-- in hers, no sympathising voice to whisper strength and consolation when the path grew rough and thorny, and the lamp burnt flickering and low. Nay, more, she had to "keep a stern tryste with with no one to bear her company to the margin death," to walk towards the Great Darkness of the cold stream, to send a cheering voice over the black waters, and to give her rendezvous upon the further shore. What wonder then that she sometimes faltered and grew faint under the solitary burden, and "sickened at the unshared light!" powers than her person: "I saw Curran | inner life" alone; to tread the weary and dusty presented to Madame de Staël at Mackin- thoroughfares of existence, with no hand clasped tosh's," he writes; -"it was the grand confluence of the Rhone and Saone; they were both so damned ugly that I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland could have taken up respectively such residences." And, again, he says, "her works are my delight, and so is she herself for half-an-hour. But she is a woman by herself, and has done more intellectually than all the rest of them together; she ought to have been a man." These spontaneous judgments of her contemporaries serve to bring before us Ma- In depicting the character of Chateaudanie de Staël in general society. But in briand Mr. Greg has excelled himself. We private life, as Mr. Greg remarks, she was never remember to have read within the one of the most warm, constant, and zeal- limits of an essay so thorough an analysis ous of friends-on the whole, an admira- of the character, genius, and literary work ble, loveable, but somewhat overpowering of a man of letters. If any complaint woman." With our author's brief remarks on her writings and genius we entirely agree; and we quote the following extract as a characteristic specimen of Mr. Greg's charming style: 66 could be made of the portrait, it would be that it is too minutely painted to be entirely lifelike: that it is too pre-Raphaelite in its details to yield an effective picture as a whole. Perhaps, also, Mr. Greg is not sufficiently considerate of the sad and depressing influences of his early years and From first to last there was nothing frivolous, artificial, or heartless in Madame de Staël: she had nothing French about her, except her untir-neglected childhood, and is too coldly cruel ing vivacity and her sparkling wit. On the contrary, a tone of the profoundest melancholy runs throughout all her writings. A short time before her death she said to Chateaubriand: "Je suis ce que j'ai toujours été vive et triste." It is in Corinne, especially, but also in Delphine, that we trace that indescribable sadness which seems inseparable from noble minds-the crown of thorns which genius must ever wear. It was not with her, as with so many, the dissipation of youthful illusions- the disenchantment of the ideal life. On the contrary, the spirit of poetry, the fancies and paintings of enthusiasm, were neither dimmed nor tarnished for her, even by the approach of death; she could dream of earthly happiness, and thirsted for it still; but she felt that she had never tasted it as she was capable of conceiving it; she had never loved as she could love and yearned to love; of all her faculties, she touchingly complained," the only one that had been fully developed was the faculty of suffering." Surrounded by the most brilliant men of genius, beloved by a host of faithful and devoted friends, the centre of a circle of unsurpassed attractions, she was yet doomed to mourn the solitude of life." No affection filled up her whole heart, called forth all her feelings, or satisfied her passionate longings after felicity; the full union of souls, which she could imagine so vividly and paint in such glorious colours, was denied to her—and all the rest "availed her nothing." With a mind teeming with rich and brilliant thoughts, with a heart melting with the tenderest and most passionate emotions, she had no one-no ONE-to appreciate the first and reciprocate the last; she had to live the in inserting so many instances of his inordinate vanity and intense egotism. To us there is something inexpressibly sad and touching in the life of Chateaubriand; while his biography, in many particulars, suggests that of Dr. Johnson. Both were men of remarkable powers, of keen intellect, and wonderful endurance, who passed the early years of their lives in poverty, privation, and toil. Yet both lived to become, in their respective countries, literary stars of the first magnitude, whose works and conversation were widely sought by the greatest and most illustrious of their fellowcountrymen. Both were vain men; but the vanity of the great lexicographer was tempered by his benevolent and Christian spirit, while the egotism of the Frenchman, was enormously increased by the honours which the times, rather than his own merits as a politician, obtained for him. The early wanderings of Chateubriand amidst the grand