other beautiful example of delicate color | something, to us, questionable in assumand careful finish. This bears the unfamiliar name of Brekelenkamp. We have not, of course, exhausted the purely technical merits of the Dutch school. There is here a Paul Potter for instance, which, though wanting in depth, is an excellent specimen of how the hides of cattle may be, so to speak, modelled in paint-" rendered with a fat brush: obtained for the price of 1210 guineas," says the enthusiastic Waagen. Turning, however, to the spirit or direction of their art, two qualities come forward prominently amongst those which have made the reputation of the Flemings. The highest of these is sincerity. So far as this quality is present, they deserve their fame. Among them were men who painted homely, who painted even coarse subjects, and that (as Jan Steen) without the attempt to point any moral by their tale-nay, without being apparently conscious that any moral existed. Men get drunk and vomit (even at a "Marriage in Cana"), or women take bribes from elderly gallants, just as dogs bark or blackbirds whistle. The Bearwood gallery is not rich in these ultra-sincere pictures. The "Cana" of Jan Steen hardly falls within the definition; and although Ostade, one of the most straightforward of the school, has thrown his strange rude earnestness (with some of his very finest painting) into the "Adoration of the Shepherds," yet with all this there is too great a contrast between the sacred story and the peasants of Friesland to leave us quite satisfied. These are boors enacting a gospel-scene; skilfully as they are handled, Ostade would have wrought them with more truth had he drawn them in their daily ways. Two girls by Maes one especially (painted almost entirely in reds and browns), so intent on peeling onions that we feel they are all the world to her for the moment are more perfect specimens of this precious, though limited, sincerity. This was a narrow art, one perceives, after all. The "short and simple annals of the poor" are soon exhausted when neither the pathos of sorrow nor the charm of childhood, neither the beauty of youth nor the venerableness of age, seem to come within the painter's precincts. It is natural to ask why this should be so? There is ing, as is perhaps occasionally done in Modern Painters, that the Dutchmen were wilfully mean and manufacturing; whilst what may be called the pot-andpan style of condemnation is really unworthy of notice. Nor are we disposed to explain this strange want or incapacity by the expedient of calling the artists or their public "insensible" or "animal." Probably it could not be accounted for without a complete analysis of life in all ranks during the seventeenth century. But it may help us to comprehend the problem if we remember that literature presented an exact parallel. The novel, whether of manners or of passion, did not yet exist. The ballad of common life was almost unrecognized as poetry. It was a hundred years before Rousseau and Goldsmith-two generations before even Gay, Fielding, or Richardson. The villa and the cottage were not yet invented. From this narrowness of range in the art of common life, it follows that those of the Dutch school who want the gift of simple sincerity are apt to fall into a kind of limbo, unprofitable to all men except so far as the artists can exhibit patient or rapid dexterity. "The mouth of the connoisseur may water," indeed, over such pieces of mechanical finish as the ugly Druggist's Shop," by Mieris, where every item stares at you like a stereoscope; but connoisseurship itself will find it difficult to praise the "Flight into Egypt," which here bears the celebrated name of Wouvermans. This is an excellent example of what Mr. Ruskin justly calls the "hybrid" manner, curiously divided between the "naturalistic" and the "idealistic" modes of treatment. To the former belong the two ordinary-looking peasant women in the centre, who are performing St. Anne and St. Mary; with St. Joseph, who, even during the flight, has found time to set up trestles and timbers, and is hard at work with his saw in the background. Two little boys with wings, who appear sadly in the way of the saw, remind us here that it is a religious picture; two more are playing hide-and-seek in a nondescript tree which bears three or four kinds of leaf at once; whilst the remaining couple are taking care of the donkey, and evidently much distressed by his ob stinate determination to get at the wa- on art, and amateurship, and the seven- We have described this picture at length because it is characteristic of that school which, from its want of redeeming sincerity, does appear to us hurtful to taste if accepted at the Waagen estimate. It has carried us into landscape, and it is in landscape that the "hybrid" style is most prevalent. Hobbima, Vandevelde, and Paul Potter, indeed, paint sincerely. They give a narrow section of nature, but so far as their power goes it is a rendering of what they actually To make out where men like Berghem or Karel du Jardin wish us to imagine the scene, is impossible. The sky belongs to one climate, the ruins to another; the peasants, who are usually seen wandering about in a boggy foreground, or crossing an