, ready to hand; boys with irons round their thin ankles: lame boys, indeed, of every variety; boys half paralyzed; others with their ten fingers so crumpled and twisted by a cruel freak of nature, it seemed miraculous they could ever learn the functions of human hands; hunchbacked boys also were there, perhaps occupying the best vantage-ground for success. Scrofula lies at the root of most of the deformities which these unfortunates have had born with them; the hunchback is rarely of the number. Scrofula saps all the vital functions, and, though acute but in one limb, debilitates all the others more or less. One small Quasimodo was, by special permission, this afternoon, copying some foliations, and with the care and accuracy of a medieval illuminator. As he sat at work, his head quite disappeared below the heaped shoulders, and I felt something like a shock on beholding the weird beauty of his pale face, as it turned with a quiet, self-reliant pride to meet the director's eyes. One must not look for the bashfulness and pretty gaucheries of childhood within the realms of crutches: such things vanish with the first consciousness of an exceptional destiny. "I make all the boys learn drawing," said the director: "the accuracy of touch, and precision of visual measurement, given by it is of the greatest use in supplying any natural manual deficiency. I never allow a boy to attempt any more delicate kind of our work until he can handle a pencil freely." We moved on to a table at the far end of the room, where a boy about ten years old, straight in shoulder and limb as boy need be, stood deeply engrossed before a gluepot and great pile of cardboard slips. Surely he was no cripple. How does the box get on?" asked my companion. "All right, sir: see, sir!" And the boy held out little box, the bevelled lid neatly papered by hands with but two fingers on each. A short time before, the boy could do nothing but eat with those maimed hands: now he could write prettily, draw a little, and use edge-tools with perfect accuracy and skill. His affliction had been far surpassed by one of his predecessors, who had one finger only on each hand; but so well, too, had he applied himself to circumvent his deficiencies that he became quite famous in the institution for his handiwork, and is now earning his living outside its walls. What must the fate of such a boy have been if he had not met with the patient care, the unwearied help and encouragement, given there! Gluing processes seemed to involve the most absorbing satisfaction to the operators: three little hunchbacks, with a big glue-pot between them, were evidently in a sort of seventh heaven while building the wall of a giant bonbonnière. Its prototype, made by them, was a wonder of card architecture: its ivory-like columns supporting a fantastic cornice; the wall behind gorgeous with plaited silk; the lid a marvel of fairy ingenuity. Seugnot frères would have held it a chef'd' œuvre. The designs for these things are all made by the Herr Director. A great glass case, occupying one end of the room, was filled with a multitudinous display of pretty things of the kind, and still more artistic brackets, crucifixes, card-trays, delicately carved au jour in various woods. Whilst looking at them, I mentioned the old masks that had at first brought me acquainted. "Traditions of those famous specimens of zoology still exist," said the director, "among the boys; and the very moulds for the masks are preserved in a store-closet. We occasionally have such things to make still in carnival time. I am very glad when such an order comes, the boys take such delight in the work. But as we endeavor to make the institution self-supporting as much as possible, our industries must be ruled by the demand outside. Papier mâché for room-decoration was largely made here at the time you speak of: now it is never asked for except in this form.' And he took down a stag's head, very carefully moulded, to be afterwards fitted with real antlers. The papier mâché so employed is, however, of a peculiar kind, and, though perfectly light, will bear any amount of rough usage with impunity. I inquired if the boys generally followed the trades thus learned. "Not in the majority of instances," was the reply; "but the end chiefly sought by the institution is obtained when the boys achieve the manual dexterity the employments here give. On their leaving, if of very poor parents, they are apprenticed from our funds to some suitable trade, and we have no difficulty in finding good masters for them. By the first statutes made, no boy was admitted to the asylum under twelve years of age; but as preference is given to the poorest candidates, it was soon found expedient to relax the rule. The task of their physical education, especially, is far easier when commenced