: Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad Vol. 2 (of 3) With Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected by Jameson Mrs Anna - Germany Description and travel

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A Visit to Hardwicke 213 A Visit to Althorpe 275

SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.

SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.

MUNICH .

The exterior of the building is plain, but has an air of grandeur even from its simplicity and uniformity. It reminds me of Sir Philip Sydney's beautiful description--"A house built of fair and strong stone; not affecting so much any extraordinary kind of fineness, as an honourable representing of a firm stateliness; all more lasting than beautiful, but that the consideration of the exceeding lastingness made the eye believe it was exceeding beautiful."

When a selfish despot designs a palace, it is for himself he builds. He thinks first of his own personal tastes and peculiar habits, and the arrangements are contrived to suit his exclusive propensities. Thus, for Nero's overwhelming pride, no space, no height, could suffice; so he built his "golden house" upon a scale which obliged its next possessor to pull it to pieces, as only fit to lodge a colossus. George the Fourth had a predilection for low ceilings, so all the future inhabitants of the Pimlico palace must endure suffocation; and as his majesty did not live on good terms with his wife, no accommodation was prepared for a future queen of England.

The commands which the king of Bavaria gave De Klenze were in a different spirit. "Build me a palace, in which nothing within or without shall be of transient fashion or interest; a palace for my posterity, and my people, as well as myself; of which the decorations shall be durable as well as splendid, and shall appear one or two centuries hence as pleasing to the eye and taste as they do now." "Upon this principle," said De Klenze, looking round, "I designed what you now see."

On the first floor are the apartments of the king and queen, all facing the south: a parallel range of apartments behind contains accommodation for the attendants, ladies of honour, chamberlains, &c.; a grand staircase on the east leads to the apartments of the king, another on the west to those of the queen; the two suites of apartments uniting in the centre, where the private and sleeping rooms communicate with each other. All the chambers allotted to the king's use are painted with subjects from the Greek poets, and those of the queen from the German poets.

We began with the king's apartments. The approach to the staircase I did not quite understand, for it appears small and narrow; but this part of the building is evidently incomplete.

The staircase is beautiful, but simple, consisting of a flight of wide broad steps of the native marble; there is no gilding; the ornaments on the ceiling represent the different arts and manufactures carried on in Bavaria. Over the door which opens into the apartments is the king's motto in gold letters, GERECHT und BEHARRLICH--Just and Firm. Two Caryatides support the entrance: on one side the statue of Astrea, and on the other the Greek Victory without wings--the first expressing justice, the last firmness or constancy. These figures are colossal, and modelled by Schwanthaler in a grand and severe style of art.

The walls of this room are also stuccoed in imitation of marble, with compartments, in which are represented, in the same style, other subjects from the "Weeks and Days," and the "Birth of Pandora." The ornaments are in the oldest Greek style.

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