angels.  The wild, prophetic eye and lofty brow of the young Jesus chains one like a spell.  There is something more than mortal in its expression—­something in the infant face which indicates a power mightier than the proudest manhood.  There is no glory around the head; but the spirit which shines from those features, marks his divinity.  In the sweet face of the mother there speaks a sorrowful foreboding mixed with its tenderness, as if she knew the world into which the Saviour was born, and foresaw the path in which he was to tread.  It is a picture which one can scarce look upon without tears.

There are in the same room six pictures by Correggio, which are said to be among his best works; one of them his celebrated Magdalen.  There is also Correggio’s “Holy Night,” or the virgin with the shepherds in the manger, in which all the light comes from the body of the child.  The surprise of the shepherds is most beautifully expressed.  In one of the halls there is a picture by Van der Werff, in which the touching story of Hagar is told more feelingly than words could do it.  The young Ishmael is represented full of grief at parting with Isaac, who, in childish unconsciousness of what has taken place, draws in sport the corner of his mother’s mantle around him, and smiles at the tears of his lost playmate.  Nothing can come nearer real flesh and blood than the two portraits of Raphael Mengs, painted by himself when quite young.  You almost think the artist has in sport crept behind the frame, and wishes to make you believe he is a picture.  It would be impossible to speak of half the gems of art contained in this unrivalled collection.  There are twelve large halls, containing in all nearly two thousand pictures.

The plain, south of Dresden, was the scene of the hard-fought battle between Napoleon and the allied armies, in 1813.  On the heights above the little village of Racknitz, Moreau was shot on the second day of the battle.  We took a foot-path through the meadows, shaded by cherry trees in bloom, and reached the spot after an hour’s walk.  The monument is simple—­a square block of granite, surmounted by a helmet and sword, with the inscription:  “The hero Moreau fell here by the side of Alexander, August 17th, 1813.”  I gathered, as a memorial, a few leaves of the oak which shades it.

By applying an hour before the appointed time, we obtained admission to the Royal Library.  It contains three hundred thousand volumes—­among them the most complete collection of historical works in existence.  Each hall is devoted to a history of a separate country, and one large room is filled with that of Saxony alone.  There is a large number of rare and curious manuscripts, among which are old Greek works of the seventh and eighth centuries; a Koran which once belonged to the Sultan Bajazet; the handwriting of Luther and Melancthon; a manuscript volume with pen and ink sketches, by Albert Durer, and the earliest works after the invention of printing.  Among these latter was a book published by Faust and Schaeffer, at Mayence, in 1457.  There were also Mexican manuscripts, written on the Aloe leaf, and many illuminated monkish volumes of the middle ages.