The King of Bavaria came over this morning. He is popular as a good king and a clever man, fond of the arts; but is esteemed to have “a bee in his bonnet,” which “bee” appears to have degenerated into a wasp with his son Otho. The Crown Prince of Bavaria is much respected, and has the reputation of being gifted with his father’s talents, with judgment superadded. The appearance of the King is droll enough; tall, with long legs and arms, he walks furiously fast, talks earnestly and loud, and gesticulates violently; he dresses shabbily, and his thin, adust face is inconceivably wrinkled.

The baths which he particularly patronises are those of Brukenau, about twenty miles distant, where he has a palace: these are steel waters, and most people go to strengthen themselves there, after being diluted by the Kissingen springs. The King has perceived the flow of money brought into other States by the resort of strangers to the baths, and is very anxious that his should be celebrated. For this reason, he decorated Dr. Granville’s button-hole with a bit of ribbon, much to the disgust of the native physicians, who are provoked to remark, “Our King is sometimes one fool.” Dr. Granville is practising here, also to the discontent of the native medical people, who see the rich current of English guineas turn away from themselves. However, as he is the cause of many coming here, he has certainly a right to profit by their visits. The King is very fond of receiving the English; he understands our language, and asks, in royal style, a thousand rapid questions; being somewhat deaf, he does not always hear the reply, and droll equivoques have taken place.

Now that the Queen of Wurtemburg, who changes her dress three times a day, and never wears the same gown twice, promenades the gardens, the ladies pay more attention to their toilettes; but there is a great absence of beauty among us. There are no good-looking Germans,—and the handsomest women are one or two Russians. The English do not shine as much as usual. As yet, few persons of rank are arrived; the season for touring with us is not yet commenced, and the good people of Kissingen will hail a second harvest when we hurry across the channel at the end of the London season. Most of the men here are really ill, and come to take care of their health. Accordingly, they obey the physicians, who forbid gambling. It is only on Sunday, when it is the fashion for all our neighbours, from many miles round, to come over to dine at Kissingen, and that gaming-tables are opened in some rooms of the Kurhaus, but they are thinly attended. No gaiety goes on in the Conversation House, with the exception of the réunions; but it is always open—a retreat and a lounge from the promenade in the gardens. There is a piano in it; and it is a specimen of German manners, that ladies go in all simplicity to practise, and even exercise their voices in a public room, without any of the false shame, or vanity, or modesty that an Englishwoman would experience, and also without exciting any observation.

I am ashamed to say I make no progress in German; my eyes and health have both held me back, and our master does not lead me on. Yet, though it is the fashion of his pupils to rebel, he has a practice which I am sure is a good one for any person desirous to speak the language quickly. With perseverance, and a haughty sense of our duty towards him, he gathers us together (about six or eight) in the rooms of some one of us, to read aloud a play of Schiller—we each having a copy of the play with a literal translation on the other side. It is strange how quickly the eye can turn from the original to the translation, and the ear get habituated to remember the words and phrases; it is a royal road to a smattering of the language to which I shall certainly have recourse again, so to try to acquire a better knowledge of this crabbed, and to my memory, antipathetic German.

This evening we drove over to Brocklet, about four miles off, described by Murray as “another watering-place, possessing four strong chalybeate springs, in which the salts and soda are largely mixed with iron. The action of the water is powerfully tonic and exciting.” They taste like ink, but I liked them much, and drank several glasses, with a great sense of deriving benefit from them. I really believe I ought to take a course of steel waters after those of Kissingen; but we are so tired of living at a watering-place that I shall not.

Brocklet is situated in a little wooded dell, quite shut in; it is as secluded, shadowy and still, as the abode of Morpheus, described by Ovid. A few convalescent sick wandered silently under the trees, and a band tried to play, but only produced a lulling murmur, in accordance with a trickling rill and the gentle rustling of the leaves of the trees. In this dim limbo you can live as well and cheaper than at Kissingen. The expense here is not large, but for a family it is not small; our household (three of us and my maid) cost us about eight or nine pounds a week—house-rent and everything included. We could easily spend more, but it is impossible, from the system of things, to spend less. The most agreeable luxury, indeed the only one that there is any opportunity of enjoying, are horses to visit the surrounding country. I wish we had our little Welsh ponies to scamper over the hills away from the malades.

