Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Now, after all, that I should forget the crown of all our seeings, Dannecker's Ariadne! It is in a pavilion in a gentleman's garden. Could mere beauty and grace delight and fill the soul, one could not ask for more than the Ariadne. The beautiful head, the throat, the neck, the bust, the hand, the arm, the whole attitude, are exquisite. But after all, what is it? No moral charm,—mere physical beauty, cold as Greek mythology. I thought of his Christ, and did not wonder that when he had turned his art to that divine representation, he should refuse to sculpture from classic models. "He who has sculptured a Christ cannot sculpture a Venus."

Our hotel here is very beautiful. I think it must have been some palace, for it is adorned with fine statues, and walls of real marble. The staircase is beautiful, with brass railing, and at the foot a marble lion on each side. The walls of my bed room are lined with green damask, bordered by gilt bands; the attendance here is excellent. In every hotel of each large city, there is a man who speaks English. The English language is slowly and surely creeping through. Europe; already it rivals the universality of the French.

Two things in this city have struck me singularly, as peculiarly German: one was a long-legged stork, which I saw standing on a chimney top, reminding me of the oft-mentioned "dear white stork" of German stories. Why don't storks do so in America, I wonder? Another thing was, waking suddenly in the middle of the night, and hearing the hymn of the watchman as he announced the hour. I think this is a beautiful custom.

In the morning, I determined to get into the picture gallery. Now C., who espoused to himself an "Amati" at Geneva, has been, like all young bridegrooms, very careless about every thing else but his beloved, since he got it. Painting, sculpture, architecture, all must yield to music. Nor can all the fascinations of Raphael or Rubens vie in his estimation with the melodies of Mozart, or the harmonies of Beethoven. So, yesterday, when we found the picture gallery shut, he profanely remarked, "What a mercy!" And this morning I could enlist none of the party but W. to go with me. We were paid for going. There were two or three magnificent pictures of sunrise and sunset in the Alps by modern artists. Never tell me that the old masters have exhausted the world of landscape painting, at any rate. Am I not competent to judge because I am not an artist? What! do not all persons feel themselves competent to pronounce on the merits of natural landscapes, and say which of two scenes is finer? And are painters any greater artists than God? If they say that we are not competent to judge, because we do not understand the mixing of colors, the mysteries of foreshortening, and all that, I would ask them if they understand how God mixes his colors? "Canst thou understand the balancing of the clouds? the wondrous ways of Him who is perfect in wisdom?" If, therefore, I may dare to form a judgment of God's originals, I also will dare to judge of man's imitations. Nobody shall impose old, black, smoky Poussins and Salvator Rosas on me, and so insult my eyesight and common sense as to make me confess they are better than pictures which I can see have all the freshness and bloom of the living reality upon them.

So, also, a most glorious picture here. The Trial of John Huss before the Council of Constance, by Lessing—one of the few things I have seen in painting which have had power deeply to affect me. I have it not in my heart to criticize it as a mere piece of coloring and finish, though in these respects I thought it had great merits. But the picture had the power, which all high art must have, of rebuking and silencing these minor inquiries in the solemnity of its morale. I believe the highest painter often to be the subject of a sort of inspiration, by which his works have a vitality of suggestion, so that they sometimes bring to the beholder even more than he himself conceived when he created them. In this picture, the idea that most impressed me was, the representation of that more refined and subtle torture of martyrdom which consists in the incertitude and weakness of an individual against whom is arrayed the whole weight of the religious community. If against the martyr only the worldly and dissolute stood arrayed, he could bear it; but when the church, claiming to be the visible representative of Christ, casts him out; when multitudes of pious and holy souls, as yet unenlightened in their piety, look on him with horror as an infidel and blasphemer, —then comes the very wrench of the rack. As long as the body is strong, and the mind clear, a consciousless of right may sustain even this; but there come weakened hours, when, worn by prison and rack, the soul asks itself, "Can it be that all the religion and respectability of the world is wrong, and I alone right?" Such an agony Luther expressed in that almost superhuman meditation written the night before the Diet at Worms. Such an agony, the historian tells us, John Huss passed through the night before his execution.

Now for the picture. The painter has arrayed, with consummate ability, in the foreground a representation of the religious respectability of the age: Italian cardinals, in their scarlet robes, their keen, intellectual, thoughtful faces, shadowed by their broad hats; men whom it were no play to meet in an argument; there are gray-headed, venerable priests, and bishops with their seal rings of office,—all that expressed the stateliness and grandeur of what Huss had been educated to consider the true church. In the midst of them stands Huss, habited in a simple dark robe; his sharpened features, and the yellow, corpse-like pallor of his face, tell of prison and of suffering. He is defending himself; and there is a trembling earnestness in the manner with which his hand grasps the Bible. With a passionate agony he seems to say, "Am I not right? does not this word say it? and is it not the word of God?"

So have I read the moral of this noble picture, and in it I felt that I had seen an example of that true mission of art which will manifest itself more and more in this world as Christ's kingdom comes; art which is not a mere juggler of colors, a gymnastic display of effects, but a solemn, inspiring poetry, teaching us to live and die for that which it noblest and truest. I think this picture much superior to its companion, the Martyrdom of Huss, which I had already seen in America.

JOURNAL—(CONTINUED.)

Wednesday, August 3. Frankfort to Cologne. Hurrah for the Rhine! At eleven we left the princely palace, calling itself Hotel de Russie, whose halls are walled with marble, and adorned with antique statues of immense value. Lo, as we were just getting into our carriage, the lost parcel! basket, shawl, cloak, and all! We tore along to the station; rode pleasantly over to Mayenz; made our way on board a steamer loaded down with passengers; established ourselves finally in the centre of all things on five stools, and deposited our loose change of baggage in the cabin.

The steamer was small, narrow, and poor, though swift. Thus we began to see the Rhine under pressure of circumstances.