quite early. Parents too often trade on a child's deformity: the poor creature is driven out to beg until it grows to like the occupation, and better things for it are soon almost impossible. The vanity thus engendered is a strange moral phenomenon." Among other instances, the director mentioned the following as an illustration of it. An unusually clever little hunchback had been admitted into the institution: he was ten years of age, and had been accustomed to rove about the country alone for weeks together. The first time he went to church, no sooner was he within the walls than he dropped suddenly to the ground, his limbs fell out of joint, and he commenced foaming at the mouth. The more the crowd gathered round him, the worse he grew. The master brought him home, quite terror-stricken. "I," said the director, "suspected a trick: accompanied him myself the next Sunday; and took him sharply by the collar just when he was prepared to fall. My touch prevented the fit; and he afterwards confessed he always 'took one when he got among a lot of people: it was nice to have them all looking at him.' With judicious treatment he became one of the best boys in the institution. "By judicious treatment," added the Herr, "I do not mean moral instruction merely nothing, we find, tends so much to raise the boys' self-respect as physical education : the gymnastic ground, drill exercise, and plentiful bathing have a wonderful effect. The gymnastic feats some of those crippled little creatures perform would puzzle many a boy sound in mind and limb: it is above all things, perhaps, their greatest delight: the only difficulty is to restrain them from overtrying their strength." All the boys are under constant surgical supervision, and every medical alleviation is at their service: many have been restored, by careful treatment, to the complete use of their limbs. By singular good fortune the Herr Director is himself learned in orthopedic science, and has effected, since his appointment, some important improvements in the artificial limbs previously made in Germany. Looking over a syllabus of the day's tasks, I was rather surprised to see stenography (short-hand) down among them. "An innovation of mine," exclaimed the director; "its success with the lads certainly justifies it. It is a profession they may often be able to follow, - requires no outlay of capital in its pursuit," he added, smiling. "But you must see what we can do in it, though few of the lads accomplish more than sixty words in the minute." Then he summoned a little blue-eyed lame boy, carving an inkstand, gave him a pencil and paper, and then rapidly read At the end of four mina paragraph from a newspaper. utes the boy had phonographed three hundred and sixty words, omitting none. "This is one of my best craftsmen too," said the Herr. Then addressing him, "You must show that little picture-frame." 66 "It is in the cabinet workshop, sir." The cabinet work shop proved a small room, evidently devoted to tasks of great delicacy, for which the observance of strict order is of special necessity. Carpenters' benches lined the walls: boxes of tools stood about. But I had no time to look around ere the little stenographer took a frame from the wall, and held it, smiling, towards me. It was really an exquisite bit of workmanship. On a broad band of dark wood were inlaid a wonderful intaglio of scrolls, foliation, birds, and shells, in metal, ivory, and mother-ofpearl: the feathers in the birds' wings still awaited engraving. The boy flushed with pleasure at my praise. "Who helped you to carve and inlay this?" "Just nobody, sir." The original, of which this was a copy, was a gem of French Renaissance work, and had been brought by the director from Paris for the purpose. Unfortunately there is little demand for work of the kind in Munich. We pass ed on to the great dining-hall, of the same dimensions as the schoolroom, and I learned the following particulars of the bill of fare. For breakfast the boys have half a pint of milk, and a white roll; for dinner, soup, meat, vegetables; puddings on the fast-days, instead of meat; and on Sundays and red-letter days, roast joints and beer. Stewed fruit is always an important item as an entremet. Supper consists of soup and bread and cheese, or some simple substitutes for the latter. Then we passed up stairs. "Our dormitory," said the director regretfully "does not fulfil modern sanitary requirements, now our inmates have so greatly increased. The workshop down stairs was designed for an infirmary; but its position and north window make it quite inapplicable. Next sessions we hope to get funds granted for rebuilding the place: then these deficiencies will be remedied, and space, I hope, provided for at least double the number of our inmates. The comparative expenses so involved