doubtful weather. The tribune, the throne
itself, were made ready in the presence-chamber, with hangings in the
grand-ducal colours, laced with gold, together with a speech and an
ode. Late at night, at last, the waggon was heard rumbling into the
courtyard, with the guest arrived in safety, but, if one must confess
one's self, perhaps forbidding at first sight. From a comfortless
portico, with all the grotesqueness of the Middle Age, supported by
brown, aged bishops, whose meditations no incident could distract, Our
Lady looked out no better than an unpretending nun, with nothing to say
the like of which one was used to hear. Certainly one was not
stimulated by, enwrapped, absorbed in the great master's doings; only,
with much private disappointment, put on one's mettle to defend him
against critics notoriously wanting in sensibility, and against one's
self. In truth, the painter whom Carl most unaffectedly enjoyed, the
real vigour of his youthful and somewhat animal taste finding here its
proper sustenance, was Rubens--Rubens reached, as he is reached at his
best, in well-preserved family portraits, fresh, gay, ingenious, as of
privileged young people who could never grow old. Had not he, too,
brought something of the splendour of a "better land" into those
northern regions; if not the glowing gold of Titian's Italian sun, yet
the carnation and yellow of roses or tulips, such as might really grow
there with cultivation, even under rainy skies? And then, about this
time something was heard at the grand-ducal court of certain mysterious
experiments in the making of porcelain; veritable alchemy, for the
turning of clay into gold. The reign of Dresden china was at hand, with
one's own world of little men and women more delightfully diminutive
still, amid imitations of artificial flowers. The young Duke braced
himself for a plot to steal the gifted Herr Boettcher from his enforced
residence, as if in prison, at the fortress of Meissen. Why not bring
pots and wheels to Rosenmold, and prosecute his discoveries there? The
Grand-duke, indeed, preferred his old service of gold plate, and would
have had the lad a virtuoso in nothing less costly than gold--gold
snuff-boxes.

For, in truth, regarding what belongs to art or culture, as elsewhere,
we may have a large appetite and little to feed on. Only, in the things
of the mind, the appetite itself counts for so much, at least in
hopeful, unobstructed youth, with the world before