The incidents of our day are few. Now and then Herr Fries, sometimes accompanied by his soi-disant English master, sometimes in all the desolating impotence of his unintelligible German, presses on our attention our pretended compact for four months; we have but one answer—the Commissaire through whose mediation we made the bargain. I do not think Herr Fries has even applied to him, and when we mention the subject he treats it with lofty contempt. Meanwhile our month is nearly concluded, and we shall soon leave Kissingen. I assure myself that I have benefited by the waters, though I gain no belief from my companions who do not drink them, and find the place and its dinners very intolerable. In the midst of our balancing whither to go, a few circumstances have turned the scale. Letters have arrived from a college friend of P. and K., begging us to come to Dresden. There is a railroad we find from Leipsig to Berlin, and from Leipsig to Dresden. My mind has for years been set upon seeing the galleries of pictures in these towns. We have had no warm weather; at the end of July the summer may be considered as well-nigh over. We shall quit this place in a day or two, and penetrate still deeper into Germany, visit cities renowned in history, and pass over ground—the fields of ten thousand battles.

At length we have left Kissingen; and though, while there, we made the best of it, we find, on looking back, that it was very intolerable, and that it is a great blessing to escape from the saddening spectacle of a crowd of invalids assembled en masse. Enormously fat men trying to thin down—delicate women hoping to grow into better case—no children. This is another decree of the physicians: children are prohibited, because the mind must enjoy perfect repose, and children are apt to create disturbance in the hearts of tender parents. It is surprising that, to forward the cure, all letters are not opened first by the doctors, and not delivered if they contain any disagreeable news. As yet, they only exhort the friends of the sick to spare them every painful emotion in their correspondence; but Kissingen will not be perfect, until the post is put under medical surveillance. Do not misunderstand me. I believe the waters of Kissingen to be highly medicinal, and the hours and walks and everything, but the dinners, exceedingly conducive to the restoration of health; but during this season it has not offered any attraction to those who come to a watering-place in search of amusement.

By the help of our German master, Mr. Wertheim, of Munich, who showed himself most zealous and kind, we engaged a voiture to take us to Leipsig in six days. The only error we have found in Murray is, that the price he mentions for the hire of carriages and horses is less than we find it. He may retort, and say we are cheated: but we apply to natives, and, if it be possible, I am sure it would be difficult, to make a better bargain than we have done.

The town of Brukenau lay in our route; the Baths, two miles beyond, were out of it: however, we bargained to visit them. The road lay along the level close under the hills, and we wound for twenty miles through the wooded ravine. The characteristic of Franconia, on the edges of which we still were, appears to be gentle valleys, thridded by small clear streams; the immediate banks either meadow or arable, and closed in by hills, covered with forests of beech, interspersed by the weeping birch. Brukenau itself is beyond this circle, and entered into the territories of the Bishops of Fulda: but in the new distribution of kingdoms, Brukenau fell to the share of Bavaria, and the town of Fulda to the Duke of Hesse Cassel. At Brukenau, leaving the high-road, we entered the valley of the Sinn, and penetrated into the very sheltered bosom of the hills towards the Baths. There is a sense of extreme tranquillity in these secluded spots in Bavaria, where you seem cast on an unknown, unvisited region, and yet, on reaching the watering-place itself, find all the comforts of life “rise like an exhalation” around.

The hills round Brukenau are much higher and more romantic than at Kissingen. They are covered with fine beech forests, and traversed in every part by paths, interspersed with seats, constructed for the convenience of the visitors; and so extensive, that you may wander for ten or twenty miles in their depths. The public gardens, instead of being a melancholy strip of ground, planted with dry and dusty-looking trees, are extensive, and resemble an English pleasure-ground; a brawling stream, the Sinn, adorns them; everything invites the wanderer to stroll on, and to enjoy in fine weather Nature’s dearest gifts, shady woods, open lawns, and views of beautiful country; loitering beside a murmuring stream, or toiling on awhile, and then resting as you gaze on a wider prospect. The waters here are chalybeate and tonic; they taste of ink, but sparkle in the glass, and I found them pleasant. We arrived at the dinner hour, and sat down in the large and well-built Kursaal, where the tables were spread, to a dinner somewhat better than that allowed us at Kissingen, and we enjoyed the novelty of salad, fruits, and ice. We found several familiar faces from Kissingen come here to strengthen themselves with steel waters. Altogether the place looked at once more sociable and more retired; and, above all, the country around was, without being striking from crag and precipice, far more picturesque than at Kissingen. The whole establishment is in the hands of government, and the houses where the visitors lodge are placed in the midst of the garden. Things are managed both more cheaply and more agreeably than at Kissingen. The visitors, however, are never so numerous, and the style of the place is more quiet. The king has a palace, where he spends the season, and is very courteous to the English. We wished to sleep at the Baths, but unfortunately no beds were to be had, though great exertion was made by several good-natured visitors to procure them for us. Oddly enough, persons we had been accustomed to meet, without speaking, day after day at Kissingen, here had the air of familiar acquaintance. We were sorry to go away, and loitered several hours in the gardens, and visited the old kursaal, a rather dilapidated room. The walls were hung with portraits of the ancient Prince-Bishops of Fulda—the discoverers, and erst the possessors, of these medicinal springs. I should have been glad to stay at least a week in this agreeable retirement, and drink the waters; but we could not now alter our arrangements.