will be actually on a diminishing ratio, as the staff of officials will need scarce any modification." The dormitory door stood open, and very fresh and pleasant it looked; but the little beds were, perhaps, too closely ranked together. All had good horse-hair mattresses, feather pillows, blankets, linen sheets, and a plumeau above all. A little shelf pulled out of the bedstead-frame to make a seat. A night-table with drawers for hair-brush and comb stood by each. Wardrobes for the boys' clothes occupied one end of the room, and the washing apparatus the other. The private apartments of the schoolmaster (the industrial master is non-resident) and of the Herr Director adjoin the great dormitory. I had a strange sensation as, accepting the Herr's courteous invitation, I followed him into his private domain, and found myself carried away by magic, as it were, from out the concentration of afflictions gathered together beneath our feet, into some calm, oldworld, Gothic sanctum for studious leisure. On shelves enriched with curious carving, stood dignified folios and octavos, gorgeous with renaissance gildings, quaint ancient flagons, grim antique weapons and armor, multitudinous precious waifs of the past, from imperial seals of miraculous intricacy, cabinets and caskets where rich burghers of old kept their treasures, disinterred rings and relics, and carefully preserved gay tapestry, all hung, or niched, half hidden in the dark carved work that veiled the wall. In the centre of the room the present asserted itself in an easel bearing an almost finished oil picture. "I have not much time for such things now," said the director, in reference to it; "but I let it stand there from month to month as a tacit promise to finish it some day." The subject was an antique gateway, with a peasant-bridal passing beneath it : no indefinite amateur work, -the colors too bright and transparent. Then, whilst talking of many things, my companion produced a portfolio of water and oil sketches, lightly touched, full of life and character, -a chronicle, gathered in old vacations, of the strange wild region of the Bayerishe Wald. Then I lingered too willingly over other portfolios of rare engravings, till I felt I must linger no longer. Bidding farewell to the tranquil little Cosmos of art, I descended with my kind guide to the ground-floor once more. From the schoolroom came a great humming and buzzing of excited talk and shrill laughter. My double-nosed friend sat gazing at the schoolroom door in eager expectancy. "The boys are going to drill," explained the Herr Director. Another moment, and out they all came, forming at once in line. They were presently marshalled on the grass-plot outside, under direction of the drill-master, and performing "platoon" with the precision and gravity of veteran grenadiers. When drill was over, they hurried off to the gymnastic ground; and I soon saw such terrific centrifugal spinning, such trapeze tricks, that made me imagine all that limping, maimed humanity was endowed by sudden magic with the agility of monkeys. But I could delay no longer : so, after a grateful farewell to the kind Herr Director, the little green gate swung behind me once more, whilst the double-nosed mystery gazed after me with pensive, doubting eyes. Here my task closes; but I cannot lay down my pen without briefly telling the story, learned by me some days subsequently, of one of those crippled boys of the Austalt I had visited. A poor woman was left widowed some thirty years ago, with many children, one a cripple. Her commune sent him to the asylum, paying his fees. From almost helplessness, by careful treatment, he soon was able to develop an unusual artistic taste and dexterity. He left the institution at fifteen, an accomplished art-workman, helped to support his mother and younger brothers for some years, and is now a celebrity in his native country, complimented by royalty, sought by theatre-managers, whenever a public festival needs graceful decoration. Not a rich man, perhaps, but one of the happiest in his simple independence: unwearied in the work he loves as only the born artist loves the work his genius makes a part of himself. But for that Cripple's Home he must have been condemned to hopeless pauperism. THE WALHALLA. Ir the English traveller ventured to speak without reserve, he would perhaps say that he sometimes felt slightly bored with modern art in Germany. You come from Nuremberg the old to Ratisbon the older; and hardly have you glanced at the cathedral when you are rushed at by half a dozen cabmen who contend for the privilege of driving you off to the Walhalla, which King Lewis of Bavaria, to his own entire satisfaction, built upon a hill six miles from Ratisbon. This edifice, which cost nearly seven hundred thousand pounds, would be called in