“The Hildesheim churches are magnificent, but spoilt, ruined, by so-called restoration—the old pavements torn up, the old ornaments removed and replaced by tawdry and vulgar imitation of Munich wall-painting.
“On Monday George de Bunsen met me with his carriage at the Berlin station, and brought me through the Thier-Garten, like a bit of wild forest, to the charming airy Villa Bunsen, standing in its own garden on the extreme outskirts of the town. Here I have a most luxurious room, filled with royal portraits, and every possible luxury. We dined al fresco on the broad terrace amid the flowers. On the next evening there was a party of about fifty people—tea, and the garden and terrace lighted up, a very pretty effect; the ladies in bright dresses, the men with uniforms and orders, moving and sitting amongst the shrubs and flowers, amid which endless little supper-tables were laid at a late hour. Many were the historic names of those to whom I was introduced—Falk of the Falk laws, Mommsen the historian, Austin the poet, Mohl, and many ministers and generals. I found also Arthur Balfour, and many waifs and strays of old acquaintance. The ‘Congress’ is going on, but excites little or no general interest, and is scarcely mentioned here, German affairs being far too important.
“Berlin interests me extremely, though without preparation it can be of small interest. It is almost entirely modern. In the sixteenth century it must have been a tiny electoral town, the houses encircling the old Schloss by the Spree in the time of the Great Elector, whose statue, a grand though rococo work, stands close by on the bridge. Friedrich I., who got a kingdom by bribery, added the enormous castle, which, ludicrous as it then was in a kingdom of five millions, is now satisfactory in a kingdom of twenty millions. Close by, Frederick the Great built two domes, merely as features in the distant view of an otherwise featureless city, and to these his son added buildings which turned them into churches. Under Friedrich Wilhelm III. and IV. the great classical revival took place and endless fine buildings arose. The library is one of the few buildings which date from Frederick the Great. The architects were an endless time disputing over the designs, and at last he said, ‘Damn you all, don’t waste any more time; this commode opposite me is of a very good design, copy that,’ and accordingly the design of the commode was copied.
“The Museum was begun when the country was poor and had no money to spend. After the French war, when the country became rich, the design expanded and became magnificent. Of the sculptures, four works deserve especial attention—the ‘Adorante,’ the exquisite bronze boy who, in the early morning, stretches out his arms in adoration: the noble vivid bust of Julius Caesar in basalt, with agate eyes, so speaking though voiceless, so never to be forgotten, of which Rauch had three copies in different parts of his house that it might never be long absent from his mind: the bust of Sappho, with banded hair, recognised as the poetess from a Hermes; and the Augustus statue, more noble than that of Livia’s villa, because taken in earlier youth, when his one feeling was that he was born to command, and when no furrow of disappointment or care was yet traced on his brow.
“The collection of casts is most interesting, as showing the important statues of each subject, Venus, Minerva, Mercury, &c., side by side for instruction or contrast.
“The pictures are a grand collection, spoilt by over-cleaning. Especially worthy of remembrance are an Adoring Madonna by Filippino Lippi, with God the Father above in glory; two noble portraits by Giorgione; one by Lorenzo Lotto (possibly of Sansovino); some marvellously graphic pictures, eloquently expressed in well-considered touches, by Franz Hals; and a noble Holbein of ‘Kaufmann Georg Gigge aus Basel.’
“Last night we went late to the Zoological Garden. The most interesting thing was a solemn congregation of ibises listening in a row, each bird with one foot in the air, and its head attentively on one side, to an ibis preacher, who never ceased a continuous discourse to them, standing on a stone. The elephant is said to be five hundred years old; what a solemn silent witness! Apropos of the future of beasts, George de Bunsen talked much of the absence of all allusion to any future in the Old Testament—that it grew up, partly in the Talmud, partly in the Apocryphal writers, in what Luther beautifully calls ‘the great empty leaf between the Old and New Testaments.’
“Montbijou, the curious little one-storied palace of Sophia Charlotte, wife of Friedrich I., is now a museum for relics of the House of Brandenbourg. The chairs, sledges, and table of Friedrich I. are very curious; the wheel-chairs of his unhappy second wife: the wax figures of his grand-daughters as babies; and their portraits as grown women—queens and duchesses. Here also are three masks from the dead face of the lovely Queen Louisa, that taken immediately after death most exquisitely beautiful.”
“June 30.—The day after I last wrote, I went with the Bunsens and Mr. Waddington, the French Minister[287] (come for the Congress of Berlin) to Charlottenbourg. The palace there is charming—the large gardens, the groves of orange-trees in tubs, the great lawns sweeping away into woods, and above all the mausoleum in one of the thick groves, with the tombs of Queen Louisa and her husband. Hither the old Emperor and all the royal family come still once a year, on the anniversary of her death, to look upon the beautiful form of his young mother, snatched away in the very zenith of beauty and popularity, not living to see the re-establishment of the kingdom in whose cause she sacrificed her life. Exquisitely, perfectly beautiful is the intense repose of her lovely countenance, in what I must ever feel to be the most beautiful and impressive statue in the world. The statue of the King is very fine too, but in her angelic presence he is forgotten. And such was the feeling for her, that though he did not marry again for many years after he had lost her in his youth, his people at first would not believe it, and then never forgave it. Mr. Waddington felt nothing in the presence of this sublime statue. ‘Yes, it is very clever, it is a very clever figure indeed,’ he said. Never was any remark more completely out of tune, making it difficult for one to believe in the great power of the man.
“The next day I went to Potsdam—quite a place by itself in the world, with its endless great ultra-German palaces and stiff gardens, arid and dusty, though surrounded by many waters. Without Carlyle’s ‘Frederick the Great,’ they would be mere dead walls enclosing a number of costly objects; illuminated by the book, each room, each garden walk, thrills with human interest. In the Residenz Schloss are the rooms in which Frederick the Great passed his winters, with massive silver furniture and priceless ornaments, amid which the portrait of Wilhelmina in her childhood is a touching feature. In the Garrison Kirche is the tomb of the great king. The terrace at Sans Souci, in this dried-up land, is quite lovely with its fountains and orange-trees. Close behind is the famous windmill.