lions, for they occur everywhere—illustrating a town of some ten or twelve church-size; and from the steeple of the lowest of which you could fire a shot or all but fling a stone beyond the faubourgs. However, let us remember that the Peloponnesus was not very much bigger than Yorkshire, and that ancient Athens is rivalled in size as well as decoration by this modern one: all honour then be to Louis the First for the most he has made of his bright little Capital.

Thereafter to Louis's own church-(he is, or is to be, a saint,) St. Ludwig: a quieter and more subdued, but still graceful and beauteously frescoed church of round arches and a grove of coralline columns. Thence drove round the Englischer garten,-a well-wooded park with an Iser waterfall, and much country beauty, à l'hotel: and after refreshments, off with the children to a grand Feuer-werken exhibition near the Bavaria, where rockets and catherine wheels would not act properly, and all must have been a failure, but for some 'fire mosaics' and the conflagration of a wire and squib castle. The odd thing was that the company was dismissed, as with us at home, by the band playing "God save the Queen." And so, after a draught of the splendid creaming Munich beer-far better than any that Heidel

berg students or British farmers wot of,-to a well-earned bed: goodnight.

3rd, Friday. Our third hot and well-spent day at this Athenian München; ordered thus. First, to the Chapelle-Riche,-where folks are admitted a few at a time in felt slippers to spare the jewelled floor: we trod on amethystine quartz and agates. The wonders of this chapel are mummied hands and feet, and other bones, skulls, &c., magnificently jewelled and overlaid with seed-pearls, rubies and topazes: these are the royal relics,-and are positively believed to include (at least the sacristan told us so) a hand of the Virgin Mary! and a hand of John the Baptist,-that hand which baptized Christ! besides ribs and feet and skulls of divers other holy worthies, including portions of the earthly tabernacles of Matthew and Peter, and I know not of whom beside :-I wonder what the believers in the Assumption of the Virgin will think of her Holy Maidenship having left one of her hands behind her,for King Louis of Bavaria to enshrine in pearls and gold!-Did ever any Romanist-the maddest idolator that ever was-suggest a relic-bone of the Risen Christ? the Risen Mary-as Romanists believe, must have her whole body, or none of it: but what then of

the chief relic of Munich ?-Remember the pearl tiaras, and mitres, and agate walls, and cameo cabinets, and all sorts of other wealth in crucifixes, croziers, reliquaries, and relics.

After these, through a wilderness of ancient chambers and corridors, where this mighty little king holds state, surrounded by halberdiers, (a hundred of whose inlaid carving knives lined the entrance,) to, next, the Jesuit church: Jesuits are expelled from these parts, however ultra Catholic; their principles are by law held execrable, and Louis's land is exempted from their pestilence: but the churches remain, and are marvellously Italian-tasteful edifices. This one, lofty, large, long, wide, cool, St. Paul's-like, but far richer though less in mere size, all white and gold, contains as its chief praise the Thorwaldsen group of statuary in memory of Prince Eugène. The sculpture lives, but the mere marble is very faulty, grey and brown and yellow: one of the chief figures has a discoloured nose; and all are spotted and striped if Thorwaldsen had been endued with Durham's conscience, he would have relinquished his marble half-way.

Thence to the Natural History Museum, where I left the children to spend an hour with beasts, birds and fishes, (remember the gigantic sow as big as a rhinoceros, and the Bavarian Bears,)

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and went and subscribed to the Odéon readingroom and having spent an hour there, went for another hour to the Gallerie of Antiquities; now prettily well used up; so far as intense. sight-seeing goes, I am master in mind of all the wealth of all those seven chambers. Hence to dinner; itself always a museum of gastronomic curiosities; sweets, savouries and sours strangely mingled, and sometimes happily: in fact, taste is a thing of education; you do as you see your neighbours do; and I don't know why meat should not be as naturally eaten with sugar as with salt all is fashion or caprice; let those rule the hour.

Dinner over at last,—for these German table d'hôtes are lengthy affairs; went to Schwanthaler's Atelier and Museum, and was greatly pleased. Truly Munich without Schwanthaler, Louis of Bavaria without Schwanthaler, were Neptune without his trident, Venus without her cestus. It is his genius that has so decorated Munich and Ratisbon and Heilheim, and I know not what places beside it is he that has made Bavaria colossal and helped her to rein the lions; has peopled the Valhalla, and given form and life to the Niebelungen: Schwanthaler has (under munificent auspices) made Munich what it is, and happy was his king in such a subject.

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Well, we have seen to-day many forms of heroic symmetry and female loveliness; and all the marble figures about to decorate the front of the Glyptothek; and the Valhalla heroes,—and the Vienna fountain, and plenty more that would make any or all of our sculptors' studios look mean and empty beside them. No doubt Schwanthaler was a genius; -alas was, for he is dead. The king [in very plebeian taste, punning on a man's name, though he might have meant the matter kindly,] gave him this canting coat of arms, which you are shewn emblazoned in the sculptor's tasty bachelor cellar: a swan holding a thaler in its mouth for the crest; and three combs for modelling, with a torso cupid for the coat. I don't know whether the king ennobled the genius or not-but any honour was well earned as to decorations, they are too common on the continent to amount to honour at all.

Remember the child nearly run over by a dray; and the Protestant church (with bénitoires for alms); and the sculptor's decorated rooms; the colossal Victory, the sleeping cupid, and listening Nymph,-&c., &c. Thence to the Rathhaus, where Schwanthaler is still lord paramount; the twelve statues of gigantic kings in bronze (elsewhere golden beefeaters)