We were obliged to return to the town of Brukenau to sleep; as the golden hues of evening increased at once the beauty and the stillness of the happy valley, with regret we tore ourselves away. Murray bids us go to the Hotel of the Post at Brukenau, and we learned afterwards that this is really a good and comfortable inn. I fancy the master has had some quarrel with the authorities at the Baths, for we were bidden go to another inn; in an evil hour we obeyed. It was very dirty and comfortless.

Leaving Brukenau the following morning early, we by degrees quitted the wooded hills and grassy valleys of Franconia, and entered the domains of the Prince of Hesse Cassel.

It was in these territories that a scene was enacted during the last century, so overlooked by history, that I believe by-and-bye it will only be remembered (how is it even now?) by the commentators on Schiller. When we read of the Hessians in the American war, we have a vague idea that our government called in the aid of foreign mercenaries to subdue the revolted colonies; an act which roused Lord Chatham to exclaim in the House of Peers, “If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms, never—never—never!” We censure the policy of government, we lament the obstinacy of George III., who, exhausting the English levies, had recourse to “the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder;” and “devoted the Americans and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty.” But our imagination does not transport itself to the homes of the unfortunate Germans; nor is our abhorrence of the tyranny that sent them to die in another hemisphere awakened. Lord Chatham does indeed in the same speech, from which the above quotations are made, cast a half-pitying glance on the victims of their native sovereign, when he talks of “traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign sovereign.” Schiller, in his tragedy of “Cabal and Love,” describes the misery brought on his own countrymen more graphically. “A petty German prince,” namely, the Duke of Hesse Cassel, or perhaps the Margrave of Anspach, who also dealt in this unholy traffic, sends a present of jewels to his mistress—she is astonished at their magnificence, and asks the bringer of them, how the Duke could pay for such immeasurably costly jewels? The servant replies—“They cost him nothing. Seven thousand children of the soil started yesterday for America; they pay for all.” “But not compelled?” the lady demands; the poor man, who has two sons among the recruits, replies—“O God, no! perfect volunteers. True, some forward lads stepped out of the ranks and asked the colonel, how dear the prince sold his yoke of men? But our gracious lord caused all the regiments to be marched to the parade ground, to shoot down the jackanapes. We heard the report of the firelocks, saw their brains scattered on the ground, and the whole army shouted ‘Hurrah for America!’ Then the loud drums told us it was time. On one side shrieking orphans followed their living father; on the other a distracted mother ran to cast her sucking child on the bayonets; here a pair of betrothed lovers were parted by sabre blows; and there grey beards stood struck by despair, and at last flung their crutches after the young fellows who were off to the New World. Oh! and with all that the deafening roll of the drum mingled, for fear the Almighty should hear us praying!” We were told that the facts were worse even than this picture; since when first the order was given out for the enlisting of the soldiers, hundreds deserted their homes and betook themselves to the neighbouring mountains of Franconia, and were hunted down like wild animals, and starved into surrender.

History fails fearfully in its duty when it makes over to the poet the record and memory of such an event. One, it is to be hoped, that can never be renewed. And yet what act of cruelty and tyranny may not be reacted on the stage of the world, which we boast of as civilised, if one man has uncontrolled power over the lives of many, the unwritten story of Russia may hereafter tell.

The country, as we went on, became uninteresting—a sandy soil, and few trees. We dined at Fulda, an agreeable, quiet-looking, old German town, once the capital of the prince-bishops of that diocese. We visited the Cathedral, a fine old building, containing some holy relics, which are preserved in little painted wooden boxes kept behind the altar. They had not the air of sanctity about them, and the man who shewed the chancel handled them with great indifference. Afterwards, we went to the Church of St. Michael, where we were taken to some subterranean vaults, in which Aniaschiadus, a saint and confessor, lived, I think, they said, for seven years, hid from the persecution of the Arians. Do not wonder that I speak in doubt, for our guide was German, and we could only guess at his meaning. Enough to learn that one persecuted for his religious faith did pass a number of years in this dark vault, in fear, want, and suffering; and came out, probably, to persecute in his turn—such is the usual result of this sort of controversy. Ministers of religion have been in all ages too easily led to destroy the bodies of those whose souls they believe to be lost. There is a palace here, standing on the highest part of the town; and a show of military. The city has, indeed, an individual appearance, that stamps it on the memory, without being sufficiently striking for description.

