ly decorated.

Let us cross the square and take a look at the Museum, admiring, as we
pass, an immense porphyry vase standing on cubes of the same material,
in front of the steps which lead up to the portico. This portico is
painted in fresco by various hands, under the direction of the
celebrated Peter Cornelius. The paintings form a broad frieze, folding
itself back at each end upon the side wall of the portico, and
interrupted in the middle to give access to the Museum. The portion on
the left contains a whole poem of mythologic cosmogony, treated with
that philosophy and that erudition which the Germans carry into
compositions of this kind; the right, purely anthropologie, represents
the birth, development, and evolution of humanity.

If I were to describe in detail these two immense frescoes, you would
certainly be charmed with the ingenious invention, the profound
knowledge, and the excellent judgment of the artist. The mysteries of
the early creation are penetrated, and everything is faultlessly
scientific. Also, if I should show you them in the form of those fine
German engravings, the lines heightened by delicate shadows, the
execution as accurate as that of Albrecht Duerer, the tone light and
harmonious, you would admire the ordering of the composition, balanced
with so much art, the groups skilfully united one to another, the
ingenious episodes, the wise selection of the attributes, the
significance of each separate thing; you might even find grandeur of
style, an air of magisterial dignity, fine effects of drapery, proud
attitudes, well-marked types, muscular audacities a la Michel Angelo,
and a certain Germanic savagery of fine flavor. You would be struck with
this free handling of great subjects, this vast conceptive power, this
carrying out of an idea, which French painters so often lack; and you
would think of Cornelius almost as highly as the Germans do. But in the
presence of the work itself, the impression is completely different.

I am well aware that fresco-painting, even in the hands of the Italian
masters, skilful as they were in the technical details of their art, has
not the charm of oil. The eye must become habituated to this rude,
lustreless coloring, before we can discern its beauties. Many people who
never say so--for nothing is more rare than the courage to avow a
feeling or an opinion--find the frescoes of the Vatican and the Sistine
frightful; but the great names of Michel Angelo and Ra