scenery of the American forests afforded him material from which he afterwards constructed his Atala' and René.' His American wanderings were followed by suffered great privations, and earned a a seven years' exile in England, where he scanty living by translating for the booksellers and teaching Latin and French. On his return to his native country, he published his romance of Atala,' which fairly turned the heads of all Paris, and made the fortunes and fame of the author: The article devoted to M. de Tocque Chateaubriand in his Mémoires has left us a purpose, because he himself bounded his own very graphic and amusing account of that re- horizon. As a literary man, the same fatal ception on himself. It was hailed with enthusi-" want re-appears: he has grand powers, grand asm by the young and by the fair sex ; but se- thoughts, grand conceptions even, but no mighty verely handled by grave Academicians. It was aim outside of the gigantic мOI; no creed but worshipped by the romanticists, but scouted by his own genius, no goal but his own glory, no the classicists. Girls wept over it in the boudoir; joy but his own success. When he enters the dramatists ridiculed it on the stage. Parodies, political arena, the native vice is still uppermost, caricatures, signboards, all helped to fill the pub- rampant as ever, and yet more intolerable, belic mind with Atala, Chactas, and the Père Au- cause the stage is so noble and the interests are bry. "I saw " (says Chateaubriand), "on a so momentous. little theatre of the Boulevards, my lady savage with a head-dress of cock's feathers, talking to a wild man of her tribe about the soul of soli-ville, reads more like the panegyric of a tude,' in a style that made me perspire with shame. Young lovers at the Variétés were made to talk of alligators, swans, primeval forests, while their parents stood by fancying they had gone crazy. The Abbé Morellet, to cover me with confusion, got his maid servant to sit upon his knee in order to show that he could not in that position hold her feet in his hands, as had described Chactas holding those of Atala during the storm. But all this only served to augment the excitement." His head, he confesses, was turned. . I René,' originally an episode in the romance of Les Natchez,' was afterwards fitted into the Genie du Christianisme.' It is the work of the author which more than any other reflects the peculiarities of his character, the vague longings, the melancholy musings, and the egotistical sentimentality of his youth and middle-age. As Mr. Greg observes: "It is one of the most remarkable specimens of that Literature of Despair' peculiar to our age, of which 'Werther,' Obermann,' and 'Adolphe' are analogous productions." For a sketch of the political life of Chateaubriand, we must refer our readers to the concluding pages of the author's powerful essay; but we cannot conclude without quoting the vivid delineation of his character, personal, literary, and political: 66 friend on one of the greatest thinkers which age: The number of women who remain unmarried, because marriage-such marriage, that is, as is within their reach, or may be offered them would entail a sacrifice of that 'position' which they value more than the attractions of domestic life, is considerable in the middle ranks, and is enormous in the higher ranks. This word "position" we use as one which includes all the various forms and disguises which the motive in We have now followed this prominent figure question puts on. Sometimes it is luxury proper of the first half of our century through all the which is thus inordinately valued, -- dainty livvarious phases of his existence -as youthful ing, splendid dressing, large houses, carriages wanderer, literary celebrity, minister and poli- ad libitum, gay society, and exoneration from tician, husband, friend, and lover; and a more all useful exertion. Sometimes it is the more strongly-marked or consistently-preserved indi- shadowy sentiment which values these things, viduality we never met in history. He was the not for themselves,- for to many they are wearisame man at eighteen as at eighty; the same in some even to nausea, but for their appearance. obscurity as in fame; the same in politics as in Hundreds of women would be really happier in love; never simple, never natural, never true; a simpler and less lazy life, and know it well; absorbingly selfish, incurably affected; the but to accept that life would be, or would be wretched victim of insatiable yearning and eter-deemed to be, a derogation from their social sta nal discontent. Probably the only thoroughly tus; a virtual ejection, to a greater or less desincere thing about him was his desolate ennui gree, from that society, that mode of existence, and weariness, or rather disgust, of life. which they do not enjoy, but cannot make up their minds to surrender. Hundreds againprobably thousands-forego the joys of married life, not because they really cling