This evening we slept at Buttlar, at a quiet, comfortable, country inn. Buttlar is a small village; this the only good house; but it had all the charm of an English way-side inn in a retired spot, where they are accustomed to receive visitors in search of the picturesque. The charges in this part of the journey were very moderate. We paid highest, of course, at the bad inn, at Brukenau; and the charges at all appear quite arbitrary. Fancy prices put on by the landlord, according to the appearance of his guests. As we pass also, without knowing it, from one State to another, the coins vary. The money is easy enough when not confounded: a Bavarian florin is reckoned as two francs; a thaler, as three shillings. Sometimes we pay in one money; sometimes in another. On the whole, the Prussian thaler, divided into three coins of ten groschen each, equivalent to a shilling, is the most intelligible; but the Bavarian florin denotes greater cheapness in price.

We now entered the depths of the Thuringerwald; and, stopping at Eisenach for dinner, hired a carriage—the distance was not much more than a mile, but the day was wet—to take us to the Castle of Wartburg. Luther, on his return from the Diet of Worms, was waylaid by his friend, the Elector of Saxony, and carried thither as to a place of safety. He remained ten months, passing for a young nobleman; and busily employed in translating the Bible, and composing other works. The Castle of Wartburg is situated on a steep wooded eminence, ascended by a winding road, thickly shaded by trees. The chamber that Luther inhabited has one large window, overlooking a wide extent of hill and dale, stretching far away over the Thuringian Forest—a noble prospect; and the very site, high-raised and commanding, was well suited to the lofty and unbending soul of the recluse. This chamber is preserved in the same state as when it harboured its illustrious guest; and, except his bed, his furniture remains: his table, his stool, his chair, and ink-stand, are there; and if not the stain on the wall, marking his exploit of throwing his ink-stand at the Arch Tempter’s head, there is at least the place where the ink was—some tourist has carried off the memorable plaster. We saw, also, several suits of armour belonging to various heroes of olden time here preserved. Hearing the names of prince, heroine, or even of illustrious robber (names honoured in history), who once endued these iron vestments—looking round on the armoury, or out of the window on the Thuringerwald—I felt happy in the sense of satisfied curiosity; or rather, of another sentiment to which I cannot give a precise name, but which swells the heart and makes the bosom glow, as one views, and touches, and feels surrounded by the remains of illustrious antiquity. The honoured name of Luther had more than any other right and power to awaken this: those of warrior or king only influence the imagination, as associated with poetry and romance; his is rendered sacred by his struggle, the most fearful human life presents, with antique mis-beliefs and errors upheld by authority.

We saw nothing of Gotha, where we slept; though, for Prince Albert’s sake, I would willingly have become better acquainted with his native place. There is something pleasing in the mere outward aspect of these Protestant German towns: they look clean, orderly, and well-built. Hail to the good fight, the heart says everywhere; hail to the soil whence intellectual liberty gained, with toil and suffering, the victory—not complete yet—but which, thanks to the men of those time, can never suffer entire defeat! In time, it will spread to those countries which are still subject to Papacy.

We breakfasted this morning at Erfurt, and made duteous pilgrimage to the Augustine convent which Luther inhabited as a monk. In the church, he said his first mass; and it remains in the same state, with a rude old pulpit, in which Luther preached, and carved wooden galleries. His cell is preserved as when he lived in it. It is, like conventual cells all over the world, a small, square, high chamber. Here is the Bible that he first found in the library of the Convent; studying which his powerful mind began to perceive the errors of the Church to which he belonged. The convent is now used as an Orphan-house. There is a gallery in it, with a strange series of pictures. Death is represented as coming upon men and women at all moments, during every occupation—the Beauty at her toilette—the Miser counting his money—the Hero in the hour of victory—the King on his throne—the Mother fostering her first-born—the Bride, proud in her husband. It is a strange idea: the pictures are badly executed enough, yet some are striking.

The country lost, as we proceeded, all its beauty—vast uninclosed tracts of arable land spread out round. From a height, we looked down on Weimar. The trees of its park were the only verdure visible; for the harvest being over, the land was all stubble: no hedge, no meadow, no shady covert. I pitied the poets who had been destined to live there; for however agreeable royal parks and gardens may be, they are a poor compensation for the free and noble beauty of nature.

