6. CYCLE.
The banquet-hall of our Islanders was in the rich palace of the absent Borromæan family. They conceded to the lovely island the prize-apple of Paris and the laurel-wreath. Augusti and Gaspard wrote their eulogies upon it in a clear, easy style, only Gaspard used the more antitheses. Albano's breast was filled with a new world, his eye with radiance, his cheeks with joyous blood. The Architect extolled as well the taste as the purse of the hereditary Prince, who by means of both had brought with him to his country, not artistic masters indeed, but still masterpieces, and at whose instance this very Dian was going to Italy to take casts for him there of the antiques. Schoppe replied: "I hope the German is as well supplied with painters' academies and painters' colics as any other people; our pictures on goods, our illuminated Theses in Augsburg, our margins of newspapers, and our vignettes in every dramatic work, (whereby we had an earlier Shakespeare Gallery than London,) our gallows-birds hung in effigy,—are well known to every one, and show at first sight how far we carry the thing. But I will even allow that Greeks and Italians paint as well as we; still we tower far above them in this, that we, like nature and noble suitors, never seek isolated beauty, without connected advantage. A beauty which we cannot also roast, sell at auction, wear, or marry, passes with us only for just what it is worth; beauty is with us (I hope) never anything else but selvage and trimming to utility, just as, also, at the Diet of the Empire, it is not the side-tables of confectionery, but the session-tables, that are the proper work-tables of the body politic. Genuine Beauty and Art are therefore with us set, painted, stamped only on things which at the same time bring in something; e. g. fine Madonnas only in the journals of fashion,—etched leaves only on packages of tobacco-leaves,—cameos on pipe-bowls,—gems on seals, and wood-cuts on tallies; flower-pieces are sought, but on bandboxes,—faithful Wouwermanns, but in horses' stalls before the stallions,[14]—bas-reliefs of princes' heads, either on dollars or on Bavarian beer-pitcher covers, but both must be of unalloyed pewter,—rose-pieces and lily-pieces, but on tattooed women. On a similar principle, in Basedow's system of education, beautiful painting and the Latin vocabulary were always linked together, because the Institute more easily retains the latter by the help of the former. So, too, Van der Kabel never painted a hare to order, without requiring for himself one freshly-shot model after another to eat and copy. So again, the artist Calear painted beautiful hose, but painted them immediately on to his own legs."
The Knight heard such talk with pleasure, though he neither laughed at nor imitated it; to him all colors in the prism of genius were agreeable. Only to the Architect it was not enough in Greek taste, and not courtly enough for the Lector. The latter turned round to the departing Dian, with a somewhat flattering air, while Schoppe was recovering breath for renewed detraction of us Germans, and said: "Formerly Rome took away from other lands only works of art, but now artists themselves."
Schoppe continued: "So also our statues are no idle, dawdling citizens, but they all drive a trade;—such as are caryates hold up houses; such as are angels bear baptismal vessels; and heathen water-gods labor at the public fountains, and pour out water into the pitchers of the maidens."
The Count spoke warmly for us, the Lector brilliantly: the Knight remarked, that the German taste and the German talent for poetic beauties made good and explained their want of both for other beauties (on the ground of climate, form of government, poverty, &c.). The Knight resembled a celestial telescope, through which the planets appear larger and the suns smaller; like that instrument, he took away from suns their borrowed lustre, without restoring to them their true and greater glory; he cut in twain, indeed, the noose of a Judas, but he extinguished the halo on a Christ's head, and in general he sought to make out ingeniously a parity and equality between darkness and light.
Schoppe was never silenced (I am sorry that in his toleration-mandate for Europe the German Circles should have been left out). He began again: "The little which I just brought forward in praise of the serviceable Germans has, it seems, provoked contradiction. But the slight laurel-crown which I place upon the holy body of the Empire shall never blind my eyes to the bald spots. I have often thought it commendable in Socrates and Christ, that they did not teach in Hamburg, in Vienna, or in any Brandenburg city, and go through the streets with their disciples; they would have been questioned, in the name of the magistrates, whether they could not work; and had both been with families in Wetzlar, they would have extorted from the latter the negligence-money.[15] Touching the poetic art, Sir Knight, I have known many a citizen of the Empire who could make but little out of an ode unless it were upon himself: he fancied he could tell when poetic liberties infringed upon the liberty of the Empire: such a man, who certainly always marched to his work regularly, composedly, and considerately in Saxon term-times, was exceedingly pained and perplexed by poetic flights. And is it, then, so unaccountable and bad? The worthy inhabitant of an imperial city binds on in front a napkin when he wishes to weep, in order that he may not stain his satin vest, and the tears which fall from his eyes upon a letter of condolence he marks as he would any darker punctuation: what wonder, if, like the ranger, he should know no fairer flower than that on the posteriors of the stag, and if the poetical violets, like the botanical,[16] should operate upon him as a mild emetic. Such were, according to my notion, one way at least of warding off the reproach which is flung at us Germans."