impracticably tall bridge, are neither Flemish nor Italian. An impossible range of hills forms the horizon. Yet, though it is all " posed," there is no invention. The same features reappear, in slightly different combinations, on a hundred canvases. The result may be sometimes pleasing in color; yet the question will arise, What appreciable rank in art can be assigned to a style which is utterly unreal without being in the least degree imaginative, which is neither sound as prose nor elevating as poetry. little glitter, appears to have been their ideal of landscape; and, with a slight change, the definition will cover the seapieces of the school. Compared with the endless complexity of tints and of effects which nature offers every day, even when not doing anything to surprise, these painters set themselves a facile task. One great element in their popularity has been that, like the commonplace husband in Locksley Hall, they Answer to the purpose-easy things to un derstand " appealing to a few obvious impressions of nature, and not calling on the connoisseur for the odious labor of thinking whether things really are so. Yet to censure the Flemings on this ground would be unfair to those who were tak ing the first and necessarily imperfect steps towards a new art. From this his torical point of view there is interest in such a woodland view as Mr. Walter's large Hobbima, where the masses of light and shade are agreeable in form, and the general tone sufficiently pleasing. Let us keep to scale in our praises, and reserve powerful" or consummate" for Rubens or Rembrandt. Most of these cabinet pieces, even at their best, are but what our ancestors called "Flemish drolleries." There is no vivid charm in such work; the ecstatics of the old style of criticism-"matchless Hobcom- bima" or priceless Vandevelde "sound hollow in modern ears; yet they have an importance, it may be, not less profound and genuine to the student of a larger subject than any single art—the progress of the human mind. Every step in this, however small or stumbling, deserves attention. Thus we may note that, occupied with the first and nearest features of scenery, the majority of Dutch artists gave little observance to sky and atmosphere, although, in truth, these constitute the principal source of effect in a flat country. The attempt which Potter has made, in the little piece already referred to, to paint a cumulus cloud, is hence worthy of remark. One sees that he was aware of the beauty of its form, and of its value to his composition; but, if we compare it as a piece of drawing and color with similar passages in contemporary art, it is like the geology of Dr. Burnet by the Sincerity in which these artists, with many others of the school, are deficient -we have stated as the highest quality of Dutch art. This is, however, too lofty a word for the landscapists who still remain for notice. Though applicable to Cuyp and De Hooghe, we would rather say of Hobbima or Ruysdael that their merit lies in choosing subjects which do not exceed their technical power. To treat nature as something gray, with dark green masses upon it, relieved by a London Society Magazine. BADEN-BADEN. side of Sir C. Lyell. It is primitive. | believe that neither excess is inevitable, "The Castle of Bentheim," again, ex- and that a larger sympathy may lead the hibits further advance. The clouds are way to a sounder, if a less exciting, crithardly more than indicated; the rocks icism? in the immediate foreground are mere spongy masses; and an air of commonplace, which might easily have been avoided, has been given to the whole by the fallen trunk and crudely-painted tree on the right. In these points (and we might easily add to the list) what we read is inexperience. To Ruysdael belongs the honor of perceiving, whilst so few of his contemporaries could make a landscape interesting without artificial details, that he might rely for legitimate success upon a simple page from what he saw, largely yet carefully paintedfirmly, yet not without delicacy. Ruysdael executed very few pictures indeed in this style. May we not argue hence that he was, so far, in advance of his age, and please ourselves with believing that, had he lived in later and better days, he would have spared us that infinity of dusky mill-dams, that uniformity of sad-colored larches, which make his name one of the terrors of a private gallery? Such are some of the lessons which the Bearwood or any other good collection of the Dutch painters may afford. They might easily be multiplied; they might, perhaps, easily be contravened. In either case they may, we hope, be held as a kind of proof of the interest which any school of art possesses when looked at as a chapter in the great history of man. Let us add, that such an examination, imperfectly even as we have performed it, may serve also to point out to those who are apathetic to art that the subject is not one which a man can rationally be proud of regarding with indifference. "Homo sum: humani nibil a me alienum puto." When we hear the painters whose names have here come before us criticised in the slang of what we have called connoisseurship, it is indeed enough to raise the scorn of those beyond the circle. Those within it, again, may