buildings was novel to me in its modern
adaptation, yet very effective. The delicate detail of ornament
contrasted admirably with the broad fronts and noble facades which they
adorned. A church with two very lofty towers of white marble, with their
fretted cones relieved with cerulean blue, gleamed in the sun; and
near it was a pile not dissimilar to the ducal palace at Venice, but of
nobler and more beautiful proportions, with its portal approached by a
lofty flight of steps, and guarded by the colossal statues of poets and
philosophers--suitably guarded, for it was the National Library.

As I advanced, I found myself in squares and circuses, in every instance
adorned by an obelisk of bronze or the equestrian statue of some royal
hero: I observed a theatre with a lofty Corinthian portico, and a
pediment brilliantly painted in fresco with designs appropriate to its
purpose; an Ionic museum of sculpture, worthy to enshrine the works of
a Phidias or a Praxiteles; and a palace for the painter, of which I was
told the first stone had been rightly laid on the birthday of Raffaelle.
But what struck me most in this city, more than its galleries, temples,
and palaces, its magnificent buildings, splendid paintings, and
consummate statues, was the all-pervading presence and all-inspiring
influence of living and breathing Art. In every street, a school: the
atelier of the sculptor open, the studio of the painter crowded: devoted
pupils, aspiring rivals: enthusiasm, emulation, excellence. Here
the long-lost feudal-art of colouring glass re-discovered; there
fresco-painting entirely revived, and on the grandest scale; while the
ardent researches of another man of genius successfully analyses the
encaustic tenting of Herculaneum, and secures the secret process for the
triumph of modern Art. I beheld a city such as I had mused over amid the
crumbling fanes of Pericles, or, aided alike by memory and fancy, had
conjured up in the palaces and gardens of the Medici.

Such is Munich, a city which, half a century ago, was the gross and
corrupt capital of a barbarous and brutal people. Baron Reisbech, who
visited Bavaria in 1780, describes the Court of Munich as one not at all
more advanced than those of Lisbon and Madrid. A good-natured prince,
fond only of show and thinking only of the chase; an idle, dissolute,
and useless nobility; the nomination to offices depending on women
and priests; the aristocracy devoted to play, and the remaind