Finally we entered the Hall of the Throne.  Here the encaustic decoration, so plentifully employed in the other rooms, is dropped, and an effect even more brilliant obtained by the united use of marble and gold.  Picture a long hall with a floor of polished marble, on each side twelve columns of white marble with gilded capitals, between which stand colossal statues of gold.  At the other end is the throne of gold and crimson, with gorgeous hangings of crimson velvet.  The twelve statues in the hall are called the “Wittlesbach Ancestors,” and represent renowned members of the house of Wittlesbach from which the present family of Bavaria is descended.  They were cast in bronze by Stiglmaier, after the models of Schwanthaler, and then completely covered with a coating of gold, so that they resemble solid golden statues.  The value of the precious metal on each one is about $3,000, as they arc nine feet in height!  What would the politicians who made such an outcry about the new papering of the President’s House, say to such a palace as this?

Going back to the starting point, we went to the other wing of the edifice and joined the party who came to visit the apartments of the king.  Here we were led through two or three rooms, appropriated to the servants, with all the splendor of marble doors, floors of mosaic, and frescoed ceilings.  From these we entered the king’s dwelling.  The entrance halls are decorated with paintings of the Argonauts and illustrations of the Hymns of Hesiod, after drawings by Schwanthaler.  Then came the Service Hall, containing frescoes illustrating Homer, by Schnorr, and the Throne Hall, with Schwanthaler’s bas-reliefs of the songs of Pindar, on a ground of gold.  The throne stands under a splendid crimson canopy.  The Dining Room with its floor of polished wood is filled with illustrations of the songs of Anacreon.  To these follow the Dressing Room, with twenty-seven illustrations of the Comedies of Aristophanes, and the sleeping chamber with frescoes after the poems of Theocritus, and two beautiful bas-reliefs representing angels bearing children to Heaven.  It is no wonder the King writes poetry, when he breathes, eats, and even sleeps in an atmosphere of it.

We were shown the rooms for the private parties of the Court, the school-room, with scenes from the life of the Ancient Greeks, and then conducted down the marble staircases to the lower story, which is to contain Schnorr’s magnificent frescoes of the Nibelungen Lied—­the old German Iliad.  Two halls are at present finished; the first has the figure of the author, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and those of Chriemhilde, Brunhilde, Siegfried and the other personages of the poem; and the second, called the Marriage Hall, contains the marriage of Chriemhilde and Siegfried, and the triumphal entry of Siegfried into Worms.