homely English “King Lewis's folly." It is about as suitable to the place and time where it finds itself as Baroness Burdett Coutts's Market Hall is to Bethnal Green. We commit many absurdities in England; but we could hardly have conceived the grotesque idea of constructing an imitation of a Greek temple in order to place in it the busts of deceased Englishmen who might be deemed to have done eminent service to their country. Something of the kind has, indeed, been done at the Crystal Palace, and is perhaps contemplated at the Albert Hall; but then we are not responsible as a nation for the proceedings of any company of private speculators. This German edifice, being stocked with mere bodiless heads, might, perhaps, deserve to be called Golgotha rather than Walhalla. It might be thought that King Lewis had been a professor of phrenology, but that roguery, except, perhaps, in its very highest forms, is unrepresented in his collection. There is, indeed, one merit in his design to which Englishmen must be sensible, since it frequently occurs to us to raise a subscription for a statue of some eminent person; and when we have got our statue we cannot tell where to put it. Perhaps the magnificent structure at Bethnal Green, which declines to become a fish-market, might succeed as a Walhalla; and if certain of our public monuments, including what remains of the statue in Leicester Square, were placed there, nobody need see them unless so disposed. Let it not be understood that we speak otherwise than with admiration of the Market Hall at Bethnal Green as a building: still less that we do not appreciate and honor the munificent generosity of which it is a monument; but there is, nevertheless, the dreadful difficulty of discovering what is to be done with it. Even King Lewis's temple might be tolerated if it were likely to stand alone; but Germany has wealth, and believes that she has taste; and her tendency towards classic art, or what is called so, may impose on the English tourist who does the country methodically with his guide-book an overwhelming burden during the next few years. Let us venture on the extravagant supposition that this country sent an army to the continent which gained a victory, and that an enterprising artist designed a group representing Cornet Campbell of the Scots Greys returning to the embrace of his family in a busby, surrounded with a laurel wreath, instead of the wide-awake which that gallant officer would have assumed at the first convenient opportunity. We should all ridicule the sort of picture which is now exhibited by a townsman of Albert Dürer for the gratification of patriotic Germany. We have heard that the desire for glory is the infirmity of noble minds; and certainly an Englishman would be thought to be as mad as a hatter who desired to add a model of his head to a collection of blocks in a Walhalla. According to the guide-book, this German edifice contains fourteen "warrior-virgins of the ancient German paradise," and six "Victories;" and if the stone and marble work is to be in proportion to the military exploits of Germany, it would seem desirable that the artists of the country should undertake a wholesale order without delay. The modern German soldier might perhaps think that a “warrior-virgin" who would condescend to employ herself in perpetually drawing beer would be an agreeable, although unscriptural, element of paradise. Three centuries ago, when a valiant German died, they carved his shield of arms, and placed it in a Gothic church. Now they place a barber's block shaped in his likeness in a Grecian temple. The best of the joke is, that King Lewis considered that his curious compound of Greek and barbaric paganism had a Christian character, as is shown by the fact that his sensitive orthodoxy would not concede to Luther a place in his Walhalla. If Luther himself could have been consulted, he might, perhaps, have declined the honor, which was conferred upon him after the king's abdication. There is, of course, a bust of the inevitable Gutenberg, whose statue produces itself in Germany as frequently as the Marquis of Granby's picture occurs on English signboards; and there are also busts of the early emperors, including Rudolph of Hapsburg, who has received from his grateful country a very unsteady pair of legs at Nuremberg, and no legs at all in this Walhalla near Ratisbon. The picture of this emperor in the town-hall of Nuremberg has the legs placed wide apart, as if their owner found a difficulty in steadying himself, and was holding on to the ball and cup in his right hand under a confused belief that it supported him, instead of his supporting it; and if he were an Englishman we should suppose him to be remarking that he is all right. If the portraits of emperors, like giants in caravans, have a tendency to become groggy in the legs, it may be wise to substitute busts; and doubtless the plan adopted by King Lewis relieves the artist from many difficulties of costume, while it enables Germans of aspiring mind to promise themselves places in the Walhalla more reasonably than an English barrister and his mother and aunts destine him for the woolsack. 