to unrelished luxuries or empty show, but because they shrink This giant, the Michael Angelo of Germany, gathered around him a compact band of scholars, ardent as himself for the revival ceived timely encouragement from King of fresco-painting. The new school reLudwig in a commission to decorate the then recently erected Glyptothek in Mu from the loss of those actual comforts which re- | signal revival of which Munich, Berlin, and fined taste or delicate organizations render al- other chief cities give signs in our times. most indispensable, and which it is supposed (often most erroneously) that a small income could not sufficiently procure. They would willingly give up carriages, expensive dresses, and laborious pleasure, but they must have tolerably ample and elegantly-furnished rooms, leisure for reading, occasional "outings," and intercourse with chosen friends. They don't wish to be idle, but they are not prepared to become drudges either mere nursemaids or mere housewives. To these must be added, as belonging in justice to the same category, those to whom men, who might otherwise love and choose them, abstain from offering marriage, under the impression that the sentiments we have described are the sentiments they entertain. Very often this impression is wholly erroneous; very often these women would thankfully surrender all those external advantages, to which they are supposed to be so wedded, for the sake of sharing a comparatively humble and unluxurious home with men whom they regard and esteem. But their own language, their own conduct, or the habitual tone of the society to which they belong, has warranted and created the impression; and therefore the fault as well as the penalty is theirs. 66 Other essays on 66 Time," Good People," "British and Foreign Characteristics," and "the Doom of the Negro Race," we can only enumerate; but, in concluding, we would call special attention to two papers which we have not space to notice at length. We refer to that entitled, "French Fiction: the Lowest Deep," in which the author reprobates very severely, but very properly, the moral degradation of some recent French novelists; and to an able exposé of the false morality of our own lady writers of fiction. 66 nich. The cartoons of this arduous work Yet it was not without difficulty that the young school of Dusseldorf struggled into life and paid its way. The fame of the Academy became so great that pupils flocked in from all parts; but success brought with it perplexity. Genius became in excess of the demand; the market was overstocked. The secret had been discovered whereby high art could be manufactured wholesale, and yet for the commodity when Fortunately King Ludwig was ready for the produced no purchasers were forthcoming, rescue. Moreover, the emergency called into existence the famed "Kunstverein fur die Rheinlande und Westphalen," an ArtUnion localized within the Academy, with the express purpose of subsidizing works which proved in advance of public taste. It is interesting to know that this Kunstverein on its twenty-first anniversary was able to announce that, in addition to nine hundred great and small pictures distributed by lottery, it had been the means of securing to churches both Protestant and Romish, THE two papers we have published on to museums and public buildings, twentyrecent art in Munich and Berlin may find seven altar-pieces and eleven large oil pica suitable sequel in some account of the pa- tures. Among the works thus fostered are rent school of Dusseldorf. There is scarcely the famous frescoes from the history of a painter of note, hardly a phase whether Charlemagne which we recently had the Christian and spiritual, or realistic and nat- pleasure of studying in Aix-la-Chapelle ; uralistic-in the history of German art also may be mentioned a master-piece by during the last half century, which has not Overbeck now in Cologue Cathedral; likebeen more or less intimately connected with wise Professor Keller's engraving-the this small town upon the Rhine. The great largest in line ever executed-of Raffaelle's Cornelius-termed by some the Goethe "Disputa." Dusseldorf, indeed, as Our of the art of painting was born at Dussel- readers are probably aware, has long been dorf; and to Cornelius, a man conspicuous a chief centre for the publication of relifrom his youth up for large comprehensive gious prints. We remember to have seen in intellect, the Academy of Dusseldorf owed Rome, twenty years ago, in the studio of its resuscitation, and art in general that Overbeck, then in the Cenci Palace, de From The Saturday Review. THE DUSSELDORF SCHOOL OF PAINTING. signs in charcoal prepared expressly for en- and it is known that a master sometimes - great mural pictures of Rome, Florence, Gallery are collected representative works 1 - The Düsseldorf school has been divided between two contending factions the one spiritual and ideal, the other natural and realistic. Of the