unless, indeed, as it sometimes happens, when I fancy myself quite alone, I come by chance upon a hundred people, in some remote corner before a side chapel, where mass is going on, but so quietly that the sense of solitude in the church is not disturbed.  Sometimes, when the place is left entirely to myself, and the servants who are putting it to rights and, as it were, shifting the scenes, I get a glimpse of the reality of all the pomp and parade of the services.  At first I may be a little shocked with the familiar manner in which the images and statues and the gilded paraphernalia are treated, very different from the stately ceremony of the morning, when the priests are at the altar, the choir is in the organ-loft, and the people crowd nave and aisles.  Then everything is sanctified and inviolate.  Now, as I loiter here, the old woman sweeps and dusts about as if she were in an ordinary crockery store:  the sacred things are handled without gloves.  And, lo! an unclerical servant, in his shirt-sleeves, climbs up to the altar, and, taking down the silver-gilded cherubs, holds them, head down, by one fat foot, while he wipes them off with a damp cloth.  To think of submitting a holy cherub to the indignity of a damp cloth!

One could never say too much about the music here.  I do not mean that of the regimental bands, or the orchestras in every hall and beer-garden, or that in the churches on Sundays, both orchestral and vocal.  Nearly every day, at half-past eleven, there is a parade by the Residenz, and another on the Marian Platz; and at each the bands play for half an hour.  In the Loggie by the palace the music-stands can always be set out, and they are used in the platz when it does not storm; and the bands play choice overtures and selections from the operas in fine style.  The bands are always preceded and followed by a great crowd as they march through the streets, people who seem to live only for this half hour in the day, and whom no mud or snow can deter from keeping up with the music.  It is a little gleam of comfort in the day for the most wearied portion of the community:  I mean those who have nothing to do.

But the music of which I speak is that of the conservatoire and opera.  The Hof Theater, opera, and conservatoire are all under one royal direction.  The latter has been recently reorganized with a new director, in accordance with the Wagner notions somewhat.  The young king is cracked about Wagner, and appears to care little for other music:  he brings out his operas at great expense, and it is the fashion here to like Wagner whether he is understood or not.  The opera of the “Meister-Singer von Nurnberg,” which was brought out last summer, occupied over five hours in the representation, which is unbearable to the Germans, who go to the opera at six o’clock or half-past, and expect to be at home before ten.  His latest opera, which has not yet been produced, is founded on the Niebelungen Lied, and will take