and Dusseldorf.  This magnificent collection is arranged in seven large rooms on the same floor.  Every facility of access is afforded; and you observe, although not so frequently as at Paris, artists at work in copying the treasures before them.  In the entrance-hall, where there is a good collection of books upon the fine arts, are specimens by Masaccio, Garofalo, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Lucas de Leyden, Amberger, Wohlgemuth, Baldonetti, Aldegrave, Quinten Matsys—­with several others, by masters of the same period, clearly denoting the order of time in which they are supposed to have been executed.  I was well pleased, in this division of the old school, to recognise specimens of my old friends Hans Burgmair and the Elder Holbein; and wished for no individual at my elbow so much as our excellent friend W.Y.  Ottley:—­a profound critic in works of ancient art, but more particularly in the early Italian and German Schools.

To conduct you through all these apartments, or seven rooms, with the methodical precision of an experienced guide, is equally beyond my inclination and ability.  Much as I may admire one or two Titians, one or two of the Caracci school, the same number of Veroneses and Schidones, and a partial sprinkling of indifferent Raffaelles, I should say that the boast of this collection are the pictures by Rubens and Vandyke.  Of the former there are some excellent portraits; but his two easel pictures—­the one, the Fall of the Damned, and the other the Beatitude of the Good—­are marvellous specimens of art.  The figures, extending from heaven to earth, in either picture, are linked, or grouped together, in that peculiarly bold and characteristic manner which distinguishes the pencil of the master.[45] The colouring throughout is fresh, but mellow and harmonious.  Among the larger pictures by this renowned artist, are Susanna and the Elders, and the Death of Seneca; the latter considered as a distinguished production.  But some of the whole length portraits, by the same hand, pleased me better.  The pictures of Rubens occupy more particularly the fourth room.  Vandyke shines in the second, sixth, and seventh rooms:  in which are some charming whole length portraits—­combining, almost, the dignity of Titian with the colouring of Rembrandt:—­and yet, more natural in expression, more elegant in attitude, and more beautiful in drawing, than you will find in the productions of either of these latter artists.

If the art, whether of sculpture or of painting, take not deep root, and send forth lusty branches laden with goodly fruit, at Munich—­the fault can never be in the soil, but in the waywardness of the plant.  There is encouragement from every quarter; as far as the contemplation of art, in all its varieties, and all its magnificence, can be said to be a stimulus to exertion.  When the