Dining at Weimar, we spent two or three hours in running about to visit the lions. It is a pleasant looking town. I do not know exactly how to present to your imagination the appearance of these German towns. The streets are wide; and thus, though the houses are high, they look airy, and, though badly paved, clean: the houses are white, and have not the air of antiquity. As I have said once or twice before, an appearance of order and tranquillity is their characteristic. We visited the abodes of Wieland, Schiller, and Göthe, who are the great people here: that is, we saw the outside of the houses in which they had dwelt; for, being inhabited by a fresh generation, the insides are not show places. The palace is a handsome building; and three apartments are being decorated in honour of those chosen poets. The larger one for Göthe; a smaller for Schiller; a sort of octagon closet for Wieland. The walls are adorned with frescoes of subjects taken from their works. I am not sure that I should give this superiority to Göthe: Schiller has always appeared to me the greater man: he is more complete. The startling quality of Göthe is his insight into the secret depths of the human mind; his power of dissecting motives—of holding up the mirror to our most inmost sensations; and also in dramatic scenes of touching pathos, and passages of overflowing eloquence: but he wants completeness, and never achieves a whole. “Faust” is a fragment—“Wilhelm Meister” is a fragment. It is true, this has a closer resemblance to life which seldom affords an artistic beginning, middle, and end to its strange enchainment of events. Still, the conception of a perfect whole has ever held the highest place in our standard of a poet’s power of imagination. But I will spare you further criticism from an ignorant person.

We saw the coffins of the poets in the dark tomb, placed not side by side, princely etiquette forbad, but in the same narrow chamber with those of the princes who honoured them. These coffins suggest a wonderful contempt for the material of life; Camoëns exclaimed, when dying in an hospital, “Lo! the vast scene of my fortunes is contracted to this narrow bed!” This tomb told us that princely protection and the aspirations of genius were shut up in those dust-containing coffers; yet not so, while the works of the one endure, and the memory of the acts of the others survive in the minds of posterity. This friendship after death, this desire to share even in the grave the poet’s renown, after having sheltered and honoured him during life, makes one love these good German sovereigns. Mr. Landor says the Germans possess nine-tenths of the thought that exists in the world. There is in even larger proportion honour for thought. The gardens of the palace are agreeably laid out; and except that turf is wanting, resemble an English park, with fine old trees and a river running through. This spot was a favourite resort, and there is a pretty shady summer-house overlooking the river, where the sovereigns held réunions, and entertained their poet friends; many a June evening was there spent in refined intercourse. There is also a pavilion in the garden which Göthe inhabited in the summer months.

The park of Weimar was an oasis in the desert. We found for many miles after leaving it, the same dreary landscape; flat and unmarked as the sea; not as barren, for the country is all corn-fields but as no hedge intersects them, nor any bush shows its tufted top, nor any trees appear except the ill-looking poplars mixed with cherry-trees that line the road, nothing can be more unvaried or uninteresting than these vast plains; uninteresting indeed, in outward aspect, yet claiming our attention and exciting our curiosity as the scene of a thousand battles, above all, of that last struggle, when yielding the ground inch by inch, mile by mile, Napoleon was driven from Dresden to the Rhine.

Some slight interruption occurs in the uniform aspect of these bare plains, when they are intersected by the course of the Saale, a common name for a river in Germany, which winds through a pleasing village. On the heights that surround, stand old castles renowned in story. We soon left this pleasant change behind, and came again on the naked country, sweeping over miles and miles; our guide-books speak of this as the scenes of battles and victories of Gustavus Adolphus, and Frederic the Great. The first name claims our admiration, and we looked with respect on the stone that marks the spot where he fell. Frederic was a very clever man, and except for the evils which, as a conqueror, he brought on his subjects, he did them good as far as his limited views permitted him. But there is no sovereign whose acts fill so many pages in history, for whom one cares so little as Frederic. Cold-hearted, if not false, the dogged determination and invincible purpose that form his best characteristic, yet centred so narrowly in self, that he excites no jot of interest. It was otherwise in his own day. He was a king, a man of talent, a warrior who encountered difficulties that had overwhelmed a weaker mind, and surmounted them. He had the charm of manners, which, though cruelly capricious to his dependents, were, when he chose, irresistibly fascinating; such qualities awoke, while he lived, the admiration of the world; but with the Prince de Ligne died the last of his enthusiastic admirers.

Another name, greater and newer than his, has thrust him from his place, and occupies our attention—in one respect his entire opposite; for Napoleon was great in success, Frederic in defeat. Perhaps the absence of heaven-born legitimacy took from the latest hero of the world who has joined the dead, the unflinching, stubborn will of Frederic in adversity; besides, it would seem that Napoleon disdained to fight, except when he could gain a world by victory. Here he lost one; and a struggle that lasted many days in the environs of Leipsig, drove him from Germany. When reduced to what he seemed to look upon as the paltry kingdom of France, he played double or quits with that and lost all.

We looked out for the Elster, where the bridge was blown up which cost Poniatowski his life, and lost to Napoleon twenty-five thousand French soldiers taken prisoners. I am told that I now look upon the very spot; that at the end of the garden of the Hôtel de Saxe this tragic scene was enacted: it seems as if a good hunter might leap the narrow stream which decided the fate of an empire.