former, the lovely church, worthy of a pilgrimage, at Remagen, on the Rhine, is the brightest manifestation. Upon the walls of this chapel, Deger, Ittenbach, Carl and Andreas Müller, all distinguished members of the Düsseldorf Academy, have given ardent expression to their pictorial, not to say religious, faith. This impressive interior of highly-wrought polychrome naturally suggests comparison with Giotto's Arena Chapel, Padua. Such modern German revivals, indeed, have much of the character and spirit of early Christian art. The forms are studiously lovely; the heads lofty and ideal in type; the draperies academic in symmetry; the colours refined and pure; the execution delicately soft. Certainly these lovely, though somewhat feeble and conventional, wall-pictures are not af flicted with the hardness, opacity, and crudity which often make German frescoes repellent, Unlike also to the frescoes in the Houses of Parliament, Westminster, the mural pictures at Remagen, in common with wall-paintings in Germany generally, remain just as fresh as when first painted. trees, a painter or two perchance within cessories for backgrounds. The landscape view making outdoor studies, we have our- capabilities of regions within reach of Dusselves found pleasant in the sunny suramer seldorf-the vintage-clad Rhine, the hills time. In winter the artists indulge in the- of Bavaria, the mountains of the Tyrol, not atricals; the walls of the club are decorated to mention the accessible fiords of Scandiby its members with mural paintings, and navia - have been turned to excellent acready faney and rapid hands find no diffi- count by Lessing, Leu, and Achenbach. culty in extemporizing scenery, colouring It may be added that Bierstadt, the Amermasks, concocting costumes, and complet- ican, formed his style in Dusseldorf; it was ing other stage properties which have at there he learnt how to paint the Rocky least the merit of being somewhat out of Mountains after the approved German fashthe common. The artists in Rome show ion. These and other artists of scarcely like histrionic propensities. Indeed any less renown place Düsseldorf landscape, one who may have glanced at art life on the notwithstanding its vicious colour, in the Continent will readily believe that the foremost position among rival national painters of Dusseldorf give themselves schools. kindly to masking and practical joking, fun and frolic of all sorts. At Dusseldorf too, as at Venice in the days of Giorgione, music is the painter's passion. Here Mendelssohn lived two years; here he conducted the "St. Paul," and the master's refining influence has survived even to the present day. Altogether, it is easy to see in artist life at Dusseldorf, as at Rome, how generously Continental manners lend themselves to free and easy ways. Feasts and holidays in Roman Catholic countries favour artist festivals; life is more scenic and picturesque than in lands where cold, commercial reason has ostracized imagination. Dusseldorf, moreover, still maintains rural simplicity; she is yet happily exempt from that fashionable frivolity which trades for its own empty ends on artists' inherent vanities. Thus the quiet town is more favourable to study than gay capitals like Berlin or Munich. On the whole, this abode of painters is a pleasant place to live in. Academicians from the windows of ateliers command picturesque views over the swift-flowing Rhine, the sails of passing craft shining in the sun. The town is prettily situated among trees, gardens, and running waters; nature puts on winning ways, though she scarcely rises into heroics; and so those artists who find themselves restless under throes of imagination betake themselves in the sketching season to the highlands of the Upper Rhine. Hence, when summer comes, ambitious spirits, consolidating into caravans, migrate in search of the sublime. Pilgrimage is made to old Romanesque Churches, to Rhenish castles legend-haunted. It has been said that poetry and lyric music animate the wine-growing districts of the Rhine. Certainly the sketching ground which nature has provided as a domain to the school of Dusseldorf furnishes to the artist's portfolio capital material, whether in type of peasantry, character in costume, or picturesque ac In direct antagonism with the spiritual phase of the Dusseldorf school, as manifested at Remagen, is the naturalism and realism of which Karl Friedrich Lessing may be taken as the express exponent. This manly painter is best judged by the series of pictures from the Reformation of Huss, two whereof are familiar to Rhine tourists tarrying at Frankfort. An interesting narrative might be written of Lessing's career and Protestant creed, if he has one. It is generally supposed that the painter, as the champion of liberty and of nature, led a kind of Protestant revolt in the Academy of Dusseldorf against servility to tradition. On the other hand, we are assured that the defiant Huss pictures |