capable of defence against an enemy as it would now be a formidable place to attack if it were garrisoned by Europeans. The Peiho River and the canal so intersect the city and suburbs, that on whichever side you approach it, a huge ditch has to be twice crossed before the entire place can fall into the hands of the victor. A light iron tramroad and locomotive engine would be invaluable in carrying to the city from Taku such supplies during the winter as may not then be in depot there. Of course the Peiho River will be frozen over, and impracticable to our gunboats long before the Gulf is: indeed, there is some reason to doubt whether the lower part of the Gulf—that is, between the Peiho River and the Mea-tou Isles-is ever unnavigable throughout the whole winter for steam vessels such as we shall possess. General report declares the winter of Pechelee to be very severe, although it puzzles us to understand how it is so, when the whole face of the country is covered with a half-naked, halfstarving working class of population, and to Shan-tung province we shall in all probability have to confine our movements during the ensuing winter of 1860-61. There is every reason to believe that provisions have been and can be thrown into the capital by some route which leads across this province, from ports on its south-east coast which have yet to be discovered, and soldiers and sailors will have plenty to do, during the cold bracing weather, in exploring a country as large as England, Scotland, and Wales, and, we fancy, not unlike them in physical features and products. Perhaps the secret which the Chinese have as yet so well kept of where the Yellow River is now discharging itself will likewise be unravelled, and some of our gallant little gunboats show the Chinaman that his troublesome stream is a mere pigmy to the giant steam. Facing Shan-tung, the great Corean kingdom, of which the aspect so pleased the missionary Gutzlaff, will tempt our navigators and explorers, and we trust next year to hail some important additions to our knowledge of that little-known part of the globe. Should the spring,

the early spring of 1861, still find the Emperor recalcitrant, the war-party in Pekin still obstinate-and, looking to the encouragement both have received in certain quarters at home, such a contingency is far from unlikely-the army will then be in an excellent position to advance upon Pekin, and, taking Tung-chow on their way, encamp in the "Palace of the Earth's Repose" until better sense returns to the "Halls of intense mental exercises," or that of "Heavenly rest." A deliberate steady approach of this character will have its effect, and the Court will come to its senses, and every Chinaman be disabused of his present universal idea, that we are going to make a rush, create a panic,

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that Emperor, he go Zehol, you come again down this Cantonne side, allo samee before, and allo man sabe that fashion!" and that if they are only obstinate, and sacrifice a few tens of thousands of poor creatures by hunger and want, we shall gladly give up all that is worth having in our new Treaty, and go back into the old groove, having wasted millions, and lost hundreds of good men, without having broken down, as we before said, the unrighteous walls of monopoly which bar out four hundred millions of men from European civilisation and God's truth. sketch in a recent work depicts a group of naked half-starved Chinese, and styles them our enemies in China. Never was a greater injustice perpetrated upon a race of creatures: they, those starving, industrious, money-making animals, are not our enemies, nor are we theirs. We can feed them, we can give them employment, homes, and raiment they throng to our colonies, and everywhere find in us kind and just masters; surely there can be no enmity between us; no, our enemy in China is he who stands between us and these creatures the burly, obstinate, over-fed mandarin, the Yehs, the Lins, the Sung-o-losins of Chinese bureaucracy, and their supporters, the monopolists of the seaboard trade of China.

Touching the indemnity question, we need not detain our readers; they will observe how easily we can insure,

IT has been said that though Regent Street may possibly be the finest thoroughfare in Europe, it will unfortunately neither bear weather nor criticism. And so Munich, though it were the grandest of capitals, assuredly suffers from the worst of climates, and can lay but little claim to the purest of tastes. As for weather, in summer it is burnt, and in winter frozen; and for art, we always seem to taste the smack of the Baierischer beer even in the glass of Lachryma Christi. In winter, some of our readers, like ourselves, may have made entrance into this mistaken and misplaced capital in carriage mounted on sledge instead of wheels-may have walked for days in frozen or slushy snow, meeting the unhoused statue shivering in icicles-the outdoor fresco as a Boccaccio garden in an Arctic field loggia stolen from Florence triumphal arches in exile from Rome-the statue with chattering teeth asking for the loan of a greatcoat-and the fresco, the arch, and the loggia, demanding passport that one and all may be off to Italy, where no northern blast shall buffet the fair face of beauty, and no German guttural mar the harmony of existence. In winter we had prayed for sun, but again summer is come, and in vain we seek for shade. We had just left the shadowy Nuremburg of pointed gable, sheltering roof, and narrow, quaint, old streets, leading hither and thither, up hill and down, now coming upon Gothic fountain in market-place, or stealing along among solemn memories of Adam Craft the sculptor, Hans Sachs the poet, Albert Durer the friend of Luther, till perchance is seen some tottering feudal tower, or city-gate is reached leading by the carved stations of the agony to the crowded "God's Acre," where the greatness of Nuremburg lies buried. We had passed, we say, some days in this dear old town, turning the thoughts backward upon Gothic architecture-the Niebelungen Lied -hard-fought liberties of ancient

