striking, though many pleasing pictures; but I have added several names to my list of German artists.* To-day at the Kunstverein, there was a series of small pictures framed together, the subjects from Victor Hugo's romance of Notre Dame. These attracted general attention, partly as the work of a stranger, partly from their own merit, and the popularity of Victor Hugo. The painter, M. Couder, is a young Frenchman, now on his return from Italy to Paris. I understand that he has obtained leave to paint one of the frescos in the Pinakothek, as a trial of skill. Of the designs from Notre Dame, the central and largest picture is the scene in the garret between Phoebus and Esmeralda, when the former is stabbed by the priest Frollo: one can hardly imagine a more admirable subject for painting, if properly treated; but this is a failure in effect and in character. It fails in effect because the light is too generally diffused : -it is day-light, not lamp-light. The monk ought to have been thrown completely into shadow, only just visible—terribly, mysteriously

*This list will be subjoined at the end of these Sketches.

visible, to the spectator. It fails in character because the figure of Esmeralda, instead of the elegant, fragile, almost etherial creature she is described, rather reminds us of a coarse Italian contadina; and, for the expression—a truly poetical painter would have averted the face, and thrown the whole expression into the attitude. It will hardly be believed that of such a subject, the painter has made a cold picture, merely by not feeling the bounds within which he ought to have kept. The small pictures are much better, particularly the Sachet embracing her child, and the tumult in front of Notre Dame. There were some other striking pictures by the same artist, particularly Chilperic and Fredegonde strangling the young queen Galsuinde, painted with shocking skill and truth. That taste for horrors, which is now the reigning fashion in French art and French literature, speaks ill for French sensibilité-a word they are so fond of-for that sensibility cannot be great which requires such extravagant stimuli. Painters and authors, all alike! They remind me of the sentimental negresses of queen Carathis, in the

Tale of Vathek-"qui avaient un gout particulier pour les pestilences." Couder, however, has undoubted talent. His portrait of de Klenze, painted since he came here, is all but alive.

In the evening at the theatre with M. and Mad. S. We had Karl von Holtei's melodrama of Lenore, founded on Bürger's wellknown ballad;-but with the omission of the spectre, which was something like acting Hamlet "with the part of Hamlet left out, by particular desire." Lenore is, however, one of the prettiest and most effective of the petites pièces I have seen here-very tragical and dolorous of course. Madll. Schöller acted Lenore with more feeling and power than I thought was in her. There is a mad scene, in which she fancies her lover at her window, calling to her, as the spectre calls in the ballad—

"Sleep'st thou, or wak'st thou, Leonore?"

And which was so fine as a picture, and so well acted, that it quite thrilled me-no easy matter. Holtei is one of the first dramatists in Germany for comedies, melo-dramas, farces,

and musical pieces. In this particular department he has no rival. He played to-night himself, being for his own benefit, and sung his popular Mantel Lied, or cloak-song, which like his other songs, may be heard from one end of Germany to the other.

18th. A grand military fête. The consecration of the great bronze obelisk, which the king has erected in the Karoline-Platz, to the glory and the memory of the thirty-seven thousand Bavarian conscripts who followed, or rather were dragged by, Napoleon to the fatal Russian campaign in 1812. Of these, about six thousand returned alive: most of them mutilated, or with diseases which shortened their existence. Of many thousands no account ever reached home. They perished, God knows how or where. There was, in particular, a detachment, or a battery of six thousand Bavarians, so completely destroyed that it was as if the earth had swallowed them, or the snows had buried them, for not one remained to tell the tale of how or where they died. Of those who did return, about one thousand one hundred survived, of whom four hundred continue in the

army; the rest had returned to their civil pursuits, and had become peasants or tradesmen in different parts of the kingdom. Now, it appears, that several hundred of these men have arrived in Munich within the last few days, in order to be present at the ceremony: and some from the mere sentiment of honour, have travelled from afar-even from Upper Bavaria and the Flemish Provinces, a distance of more than eighty leagues, (two hundred and fifty miles.) On this occasion, according to the arrangements previously made, the veteran soldiers who remained in the army, were alone to be admitted within the enclosure round the monument. The others, I believe about five hundred in number, who had quitted the service, but who had equally fought, suffered, bled, in the same disastrous expedition, demanded, very naturally, the same privilege. It was refused; because forsooth they had no uniforms, and the unseemly intrusion of drab coats and blue worsted stockings among epaulettes and feathers and embroidered facings, would certainly spoil the symmetry-the effect of the coup d'œil! They complained, murmured aloud, resisted; and all night there