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INFLUENCE OF THE FINE ARTS.

Let Scotland and Bavaria appear. Say, ye admirers of Michael Angelo, which of these two nations has advanced farthest in civilisation mentally and morally, which of them deserves the prize? Call us Vandals and Ostrogoths if you please, but give us the former with her engines, her factories, her magazines, her reviews, her railroads, her charitable institutions, and her churches, and we leave you to experiment till patience fails on the morals, mind, and religion of paintingadorned Munich.

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Good people cease not to speak of the humanising, civilising, softening effect of the fine arts. Can they refer us to that chapter in European history which shows this? for we have searched in vain. Humanising indeed! Look at Italy. Go with us to the palaces of Genoa, erected by architects of no common fame, enter the picturegalleries of Venice, inspect the statuary of Milan and of Rome. During prosperity, when riches flowed into that peninsula like a river, when her merchants acquired princely fortunes in the Eastern trade, the people did what a certain class wish England now to do, they turned their minds to the fine arts, leaving mental science, politics, mechanism, manufactures, and literature to after generations. On all hands rose splendid

palaces, designed by men whose study had been solely architecture, churches adorned with every device which artists could think of were built,

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THEIR INJURIOUS EFFECTS IN ITALY.

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paintings could not be finished fast enough to meet the demand, -treasures were exchanged for well executed statues, and Italy became one vast museum. Did all this outlay, did this taste for fine works of art benefit the people? Experience declares to us emphatically that thus was brought about their commercial, mental, and moral ruin. The capitalists of that country sunk their means in unproductive enterprises. The mouldering palaces of Venice, the half-tenanted mansions of Genoese nobility, remain as warnings to all nations not to neglect the useful for the ornamental, or misemploy their precious time. We shall tremble for Old England when she begins to emulate foreign countries in spending money upon paint and marble, when it can be so much more profitably employed in ships, books, manufactories, and machine shops.

“How inferior are Britons to Italians in point of taste!" we hear young gentlemen and ladies from London observing to each other in the galleries of Florence. They know not what they speak of. The taste of Englishmen, fortunately for their country's sake, lies in a more advisable direction. Pictures they can admire like other men; palaces with finely executed masonry they now and then erect; a sculptor may, in their principal towns, gratify his love for the chisel's work; but they have no taste for national decay, they do not relish the prospect of sharing a fate which an inordinate

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ARMY OF BAVARIA.

taste for the fine arts materially assisted in bringing upon Italy.

Let these remarks not be misunderstood. They might be made by Michael Angelo as well as by the political economist; one may be a devoted admirer of pictures and still think it unadvisable that to them the attention of a nation should be CHIEFLY directed. We may travel over Europe, inquiring into the condition of the masses in every land, but, like Dr. Goldsmith, at the end of our pilgrimage, we exclaim,

"Vain, very vain, my weary search to find

That bliss which only centres in the mind."

By the exposition of paintings or sculpture, you will never make men love the fine arts, if their taste is not in that direction; but by substituting such exhibitions for newspapers, books, and literary clubs, you may produce a mental inactivity by no means favourable to a nation's prosperity, or its progress in those arts which tend to the advantage of the multitude. The press is a far more powerful instrument for the civilisation of a people than galleries of pictures.

Like too many continental countries, Bavaria supports an army out of all proportion to the population. Every seventy-five people have one soldier to protect them and live upon their industry in times of peace, however, leave of

EDUCATION.

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absence is given to a large proportion of these

warriors.

A lamentable amount of ignorance prevails among the labouring class in this kingdom; notwithstanding the elementary schools, of which there are many, higher branches of knowledge cannot be learned out of the larger cities. Superstition, and a blind adherence to the dogmas of Romanism, tend to perpetuate this state of things in no small degree.

Few countries in Europe have been the scene of more memorable conflicts than Bavaria. Catholics and Protestants fought on its plains before Gustavus Adolphus conquered on the banks of the Lech. Farther north, the names of brooks and villages recal to our mind that campaign which Marlborough ended on the field of Blenheim ; while Ulm, Ratisbon, Echmuhl, and Hohenlinden, are places familiar to the reader of French history. Let us hope that a happier destiny awaits the country in that good time coming, when spears will be turned into pruning-hooks, and swords into ploughshares, when the nations will no more learn the art of war.

CHAP. III.

LEAVE MUNICH. PEASANTRY.

VARIA.

AACHENSEE.

TEGERNSEE. ALPS OF BAGRANDEUR OF THE MOUNTAIN

PASSES. DESCENT TO THE VALLEY OF THE INN.

BRUCK.

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INNSLABORIOUS HABITS OF

THE FINSTERMUZZE PASS.

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THE TYROLESE.

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PILGRIMS. OCULTIVATION OF THE

DEVOTION OF THE PEOPLE TO ROMISH CEREMONIES.

NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

ROMAN CATHO

LICISM AND PROTESTANTISM ABROAD. SUPERIOR FERVOUR OF THE ROMANISTS.

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THE TRUE REFUGE FOR CHRISTIANITY.

We left the Bavarian capital without much regret ; for, although containing many gorgeous galleries of art, its frescoes become wearisome, and one is glad to escape from the noise of beer-shop revelry. The sun was rising behind the Plain of Hohenlinden, when we passed the sentinel at the gate; before us rose the snowy mountains glistening in the morning rays, while at the bottom of a grassy slope were the glacier streams of

"Isar rolling rapidly."

A change was now observable in the dress of the peasantry. Men and women alike wore the conical hat, so peculiar to the Tyrolese, and generally or

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