VOL. LXXXVII.-NO. DXXXV.

cities-and rights bravely won for German Protestantism. A ride of a few hours brings us to the modern Munich denuded of mediæval association, wholly destitute of pedigree from the classic-a pretended Athens without her groves or acropolis-a Rome without her seven hills, without even genial shelter for any one of the muses nine or the graces three. All this is true, yet we are willing to confess not the whole truth, otherwise we should not trouble our readers with a paper upon "Munich and the Christian Arts." Munich, after all, is one of the wonders of modern Europe; we have ourselves thought it worth our while again and again to visit this great show-capital, and we now propose to pass in brief review some of its most important works, often of ambitious pretence and of jarring incongruity, but not unfrequently profound in study and elevated in thought.

In Munich everything has been attempted-street-architecture, sculpture, and bronze - casting; painting in its highest walks-on canvass for cabinets, on walls for museums and palaces, on glass for churches, even on porcelain for domestic use and decoration. From prince to peasant, every one in this capital is presumed to lead an art-existence of refined culture and enjoyment: in his daily walk he is in the very midst of triumphal arches, porticoes, and statues. Museums, rich in choicest works, are freely open to his gaze. Churches ornate in decoration, solemnised by sacred art, make religion herself a luxury, and give to worship the thrill of æsthetic emotion. As an enthusiastic stranger, we at once naturally think that a broad way is opened leading to highest heaven. Yet soon we find that the Church abuts upon the Foundling Hospital; Apollo, in the open street, walks armin-arm with Silenus; the vestals keep company with satyrs; and here in Munich, the feast of the gods is held in a beer-cellar.

But let us give to the reader a short summary of Munich and her

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works. Firstly, let us mention the four churches All-Saints of the royal palace, regal and saintly by its rich yet solemn decoration, a fullvoiced chorus of colour-a painted hierarchy enshrined in precious and gem-like marbles. Then, entering the grand Ludwig Strasse by the Hall of the Marshals, and passing by the Royal Library, one of the best of these modern adaptatons, we come to the church of St Ludwig, the patron saint of exKing Lewis, himself in turn the great patron and father of Munich art. This church glories in a façade of weak painstaking mediocrity. But it may with more reason pride itself on "The Last Judgment" and other works, by Cornelius, of whom we shall hereafter speak. A walk of perhaps a quarter of an hour brings us to the Basilica of St Boniface, a successful imitation of the venerable Basilicas in Rome, Sta Maria Maggiore, with others scarcely less sacred in the traveller's memory,-successful, moreover, in the careful and refined frescoes by Hess, the German Carlo Dolci, for softness and sentiment. Lastly, at some distance, lies, in a rather plebeian suburb, the Gothic Church of Sta Maria Hilf, here worthy of notice chiefly from its painted windows, veritable pictures painted on glass, the best examples we know of the Munich school of glass - painting, an art which deliberately shuns all that is severe, architectural, or geometric, making a church window a suspended transparency, a picture all softness and beauty, through which heaven shines with radiant light. To such treatment grave objections may doubtless be urged; but we confess that we are never very willing to listen to that criticism which sternly forbids a proffered enjoyment, or condemns by harsh rule any work which wins its way by beauty. Truly, there is no art more noble or divine than the painting of cathedral windows. In Rouen, in La Sainte Chapelle, and before the grand lancets of Milan Cathedral, how often have we stood with rapture, as rainbow glories streamed with colours verily dipped in heaven, softly modulated an

thems of solemn tones, swelling in the noonday splendour, or fading in vesper twilight. Often in such hours have we thanked God for the ministry of art in the sanctuary of religion. And now, under a deep feeling of the responsibility devolving on all labourers in the house of God, no less upon the artist than on him who preaches or prays, would we raise our voice in indignation against windows which, as very blasphemy towards all that is beautiful and holy, have of late years been put up in some of our English churches. The present custom of enriching our cathedrals with memorial glass, we need scarcely say, claims our warmest sympathy. But many a work has of late been put into sacred places which, as bad doctrine or vulgar sound, can only pervert and mislead the public mind and taste. We know there is a prejudice in this country against German painted windows. We do not wish that the English school should adopt, at any rate, German faults. But this we do say, that our English art will do well to profit by the attempts, and even by the failures, which have been made in neighbouring countries. With this end we write; with this object men in this country, interested in the promised development of our English school, have gone to Munich, Berlin, or Dusseldorf, to see for themselves those great architectural, pictorial, and decorative works of which the Germans are so justly proud.