not unreasonably be indignant when they, in their turn, hear the traditionary gems of their galleries condemned to "be thrown into one pit together." Is it too presumptuous to GOING to Baden and going to the Bad are by very many persons considered synonymous. Certainly society is mixed and experiences manifold, and the entire place is, to a considerable extent, pleasant but wrong. The world has only two capitals, it has been remarked, its winter capital which is Paris, and the summer capital which is Baden. Yes, I think she has some pretensions to that often disputed title, "The Queen of the Watering Places ;" and even when the gambling element is eliminated she will be no discrowned queen. I speak of her as she is at present, without discussing eventualities. I like in Baden, that centre of activity and that circle of repose, the life of the watering-place and the solitude of the Black Forest. I like the sharp contrast of the highest cultivation and artificiality of the age, with the indigenous habits, manners, and garb of the primitive people, who retain the ways and modes of two hundred years ago. I like those ancient stories of the Vehmgericht and the Virgin's kiss, and the modern narratives of daily gossip and adventure. Many of my readers, I am sure, are numbered among the fifty thousand tourists who visit Baden every year, and if sufficiently endowed with health and wealth must have enjoyed it hugely. Among the fifty thousand are sovereigns who lay aside their crowns and cares, and wily statesmen who arrange diplomatic meetings; the artist who intends to sketch, and the man of letters who meditates his novel. But the waiter will bring you round every day at dinner the Bade Blat Amtliche Fremden Liste, where you will find your own honored name in print, probably with disguised spelling, and those of your contemporaries. After your arrival, if you happen to possess a well-regulated mind, or rather any mind at all, you will endeavor to arrange your impressions in an orderly manner. You will like to know some thing of this Grand Duchy, which is really a kingdom of considerable size and its Zoehringen line of princes as ancient and illustrious as any of their compeers. You will surely traverse those wide dominions, northwards as far as romantic Heidelberg, and southwards to fair Constance. But you will not do this until you have wandered much by the shady side of the Oos, once the slender boundary against France, and much in the region of the Oosgan. Then you have to examine the Baden lions, unless you are a man of original frame of mind and prefer to take *it all for granted. There are positively Baths of Caracalla, but these resolve themselves into an unimportant fragment of old therma built by the Emperor. There is the Old Castle and the New Castle, and a Devil's Pulpit, and an old castle of Eberstein, and a new castle of Eberstein, and churches and chapels, and hills, and lakes, and picturesque ruins. The guide books will give you a catalogue raissonné of all this. They are by no means to be despised in their way-not even in the guide-book literature, which often gives you curious authentic details to be sought in vain in larger works, but you will always be falling back on Baden itself, to the books and papers at Marx's and the numerous resources of the Conversation House. Generally speaking, one travels from Paris to Baden by way of Strasbourg. At Epernay, understanding that it was the proper thing, I called for champagne, "the foaming grape of eastern France," and partook of the only champagne, or rather I should say, vile gooseberry, which ever cost me a headache. The bridge over the Rhine is soon crossed, and then everything becomes German. I say this deliberately, in opposition to the French writers, who maintain that everything continues French. It is, however, to be conceded that French is the ordinary language of the place. Baden Baden, according to one of these writers, is only a Pré Catelan, of which the Black Forest is the Bois de Boulogne. This is French sententiousness, you understand, one of those short jerky sentences in which the feuilletonistes so greatly delight. It alludes to the days when the Pré Catelan was something better than a child's dancing-ground on Sundays and fête-days. The picturesque, NEW SERIES-VOL. I., No. 1. they complain, is all utilized; each savage gorge has its cafe, there are fancy bridges over the precipices, and elegant seats in front of the cascades. Now all this is pure cockneyism, and for my part I wonder why the cockneyism of Paris, as it is more flagrant, is not also more celebrated than the cockneyism of London. I imagine that this ingenious writer took a voiture for an hour to go into the forest, and on his return jotted down his impressions after the fashion of the celebrated Count Smorltork. Any one who has spent any time in the forest will contradict this. The forest is, at times, wild and savage in the extreme. Whence its name of Black is not quite clear, but certainly some of its deep tarns are black enough, and almost black are the very dark green pines, and so black is the Hallenthal, that Marshal Villars drew back and refused to enter the gloomy gorge. In the grounds of the Prince of Faustenberg's castle