Here ends a very fatiguing journey. The carriage we hired was to appearance roomy and comfortable; but being badly hung, it was inconceivably uneasy; and partly, I believe, the effect of the Kissingen waters still hanging about me, (I ought to have spent a week at least at Brukenau,) I never suffered more fatigue and even distress on a journey. Right glad I am to be here. To-morrow we commit ourselves to a railroad—blessings on the man who invented them. Every traveller must especially bless him in these naked, monotonous plains.

The Hôtel de Saxe is very good, and not much dearer than any other. They are expecting the King of Prussia to-morrow, and the staircases are carpeted and decorated with evergreens. The Oberkellner, or upper waiter—a very important personage in these German hotels—is an intelligent little fellow, and speaks English perfectly.

Congratulate me that so far I am advanced in the heart of this mighty country. Though I skim its surface without having any communication with its inhabitants, still the eye is gratified, the imagination excited, and curiosity satisfied.

The distance from Leipsig to Berlin is 105 miles; the greater part an arid sandy plain. Earlier in the season it had not been so bad, for the land is arable; but now the stubble remaining after harvest was the only sign left of cultivation. The sense the eye received of nakedness was in no way relieved—no hedge, no tree, no meadow, no bush. One break there was when we crossed the Elbe, and a line of verdure and wood follows the course of the river. I read “The Heart of Mid-Lothian” during the journey, which occupied six or seven hours, and the time passed rapidly.

There are three classes of carriages, and the price is not dear:—1st class, five and a half thalers (a thaler is three shillings); 2d class, three and a half thalers; 3d class, two and a half. A few miles beyond Leipsig we entered the Prussian territory, and changed carriages. The Prussian carriages are very much more roomy and comfortable. The pace we went, when going, was very great, so that I heard passengers call out from the windows imploring that the speed might be lessened. Much time was lost, however, at every one of the numerous stations, where the carriage-doors were thrown open with the announcement of stopping for funfzehn minuten, or funf minuten, or even drei minuten, (fifteen, five and three minutes,) when the passengers poured out, and comforted themselves with all sorts of slight refreshments—light wine, light beer, light cakes and cherries, nothing much in themselves, but a good deal of it—offered by a whole crowd of dealers in such wares. On arriving at Berlin we went to the hotel Stadt Rom, Unter-den-Linden, which we find very comfortable, the host attentive, and the table d’hôte good.

We are here in the best street, which has a double avenue of lime-trees in the middle, running its whole length. One way it leads to the Brandenburg gate, the other to a spot that forms the beauty of Berlin as a capital—a wide open space, graced by a beautiful fountain, and an immense basin of polished granite, made from one of those remarkable boulders found on the sandy plain, fifty miles from Berlin; adorned also by the colonnade of the New Museum, opposite to which stands the Guard-house, the Italian Opera, and the University. The building of the Arsenal is near, and the whole forms a splendid assemblage of buildings. After dinner, we have walked under the lime-trees to the Brandenburg gate—a most beautiful portal, built on the model of the Propylæum at Athens, on a larger scale. Napoleon carried off the car of Victory which decorates the top; it was brought back after the battle of Waterloo. Before its capture it was placed as if leaving the city behind, to rush forward on the world; on its return, it was placed returning to and facing the city. The square before this gate is chiefly inhabited by foreign Ministers: Lord Burghersh has his house here. Outside are extensive public gardens, in the usual foreign style—that is, numerous avenues of trees, in a herbless sandy soil.

Our first visit in the morning was to the Museum. It is at some little distance from the hotel, and the walk led us through the best part of Berlin. The building itself is beautiful; the grand circular hall by which you reach the statue-gallery, and which again you look down upon from the open gallery that leads to the pictures, surpasses in elegance and space anything I have ever seen, except in the Vatican. At once we rushed among the pictures—our only inducement, except curiosity to see a renowned capital city, to visit Berlin. The gallery is admirably arranged in schools, and the pictures have an excellent light on them; and in each room is hung up a list of pictures and their painters contained in it. First we saw the Io, of Correggio, a most lovely picture, and near it Leda and the Swan, by the same artist; and then our eyes were attracted to one still lovelier in its chaste and divine beauty—a Virgin and Child by Raphael. The Mother is holding a book in one hand, the other arm encircles her infant. It bears the impress of the first style of the divinest of painters, when his warm heart was animated by pious enthusiasm, and his imagination inspired by a celestial revelation of pure beauty. It was once the gem of the Colonna Gallery at Rome, and was sold by the Duke of Lanti to the King of Prussia.

Next to these I was most struck by a picture by Francia, the Virgin in glory, worshipped by six saints. There is a remarkable picture by Rembrandt, a portrait of the Duke Adolph of Gueldres, shaking his fist at his father. The countenance bears the liveliest impress of angry passion: the impious madness of the parricide mantles in the face, and gives wild energy to the furious gesture. The gallery is rich in portraits by Van Dyck—some of his finest: but I must not send you a mere catalogue. From room to room we wandered; sometimes desirous of seeing all, and so penetrating into every nook—sometimes satisfied to sit for hours before a masterpiece.

