Different nations ought to serve as guides to each other, and all would do wrong to deprive themselves of the information they may mutually receive and impart. There is something very singular in the difference which subsists between nations; the climate, the aspect of nature, the language, the government, and above all, the events of history, which have in themselves powers more extraordinary than all the others united, all combine to produce those diversities; and no man, however superior he may be, can guess at that which is naturally developed in the mind of him who inhabits another soil and breathes another air: we should do well then, in all foreign countries, to welcome foreign thoughts and foreign sentiments, for hospitality of this sort makes the fortune of him who exercises it.

CHAPTER XXXII.

OF THE FINE ARTS IN GERMANY.

THE Germans in general understand the arts better than they practise them; no sooner is an impression made on their minds, than they draw from it a number of ideas. They boast much of mystery, but it is with the purpose of revealing it, and no sort of originality can be shown in Germany without exciting a general endeavor to explain from whence it is derived this is a great disadvantage, particularly with respect to the arts, where all is sensation; they are analyzed before this inpiration is felt, and it is in vain afterwards to say, it was wrong to analyze them, we must denounce the practice, for we have tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and the innocence of genius is lost.

I certainly do not recommend, with respect to the arts, that gnorance which I have always condemned in literature; but we should distinguish the studies which relate to the practice. of the arts, from those whose only object is the theory of

genius; these carried too far, stifle invention; we are per plexed by the recollection of all that has been said on the subject of every different chef-d'œuvre, and think we perceive between ourselves and the object we mean to describe, a number of treatises on painting and sculpture, on the ideal and the real, till as artists, we feel that we are no longer in immediate communion with nature. Without doubt the spirit of those various treatises is encouragement; but genius is wearied by being brought too forward, as on the other hand it is extinguished by too much restraint; and in all that relates to the imagination, there is required so happy a combination of obstacles and facilities, that ages may pass away before we arrive exactly at the point most favorable for the display of the human mind in its highest degree of perfection.

Before the period of the Reformation, the Germans had a school of painting which that of Italy would not have disdained. Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach, and Holbein, have in their manner of painting some affinity with the predecessors of Raphael, Perugino, Andrea Mantegna, etc. Holbein approaches nearer to Leonardo da Vinci; there is however in general more hardness in the German than in the Italian school, but not less expression and collectedness in the countenances. The painters in the fifteenth century had very little knowledge of the means which facilitate the practice of their art, but simplicity and modesty are everywhere displayed in their works; we see in them no pretensions to grand effect, we perceive only the expression of that strong and vivid emotion, for which all men of genius endeavor to find a language, that they may not leave the world without imparting a portion of their soul to their contemporaries.

In the paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the folds of the drapery are quite straight, the head-dresses a iittle stiff, the attitudes very simple; but there is something in the expression of the figures which we are never tired of contemplating. The pictures inspired by the Christian religion, produce an impression like that of the Psalms, wherein poetry and piety are so charmingly united.

The second, and the finest epoch of the art of painting, was hat in which the painters preserved the truth of the middle. ages, and added to it all the more recently acquired splendor of the art nothing among the Germans corresponds to the age of Leo X. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, on to the middle of the eighteenth, the fine arts almost everywhere. fell into a singular decay; taste degenerated into affectation : Winckelmann' then exerted the greatest influence not only over his own country, but over the rest of Europe; and it was his writings which directed the minds of different artists to the study and admiration of the monuments of antiquity: he was better skilled in sculpture than in poetry; and he therefore led painters into the practice of placing colored statues in their pictures rather than the animated forms of living nature. Painting also lost much of its charm by being so nearly allied to sculpture; the illusion necessary to the one is directly contrary to the immovable and decided forms of the other. When painters take their models exclusively from the remains of ancient beauty, as it is only in statues that it can be discovered, we may address to them the reproach which has been applied