But let us resume our promised summary of Munich art. If the four churches already mentioned stand first in importance, the three museums-the Old Pinacothek, the New Pinacothek, and the Glyptothek-are certainly entitled to the second position. In external architecture they have no special merit. The Glyptothek boasts of that most hacknied of all exordiums, a Grecian portico; the New Pinacothek finds some novelty in the parade of external frescoes, not unlike, in conception, the pictures placed in front of itinerant caravans containing wild beasts and mountebanks. In the internal arrangements for lighting the pictures and

sculptures, these buildings are admirable-arrangements which have claimed the special attention of Parliamentary Committees and Government authorities in our own country. The contents of these museums, in master works of painting and sculp ture, ancient and modern, might well demand from the traveller a week or fortnight for their examination. The Pinacothek of old masters, Italian and German, rich beyond rivalry in works by Van Eyck, Hemling, Durer, and others of the school, is, we think, taken for all in all, the foremost gallery in Germany. The Glyptothek, or museum of sculpture, will be best remembered by the invaluable marbles from the Temple of Egina, and the pretentious modern frescoes by Cornelius, the would-be Michael Angelo of Munich. The New Pinacothek, with its exterior frescoes as sign-boards, or rather as laureate pictures in honour of the great ex-King Ludwig, Lorenzo the Magnificent of Germany, may justly boast of some great modern works, especially that masterpiece, "The Destruction of Jerusalem," by Kaulbach. Having, in the churches, gone through rather a severe course of sacred art, wrought to the highest pitch of the sublime, and in galleries satiating a more omnivorous appetite by a feast upon all things in general, we hurry, at the appointed hour of three, to the palace of King Ludwig, now no longer in guise of medieval saint, but transformed into epicurean sybarite in the midst of a painted harem. We walk through Pompeian rooms, light, elegant, and festive; listen to the showman as he tells his threadbare story over huge pictures painted by Schnorr of Niebelungen Lied and German legend; slide in slippers along the slippery polished floor of throne-room in the awful presence of Schwanthaler's twelve colossal gilt bronzes of German princes; and whisper scandal in the cabinet of Ludwig's far-famed gallery of favoured beauties, of whom the now dethroned Lola Montes was once the heroine. Such is the Munich school of so-called high art-now inspiring to virtue and then awakening passion; now giving scope to genius, and then pampering medio

crity-a school, as we have seen, of the church and cloister, the gallery and cabinet, the palace and the casino; just as the Jupiter head of Ludwig may have nodded a dispensing patronage-now kneeling before a saint, and anon coying with a mistress.

Let us, for a moment, recapitulate the artists who have made Munich such as now we find it. Schwanthaler the sculptor, whose prolific genius was stimulated by palace patronage into immature and copious production, whose works, we should say, were writ in water, did we not remember the bronze colossal" Bavaria" in front of the Hall of Fame, best criticised in the words of the guide-book as sixty-one feet in height, pedestal twenty-eight feet, staircase within, leading the traveller to eyes and mouth as a lookout to distant Alps-head of size sufficient to contain some half-dozen strangers! Schwanthaler has gone to his rest, left his works to the nation, and is not wholly unknown in this country at Sydenham and elsewhere. Of the great Cornelius we have already spoken, and shall hereafter speak again. He is now well stricken in years; and his latest works, marked by declining power, are de signs executed in Rome as the pictorial decoration for the projected Campo Santo in Berlin. The venerable Overbeck we have known in his studio in Rome, a patriarch, or rather a Romish cloistered saint of vigils and visions, the father of the so-called Catholic religious school of Germany and Dusseldorf. In Munich, this muchworshipped painter shows one picture only, but scholars he has many. Hess, of whom we have spoken, both in the palace chapel of All-Saints and the Basilica of St Boniface, the most prolific, indeed, of Munich artists, evidently claims Overbeck as his great progenitor. Kaulbach, on the other hand, whose studio was for many years in Munich, whose greatest easel picture is still in the New Pinacothek of that city, and who is now engaged on yet more important works in the New Museum of Berlin, is, unlike his brethren, not exclusively Christian, Romish, or medieval, but, in a more truly catho