Art has done every thing for Munich.  It lies on a large, flat plain, sixteen hundred feet above the sea, and continually exposed to the cold winds from the Alps.  At the beginning of the present century it was but a third-rate city, and was rarely visited by foreigners.  Since that time its population and limits have been doubled, and magnificent edifices in every style of architecture erected, rendering it scarcely secondary in this respect to any capital in Europe.  Every art that wealth or taste could devise, seems to have been spent in its decoration.  Broad, spacious streets and squares have been laid out, churches, halls and colleges erected, and schools of painting and sculpture established, which draw artists from all parts of the world.  All this was principally brought about by the taste of the present king, Ludwig I., who began twenty or thirty years ago, when he was Crown Prince, to collect the best German artists around him and form plans for the execution of his grand design.  He can boast of having done more for the arts than any other living monarch, and if he had accomplished it all without oppressing his people, he would deserve an immortality of fame.

Now, if you have nothing else to do, let us take a stroll down the Ludwigstrasse.  As we pass the Theatiner Church, with its dome and towers, the broad street opens before us, stretching away to the north, between rows of magnificent buildings.  Just at this southern end, is the Schlusshalle, an open temple of white marble terminating the avenue.  To the right of us extend the arcades, with the trees of the Royal Garden peeping above them; on the left is the spacious concert building of the Odeon, and the palace of the Duke of Leuchtenberg, son of Eugene Beauharnois.  Passing through a row of palace-like private buildings, we come to the Army Department, on the right—­a neat and tasteful building of white sandstone.  Beside it stands the Library, which possesses the first special claim on our admiration.  With its splendid front of five hundred and eighteen feet, the yellowish brown cement with which the body is covered, making an agreeable contrast with the dark red window-arches and cornices, and the statues of Homer, Hippocrates, Thucydides and Aristotle guarding the portal, is it not a worthy receptacle for the treasures of ancient and modern lore which its halls contain?

Nearly opposite stands the Institute for the Blind, a plain but large building of dark red brick, covered with cement, and further, the Ludwig’s Kirche, or Church of St. Louis.  How lightly the two square towers of gray marble lift their network of sculpture!  And what a novel and beautiful effect is produced by uniting the Byzantine style of architecture to the form of the Latin cross!  Over the arched portal stand marble statues by Schwanthaler, and the roof of brilliant tiles worked into mosaic, looks like a rich Turkey carpet covering the whole.  We must enter to get an idea of the splendor of this church.