OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 349 



ever realized a beautiful type, it is in some of the children which he 

 l^aiuted in the fi'iezes of the New Museum at Berlin, or in some of 

 his illustrations to the fairy tales published at Stuttgart ; but among 

 his thousands of adult figures we do not remember one which we 

 should call beautiful, either, from the Greek or the Italian point 

 of view. Like Cornelius, he wanted a clear comprehension of the 

 limits of his art ; he had not pondered enough over the " Laocoon " 

 of Lessing, where the lines which separate painting from poetry 

 are so clearly defined. He painted from the poets' verses, as if 

 painting were as unfettered as poetry. Such, assuredly, is not the 

 case. The painter must limit his expression of sentiment, so that 

 it may never trouble the harmony of his work. Take, as an ex- 

 ample, these verses from the lament of the Bards over Arminius, 

 in Klopstock's third Herminiad, which Kaulbach treated in those 

 frescoes in the Queen's Throne Hall of which we were just now 

 speaking : — 



" Here, O bards, upon this rock covered with hoary moss let us sit and sing 

 our funeral hymn. Here stay your steps ; let no one peer beneath those branches 

 which cover the mortal remains of our country's noblest son. He lies there 

 bathed in his blood, — he who, when the Romans with war-dances and hymns 

 of triumph led his Thusnelda captive, filled their hearts with a secret dread. Be- 

 hold the torrent rushing down the mountain side, to precipitate itself upon the 

 rocks below. Its tumid waves are black with the up-rooted pines. Hurrying on 

 in its swift course, it comes to bring them for the hero's funeral pyre." 



To realize the images which the poet here calls up in our minds in a 

 few lines, the painter, who feels the exigencies of his art, must treat 

 them successively. Unlike the poet, he cannot have prepared us to 

 understand them by a previous recital of the brave deeds of his hero : 

 he can strike but one blow, seize but one pregnant moment. The bards 

 gathered in the gloomy German forest to lament over the body of the 

 dead chieftain, which lies hidden under the heaped-up branches ; the 

 torrent hurrying on to bring the black pines torn up by their roots to 

 feed the flames which are to reduce it to ashes ; the caj^tive, Thusnelda, 

 led with festal dances and songs of victory before the eyes of the 

 Romans, who vainly strive to forget that Arminius lives and may yet 

 avenge her shame, — all appear before us as we read Klopstock's 

 lines. Our thoughts follow his from barbaric Germany to imperial 

 Rome. We see Thusnelda as she was and as she is ; we know Ar- 

 minius in life and in death ; we hear the bards lament, and the tri- 

 umphant songs of the Romans, — nay, we even look into their hearts, 

 and perceive the secret dread of the future which lurks beneath their 



