One of the dwellers near his father's vineyard was rich in the possession of a little daughter of extraordinary grace and beauty. She inspired the artist with some of his brightest conceptions of that peculiar infantine loveliness which his pencil has rendered with such eloquent fidelity.
The child crept into his heart—the young girl took possession of it. The poet-painter made no effort to dispossess her; on the contrary, he increased her power by giving her an excellent education; and when she had arrived at the age of womanhood, he made her his wife. Their married years have numbered many. One may be considered old, the other is no longer young; but their happiness has been, as far as it can be, without a shadow. Although they have no children, they do not seem to have desired them. Some gallant husbands pen a sonnet to a wife on her birth-day, or the anniversary of her marriage, but Moritz Retzsch sketches his birthday ode, in which the beauty and worth of his cherished wife, his own tenderness and happiness, their mingled hopes and prayers, are penciled in forms the most poetic and expressive. From year to year these designs have enriched the album of Madame Retzsch; and never was a more noble tribute laid at the feet of any lady-love, even in the times of old romance!
Professor Vogel had promised that Moritz Retzsch should show us his drawings; and we were full of hope that we should also have the privilege of seeing this Album. The sunset had given promise of—
"A goodly day to-morrow."
And it was with no small delight that, on our return to our hotel, we found an hour had been fixed for our visit to the village, or Weinberg, and that Professor Vogel would be ready to accompany us at the time appointed.
We were prepared to expect allegorical designs; and Mrs. Jameson has long since converted us to a belief in the great power and benefit of symbolic painting, particularly on the minds and imaginations of the young. "To address the moral faculties through the medium of the imagination," says this distinguished lady, "for any permanent or beneficial purpose, is the last thing thought of by our legislators and educators. Fable, except as a mere nomenclature of heathen gods and goddesses, is banished from the nursery, and allegory in Poetry and the Fine Arts is out of fashion;" and then she mingles her ink with gall, and adds, "it is deemed the child's play of the intellect, fit only for the days of Dante, or Spenser, or Michael Angelo."
Wearied with pleasure, we slept; but what we had seen and what we anticipated rendered repose impossible. The morning was bright, and warm, and sunny; and when our kind friend entered the carriage, we felt assured of a day's enjoyment. We soon skirted the city, and found ourselves rolling in sight of the river; the road was overshadowed by trees, which had not yielded a leaf to the insidious advances of autumn; the villas—not certainly with shaven lawns and carefully-tended gardens, were picturesque and charming from the novelty of their construction, and not the less striking because the foliage was left to twine about them in unconstrained luxuriance. We had become accustomed to the wicker wagons, and the heavy oxen, and slow paces of men and horses; but there is something always to admire in the broad faces of the well-built Saxons, and the frank and kindly expression of their clear blue eyes.
We soon reached the narrow roads that wound along the base of the vine-clad hills, rising so abruptly as to form terrace after terrace, until they achieved the topmost height. Nothing can be more delightful than the situation of the houses at the foot of these hills, commanding, as they do, the whole of the rich valley in which Dresden is placed. "They call it Paradise," said our kind companion; "and truly it deserves the name."
It was positively refreshing to hear how Professor Vogel delighted in extolling Professor Retzsch. His eulogiums were so warm from the heart, and the desire to do his friend service so sincere, that we honored him more than ever. At last we paused at the garden-gate of the cottage-house of the illustrator of Faust, and entered. Wide-spreading trees overshadowed the path which led along the side of the house to a sort of stone verandah, formed by the upper story projecting over the lower, and supported by rude stone pillars. At the further end were stairs leading to the living-rooms; and down these stairs came a gentleman who must have riveted attention wherever seen. His figure was somewhat short and massive, and his dress not of the most modern fashion; yet the head was magnificent. His whole appearance recalled Cuvier to us so forcibly, that we instantly murmured the name of the great naturalist; but when his clear wild blue eyes beamed their welcome, and his lips parted into a smile to give it words, we were even more strongly reminded of Professor Wilson; in each, a large, well-developed head, masculine features, a broad and high forehead, a mouth strongly expressive of a combination of generosity and force, bespoke the careful thinker and acute observer; and in both, the hair, "sable silvered," seemed to have been left to the wild luxuriance of nature. He preceded us to the drawing-room—an uncarpeted chamber, furnished with old-fashioned German simplicity. Several birthday garlands were hung upon the walls. There were three doors opening into the apartment, and a long sofa extending along one of the sides; this sofa was canopied by ivy, growing in pots at either end, and entwined round a delicate framework. In Heidelhoff's house, at Nüremberg, we had seen wreaths of ivy growing round the window-curtains in a peculiarly graceful manner; and at Berlin, in the costly and beautiful dwelling of the admirable sculptor Wichmann, the door leading from the dining into the billiard-room—where Mendelssohn delighted to play while Jenny Lind sat by and sung, enjoying, as she always does, the enjoyment of others—that door is trellised with ivy, the trellis being formed of light bamboo, and the foliage contrasting charmingly with the color of the trellis. The dust of our carpets, perhaps, prevents the introduction of this charming ornament generally into our rooms; but it is difficult to conceive how much this simple loan from nature may be made to enrich the interiors of our dwellings.