Yes, I dedicated hours this morning,—I know not how many,—to a painting that has given me more delight than any I ever saw. I had often heard the first style of Raphael preferred to his third, and thought it a superstition; but I am a convert—entirely a convert. Apart, locked up in a room with some of the gold-grounded deformed productions of the Byzantine artists, stands, except one, the largest painting of Raphael’s in the world; the subject is the adoration of the Magi. It is in his first style—it is half destroyed—the outline of some of the figures only remains; no sacrilegious hand has ever touched to restore it, and in its ruin it is divine. The Baby Jesus is lying on the ground, and Mary, with an angel at each hand, kneels before the lowly couch of her child; on the other side are the kings bearing their gifts; and far in the background are the shepherds visited by angels, announcing peace and good-will to man. I never saw such perfect grace and ideal beauty as in the kneeling figures of the Virgin and her attendant angels. Composed majesty and deep humility are combined in the attitudes. The countenances show their souls abstracted from all earthly thought, and absorbed by pure and humble adoration. Adoration from the adorable: this is what only an artist of the highest class can portray. You perceive that the painter imagined perfect beings, who deserve a portion of the worship which they pay unreservedly to the Creator, and such are saints and angels in the mind of a Catholic. You who so much admire the unfinished ideas of Leonardo da Vinci, would delight in this relic of a greater man: will you receive any from this attempt to convey what I felt? I read somewhere the other day, that speech is one mode of communicating our thoughts—painting another—music another—neither can, with any success, go beyond its own department to that of the other—thus, words can never show forth the beauty of which painting presents the living image to the eyes.

It may be a defect, that I take more pleasure in graceful lines, and attitudes, and expression, than in colouring. Sir Thomas Lawrence told me that it was one, and that an uncultivated eye was, therefore, often better pleased by statuary than painting; and he said this, because I looked with more delight on some inimitable bronze-statues standing on his mantel-piece, preferring them to a richly-coloured painting on which he was accustomed to rest his eye while at work; so to familiarise it to the fullest and most glowing hues—I am not sure that he is right.

Let us take, for instance, two pictures by the prince of painters—the Adoration of the Magi among his first;—The Transfiguration his last work. In artistic power, this picture is said to surpass every other in the world. The genius of its author is shown in its admirable composition, in the spirit of the attitudes, in the life that animates each figure, without alluding to technical merits, which, of course, are felt even by those who cannot define, nor even point them out. Yet, this picture does not afford me great pleasure—no face is inspired by holy and absorbing passion; and the woman, the most prominent figure, is a portrait of the Fornarina, whose hard countenance is peculiarly odious. Turn from this to the half-effaced picture at Berlin—the radiant beauty here expressed, strikes a chord in my soul—all harmony, all love. It is not the art of the painter I admire; it is his pure, exalted soul, which he incarnated in these lovely forms. I remember Wordsworth’s theory, that we enter this world bringing with us “airs from heaven,” memories of a divine abode and angelic fellowship which we have just left, that flake by flake fall from our souls as they degenerate and are enfeebled by earthly passions. Raphael seems to confirm this theory; for, in his early pictures, there is a celestial something absent from his latter, a beauty not found on earth—inspiring as we look, a deep joy, only felt in such brief moments when some act of self-sacrifice exalts the soul, when love softens the heart, or nature draws us out of ourselves, and our spirits are rapt in ecstacy, and enabled to understand and mingle with the universal love.

The gallery is open from ten till three. Unfortunately, the fatigue of the journey made me very ill able to endure much toil; and you know,—who knows not?—that visiting galleries produces extreme weariness. I went back to the hotel several times to repose, and then returned to the gallery. I desired to learn by heart—to imbibe—to make all I saw a part of myself, so that never more I may forget it. In some sort I shall succeed. Some of the forms of beauty on which I gazed, must last in my memory as long as it endures; but this will be at the expense of others, which even now are fading and about to disappear from my mind. I feel, though usually I prefer statuary to painting, and there are some statues—and particularly an ancient bronze of a boy praying, that I have regarded with delight; still my mind was full before, the rest can but overflow. The gallery of Berlin will, I fear, become a vague, though glorious dream, for the most part, leaving distinct only a few images that can never be effaced.

Yesterday evening we went to the opera—the house is small, but pretty. The piece was Massaniello, at which I grieved. I want German music in Germany. There was no remarkable singer. There was no ballet; and all was over, according to the good German custom, by ten o’clock.