1 “J. J. Winckelmann, the son of a poor shoemaker, was born December 9, 1717, at Stendall, in the Altmark. He studied theology at Halle, and, in 1743, became a schoolmaster at Seehausen. His leisure time there he gave to the study of the ancient classics, and his thoughts were altogether turned towards Greece and Rome. Appointed librarian (1748) to the Count Bünau, he had opportunities of examining the valuable collection of antiquities in Dresden, and of becoming acquainted with Lippert, Hagedorn, and Oeser, and more deeply initiated in the fine arts. Through Cardinal Archinto, who held out to him promotion at Rome, he became, in 1755, a convert to the Romish faith, and secretary to the Vatican library. He hastened to Rome, where he led for more than ten years the happy life of a man enabled to indulge in his favorite pursuits. In 1768, when he returned to Germany, to visit his friends, the sight of snow and of smoky houses drove him back to Italy. On his way thither he was joined by an Italian who affected to be greatly interested in numismatics, and when Winckelmann, on their arrival at Trieste, readily displayed to him his collection of gold coins, assassinated him, June 8, 1768.

"Winckelmann is founder of the school of art-criticism. His greatest "elebrity is from the work Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, which gave an impulse and a healthiness of tone to the whole literature of Ger nany."-Ed.

to modern classical literature, that it is not from the inspiration of their own minds that they produce the effects of their art.

Mengs, a German painter, has given us many philosophical thoughts, in his writings, on the subject of his art; he was the friend of Winckelmann, and participated in his admiration of the antique; but he nevertheless avoided the faults for which the painters, formed by the writings of Winckelmann, have generally been censured, and which are mostly confined to their copying the chefs-d'œuvre of antiquity. Mengs had even taken Corregio for his model, whose pictures, of all others, are the farthest removed from any resemblance to sculpture, and whose chiaro-oscuro recalls to our minds the vague but delightful impressions of melody.

The German artists had almost all of them adopted the operations of Winckelmann, till the period when the new literary school also extended its influence over the fine arts. Goethe, whose universal genius meets us everywhere, has shown in his writings that he comprehends the true spirit of painting much better than Winckelmann; nevertheless, convinced like him that subjects drawn from the Christian religion are not favorable to the art, he endeavors to revive our enthusiam for ancient mythology, an attempt which it is impossible to succeed in; perhaps, with respect to the fine arts, we are not capable of being either Christians or Pagans; but at whatever period a creative imagination shall again spring up from among men, it will assuredly not be in an imitation of the ancients that its effects will be perceived.

The new school maintains the same system in the fine arts as in literature, and affirms that Christianity is the source of all modern genius; the writers of this school also characterize, In a new manner, all that in Gothic architecture agrees with the religious sentiments of Christians. It does not follow, however, from this that the moderns can and ought to construct Gothic churches; nether art nor nature admit of repetition; it is only of consequence to us, in the present silence of genius, to lay aside the contempt which has been thrown on all the conceptions of the middle ages; it certainly does not suit us to

adopt them, but nothing is more injurious to the development. of genius than to consider as barbarous every thing that is original.

I have already said, in speaking of Germany, that there are very few modern buildings which are at all remarkable; in the North, we see nothing in general but Gothic edifices, and the dispositions of soul which they tend to excite are encouraged both by nature and poetry. Görres, a German writer, has given an interesting description of an ancient church. "We see," he says, "figures of knights kneeling on a tomb-stone, with their hands joined together; above them are placed some wonderful curiosities from Asia, which are intended to attest, as so many dumb witnesses, the voyages of the deceased to the Holy Land. The dark arches of the church cover those who rest beneath them with their shade; we might almost imagine ourselves in the midst of a forest, the branches and leaves of which have been petrified by death, so that they will no longer move or be agitated when succeeding ages, like the midnight. storm, shall roll through their lengthened vaults. The church resounds with the majestic tones of the organ; inscriptions in letters of brass, half destroyed by the humid vapors of time, confusedly indicate those great actions which are now become fabulous, after having been so long considered as incontestably true."

In speaking of the arts in Germany we are led to mention writers rather than artists. The Germans are in every respect stronger in theory than in practice, and northern climates are so little favorable to those arts which strike our eyes, that we might almost be induced to think the spirit of reflection was bestowed on them merely because their inhabitants should be enabled to observe and appreciate the beauties of the South.

There are many galleries' of pictures and collections of drawings in Germany, which indicate a love of the arts in all ranks of people. In the houses of the nobility and most dis

1 Those of Dresden, Munich, Berlin, and Vienna, are among the most celebrated in Europe.-Ed.