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 exprest.  In one of the halls there is a picture of 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 Raecknitz, Moreau was shot on the second day of the battle.  We took a footpath 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 17, 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 Melanchthon, a manuscript volume with pen-and-ink sketches by Albert Duerer, 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.