66 To walk six miles along a muddy road to the foot of the hill on which Walhalla stands, would be rather irritating if there were not a certain decency in placing this heathen temple at a respectful distance from the cathedral of Ratisbon. It happened that the crown prince lately visited this ancient and famous city; and, of course, he was taken to that modern wonder, the Walhalla, which he carefully inspected, as if he were choosing a nice place for his own bust to occupy hereafter. The reception of the crown prince by the Bavarian village on which Walhalla looks down was a much more interesting sight than the blue and gold ceiling and marble pillars of that edifice. These Bavarian villagers can enter Walhalla every day, if they do not prefer, as they probably do, to contemplate the interior of one of their beerpots; and, besides, they would rightly consider that a live crown prince was worth any quantity of busts of defunct kaisers. The prince and his party were allowed an undisturbed inspection of the interior, while curiosity urged, and decency forbade, villagers and strangers to peep through the imperfectly closed doors. It may, perhaps, never be known whether the crown prince put on a pair of the hideous slippers by which the feet of ordinary visitors are prevented from scratching the marble floor. But it may be safely said that even Louis le Grand could not have looked kinglier in those slippers. There are assembled outside the temple its custodians in the blue coat of the Bavarian service, some villagers in their best clothes, others as they have left the plough, and two or three tourists. The little army of observation hastily forms itself as the crown prince emerges. The village girls "carry" their bouquets. The head man makes ready" with his speech. The tourists are at " eyes front." The crown prince receives the flowers kindly, while signifying by expressive pantomime his dread of an oration whereupon the head man takes it out as well as he can in cheering, at which, however, Bavarians are very poor performers. Whatever may be thought of the temple, its position deserves unqualified commendation. It stands on a hill of the height of three hundred and thirteen feet, at the foot of which the Danube flows. Behind the spectator, as he looks south, are the dark hills of the Bavarian forest, which here come close upon the river. Before him is the fertile plain of Straubing, through which the shining river winds, and across which, on a clear day, he may see the snow-clad Alps. On his right are the town of Ratisbon and the hills which shut from his view the upper course of the river and the towns of Ingolstadt and Donauwörth. On his left, the same river flows on and on to Passau, Linz, Vienna, Belgrade, and the Black Sea. As the crown prince stands on that hill, the visible embodiment of the strength and unity of Germany in the present, the mental contrast is inevitable with the reverses which Germany suffered in the past, when she was weak because she was divided. In 1805, and again in 1809, this hill looked down upon the march of a French army which had defeated Austria as completely as the army of the crown prince lately defeated France. On the first occasion, Prussia would not, and on the second she could not, help Austria. It seemed as much a law of nature that France should divide and conquer Germany as that the Danube should flow down from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. Once, indeed, the French were driven from the valley of the Danube, and forced to seek refuge beyond the Rhine; but that was when an English general and army gave cohesion and power to the German Empire. This same hill has seen the scarlet coats of English troopers employed, after the manner of the time, in ravaging Bavaria to punish the elector for adhering to France against the emperor. When we see Bavaria exulting in recent victories, wherein her troops bore honorable part, we cannot but remember that, when Austria, fighting the battle of Germany, was utterly defeated under the walls of Ratisbon, that city was given to the elector as the reward of services to France. Three of the greatest generals that the world has seen have led armies over the district upon which now looks down the representative of one of the greatest of military powers. First came Gustavus Adolphus, against whom Tilly, defending the passage of the Lech, received the wound of which he died at Ingolstadt. On the very next hill to that |