"This is my last journey," said the vetturino; "the railway opens on Monday of next week."
"What will you do thereafter?" I inquired.
"Sell all out, and go to work as I can," he answered; adding, however, "In case you should intend going as far as Munich by carriage, I beg to be honored,"—of which the Yankee rendering would be, "I shouldn't mind putting you through."
This, however, was hardly to be thought of, and at Innspruck we took leave of this honest and polite man, whose species must soon become extinct, whether he survive or no. Here recommenced for us the prosaic chapter of the railroad. Our route, however, for a good part of the way, lay within sight of the mountains. The depots at which we took fiery breath were in the style of Swiss châlets, quite ornamental in themselves, and further graced by vines and flowers. The travellers we encountered were not commonplacely cosmopolite. The young women were often in Tyrolese costume, wearing gilt tassels on their broad, black felt hats. We encountered parties of archers going to attend shooting matches, attired in picturesque uniforms of green and gold. At the depots, too, we encountered a new medium of enlivenment. We were now in a land of beer, and foaming glasses were offered to us in the cars, and at the railway buffets. Mild and cheerful we found this Bavarian beverage,—less verse-inspiring than wine,—and valuable as tending to reduce the number of poets who tease the world by putting all its lessons into rhymes, chimes, and jingles. Whatever we ourselves may have done, it is certain that our companions of both sexes embraced these frequent opportunities of refreshment, and that the color in their cheeks and the tone of their good-natured laughter were heightened by the same. One of these, a young maiden, told us how she had climbed the mountain during four hours of the day before, visiting the huts of the cowherds, who, during summer, pasture their cows high up on the green slopes. The existence of these people she described as hard and solitary in the extreme. The rich butter and cheese they make are all for the market. They themselves eat only what they cannot sell, according to the rule whereby small farmers live and thrive in all lands. The young girl wore in her hat a bunch of the blossom called edelweiss, which she had brought from her lofty wanderings. It is held in great esteem here, and is often offered for sale.
In the afternoon we turned our back upon the mountains. A flat land lay before us, green and well tilled. And long before sunset we saw the spires of Munich, and the lifted arm of the great statue of Bavaria. Our arrival was prosperous, and through the streets of the handsome modern city we attained the quiet of an upper chamber in a hotel filled with Americans.
MUNICH.
Our two days in Munich were characterized by the most laborious sight-seeing. A week, even in our rapid scale of travelling, would not have been too much for this gorgeous city. We gave what we had, and cannot give a good account of it.
My first visit was to the Pinakothek, which I had thoroughly explored some twenty-three years earlier, when the galleries of Italy and the Louvre were unknown to me. Coming now quite freshly from Venice, with Rome and Florence still recent in my experience, I found the Munich gallery less grandiose than my former remembrance had made it. The diary says, "The Rubenses are the best feature. I note also two fine heads by Rembrandt, and a first-rate Paris Bordone—a female head with golden hair and dark-red dress; four peasant pictures by Murillo, excellent in their kind, quite familiar through copies and engravings; some of the best Albert Dürers. The Italian pictures not all genuine. None of the Raphaels, I should say, would be accepted as such in Italy. The Fra Angelicos not good. Two good Andrea del Sartos; a Leonardo da Vinci, which seems to me a little caricatured; a room full of Vander Wertes, very smooth and finely finished; many Vandycks, scarcely first rate."
The afternoon of this day we devoted to the Glyptothek, or gallery of sculpture. Here our first objects of interest were the Æginetan marbles, whose vacant places we had so recently seen on the breezy height of the temple from which they were taken.
We found these rough, and attesting a period of art far more remote than that of the Elgin marbles. They are arranged in the order in which they stood before the pediment of the temple, a standing figure of Minerva in the middle, the other figures tapering off on either side, and ending with two seated warriors, the feet of either turned towards the outer angle of his side of the pediment. All seemed to have belonged to a dispensation of ugliness; they reminded us of some of the Etruscan sculptures.