Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXIII. CONVERSATION WITH A PAINTER.--THE FRESCOES OF THE NEW PINAKOTHEK AND STERRIO-CHROMIE. March 2th.--In conversation to-day with a Munich painter, I chanced to observe what a great charm, for me, the character of Munich had, --not alone its churches, its pictures, its galleries, its beautiful and quaint houses, but its whole poetical dreamy character: I loved the mild oxen yoked in the heavy wagons, the peasants, the villages, the Isar, the desolate plain, and the glorious chain of Alps, with a peculiar and an indefinable love. " But," observed he, " there is one feature in Munich life from which you, unfortunately, as a woman, have been cut off, --the jovial, poetical, quaint life of the artists among themselves. This is a great pity, for you would have so much enjoyed it, --the life of the artists, I mean, in their Kneips, with their festivals and odd usages." And then he went on to tell me how gay the artists here usually are during Carnival time, and described one of their masked balls, where all is deliriously artistic and poetic. This year and last, however, people, " said he, have been too much dispirited by all these political troubles to have heart for such merriment. But the meetings at their Kneips! those were delightful, poetical, artistic! Then too, in May, there is the May Festival, when all the painters go forth, with their wives and children, to Starnberg, where they spend a day full of beauty and merriment upon the lake, and among the woods, and make huge bonfires by tbe water side, leaping over tbcni in memory of old pagan times. " Have you ever been to Schwanthaler's Castle?" asked the painter. " No," I replied; " where is it ?" " It is about two Stand from Munich, a strange romantic little castle, a great...