me.

You see, it is easy to grumble, and especially in a cheerful, open,
light, and smiling city, crammed with works Of art, ancient and modern,
its architecture a study of all styles, and its foaming beer, said by
antiquarians to be a good deal better than the mead drunk in Odin's
halls, only seven and a half kreuzers the quart. Munich has so much,
that it, of course, contains much that can be criticised. The long, wide
Ludwig Strasse is a street of palaces,--a street built up by the old
king, and regarded by him with great pride. But all the buildings are
in the Romanesque style,--a repetition of one another to a monotonous
degree: only at the lower end are there any shops or shop-windows, and
a more dreary promenade need not be imagined. It has neither shade nor
fountains; and on a hot day you can see how the sun would pour into it,
and blind the passers. But few ever walk there at any time. A street
that leads nowhere, and has no gay windows, does not attract. Toward
the lower end, in the Odeon Platz, is the equestrian statue of Ludwig,
a royally commanding figure, with a page on either side. The street is
closed (so that it flows off on either side into streets of handsome
shops) by the Feldherrnhalle, Hall of the Generals, an imitation of the
beautiful Loggia dei Lanzi, at Florence, that as yet contains only two
statues, which seem lost in it. Here at noon, with parade of infantry,
comes a military band to play for half an hour; and there are always
plenty of idlers to listen to them. In the high arcade a colony of doves
is domesticated; and I like to watch them circling about and wheeling
round the spires of the over-decorated Theatine church opposite, and
perching on the heads of the statues on the facade.

The royal palace, near by, is a huddle of buildings and courts, that I
think nobody can describe or understand, built at different times and in
imitation of many styles. The front, toward the Hof Garden, a grassless
square of small trees, with open arcades on two sides for shops, and
partially decorated with frescoes of landscapes and historical subjects,
is "a building of festive halls," a facade eight hundred feet long, in
the revived Italian style, and with a fine Ionic porch. The color is the
royal, dirty yellow.

On the Max Joseph Platz, which has a bronze statue of King Max, a seated
figure, and some elaborate bas-reliefs, is another front of the palace,
the Konigsbau, an imitation, not fully carried