is the principal source of the Danube, which rises in the Black Forest and emerges in the Black Sea. You are surprised to see the tiny rivulet murmuring over its pebbly bed, through the green grass. But the Black Forest is a wide and scattered territory with some hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, with picturesque villages and towns, with various vast flat plains and treeless hills. Many of the plains were formerly dense forests peopled by hunters and miners, not to say bandits. Those vast rafts, which form the most picturesque feature of Rhine navigation, are generally the timber of the Black Forest. "That's a Dutchman !" is the common exclamation of the native when he sees a fine tree. The meaning is this: the pines felled on the mountain sides lie in the declivity of the ravines, till the torrents from the melting mountain snows sweep them into the neighboring river which transfers them to the Rhine. The wood intended for ship-building is carried down as far as Dordrecht, and then the canny Dutch keep the best before they transfer the remainder to England, Spain, and Portugal. The story of the "many-fountained Ida " is evermore repeated on the mountains of the Black Forest. "They came, they cut away my tallest pines." You will probably traverse the Black But let us copy the programme for the month of July, of this year of grace, 1864, commencing this very day, July the 12th. Le 12. Musique militaire à la promenade et grand concert à la chapelle de Manheim. Le 13. Musique d'orchestre et bal. Le 14. Représentation du Déserteur et de De par le Roi. Le 16. Musique d'orchestre. Le 17. Musique militaire à 3 heures, solistes le soir. Le 18. Représentation de Richard Le 22. Musique militaire: représentation des Noces de Jeannette, des Papillotes de M. Benoit, et de La Fleur de Lotus. Le 23. Musique d'orchestre. Le 24. Musique militaire de Grenadiers. Le 25. Représentation de Zampa, et de Volage et Jaloux. Le 26 et 28. Musique militaire et bal. Forest post, with Baden postilions. [ Very picturesque is their appearance; a trumpet slung across their shoulders, with which they stir up their horses to the tune of old mountain airs, a bright yellow waistcoat, white buck-skin breeches, and jack-boots. Very picturesque also is the attire of the Baden peasants, especially on the Sunday, when waistcoats and breeches are braided and laced all over; the long coat is that of the seventeenth century, and the women's long tresses of hair gathered up into a black ribbon, hang almost down to their ankles. You often meet the peasants carrying at their waists little bags full of fine straw, and as they walk plaiting the straw hats, which are imported into various countries. The manufacture of cheap wooden clocks is also a very common source of employment in the Forest. These are everywhere known, and form a considerable source of business to the Badois. Formerly the liqueur kirchwasser was made out of the wild cherries of the country, but I imagine that this has ceased to be a specialty. It is very interesting, while wandering through the country, to observe the frequent crosses set up by the pious mountaineers in the forest path. No amount of Protestantism can enable me to see any objection in these. There is a beautiful passage on this subject in poor Hawthorne's Romance of Monte Beni, that most faithful transcript of Rome and Italian life. "Whatever may be the iniquities of the Papal system, it was a wise and lovely sentiment that set up the frequent shrine and cross along the roadside. No wayfarer, bent on whatever worldly errand, can fail to be reminded at every mile or two, that this is not the business which most concerns The weather was so capricious this him. The pleasure-seeker is silently ad-season that the Baden belles were long monished to look heavenward for a joy in settling whether it was hot or cold, infinitely greater than he now possesses. whether summer or autumn. The pretThe wretch in temptation beholds the ty summer dresses of material from cross, and is warned that, if he yield, the Mexico and Chambery excited quite a Saviour's agony for his sake will have furore on the Lichtensal promenades, been endured in vain. The stubborn when the month of July at last settled criminal, whose heart has long been like the question in the affirmative. The a stone, feels it throb anew with dread wonder is, where all the visitors can be and hope; and our poor Donatello, as stowed away. The explanation is that he went kneeling from shrine to cross at Baden innkeeping is the principal inand from cross to shrine, doubtless found dustrial pursuit, and the natives, who an efficacy in these symbols that helped amply enjoy themselves out of the seahim towards a higher penitence." son in their ample rooms, get into the Le 29. Représentation de Zampa, et de Volage et Jaloux. Le 31. Musique militaire à 3 heures, solistes le soir. This programme will give a good idea of the general nature of such programmes. The great balls of the season were, some time since, fixed for the 16th and 30th of August, the races for the 1st, 3d, and 5th of September, and the steeple-chase for the 7th of September. I think this will give a tolerably accurate idea of the nature of the public amusements. |