To-day, we have been doing our duty in sightseeing; though I grudged every minute spent away from the gallery. There are some good pictures, however, in the palace, especially the portraits of our Charles I. and his Queen, by Van Dyck. The apartments are very handsome. They have an ungainly custom here, as in Holland, of providing the visiter with list-shoes, to preserve their shining parquets. I rebelled against putting on slippers other people had worn, and forced the Custode, grumblingly, to acknowledge that my shoes could not hurt the floor. The rooms of the palace are chiefly associated with the name of Napoleon, and are decorated by vases of Sèvre china and by portraits of himself and Josephine, presents from the conqueror to the conquered, which were impertinent enough at the time; but the spirit is changed now, and they remain as trophies of Prussian victories. I looked with great interest on the various portraits of the celebrated Queen of Prussia. In all, she is inexpressibly beautiful. Her face is thoroughly individual;—animation—independence—a truly feminine, yet, (for want of a better word I must say,) a wild loveliness gives it a peculiar charm. There is a portrait of her at twelve years of age—dignity, true nobility, artless innocence, and evident strength of character, adorn a countenance in the first bloom of untainted girlhood.

We visited the Museum. I did not much care for what I saw. There are many relics of Frederic the Great, and a wax figure, dressed up in his old clothes, is placed on a faded throne beneath a shabby canopy—all such as he used in life. There is nothing to excite respect in this sort of spectacle. It is the misfortune of those who live to be old that they are always handed down to posterity as decrepid and feeble. If I were a queen, I would never suffer myself to be painted after thirty; or, if well preserved, five-and-thirty at the latest. Queens and beauties—kings and heroes—all must pay our nature’s sad tribute, and lose even individuality and charm, as the moss of age creeps over the frame, which, becoming weak and shattered, loses proportion and grace; but it is foolish to leave behind these emblems of decay. Frederic the Great, as he first met Voltaire at the castle of Meuse, near Cleves, or as he wrote his dispatch on a drum after one of his first battles, would indeed be the Frederic, whose deeds, if evil, at least were instinct with power and life. This doll, dressed up to represent a decrepid, feeble old man, is the most dreary sarcasm that can be imagined.

The prospect from the palace windows is really grand: the Platz in front—the Museum—the Fountain—the whole range of buildings—form a coup-d’œil that transcends that of the Place de la Concorde, at Paris.

I desired to visit some of the manufactures of Berlin steel, and expected to see beautiful specimens. It is a curious fact, how difficult it is to find out where you ought to go, and how to see any sight, unless it be a regular lion, or you have an exact address. We took a drosky, and drove to a shop; it was closed: to another; there was no such thing. We returned to our hotel, and learnt that we had been spending many useless groschen by not taking the drosky by the hour instead of the course. Having reformed this oversight, we set off again in search of the manufactory. You know the history of the building of Berlin. Frederic the Great, desirous that his capital should rival that of other kingdoms, inclosed a large space within its walls, and ordered the vacancy to be filled up with houses. This occasions a great difference between Berlin and most foreign cities. In the latter, the aim is to save land, and to encroach on heaven. Here, the builders endeavoured to cover as much space as possible, and many of the finest houses are only two stories high. Wide and grass-grown, the streets, all straight and at right angles, stretch far away, with scarce a solitary passenger or drosky here and there, making the solitude even more felt. There is another peculiarity in this wide-spread city. It is built on the flattest plain in the world. The Spree stagnates beneath its bridges, and the drains, just covered by planks, stagnate in the streets, and are by no means agreeable during the present heat and drought.

At length, after driving about from one place to another, asking our way as well as we could, resolved not to give in, but much puzzled, we reached the Eisengiesserei, or iron-foundry, just outside the Oranienburg gate. We alighted from the drosky and walked into a large court-yard, and into the sort of immense shed in which is the foundry. We asked every one we met where the works in steel were sold; no one could tell us. We wandered about a long time. The men were at work making moulds in sand. At length a vast cauldron of molten metal was brought from the furnace, and poured into a mould. There is something singular in boiling metal, the sight of which gives a new idea to the mind, a new sensation to the soul. Boiling water, or other liquid, presents only an inanimate element, changed to the touch, not to the eye; but molten metal, red and fiery, takes a new appearance, and seems to have life,—the heat appears to give it voluntary action, and the sense of its power of injury adds to the emotion with which it is regarded; as well as the fact that it takes and preserves the form into which it flows. In this every-day world a new sensation is a new delight. I have read somewhere of a French lady, who went to Rome to kiss the Pope’s toe, because it made her heart beat quicker so to do. Certainly, seeing the diminutive Cyclops pour the glowing living liquid from their cauldron, viewing it run fiercely into the various portions of the mould, and then grow tranquil and dark as its task was fulfilled, imparted, I know not why or how, a thrill to the frame.