unparalleled obstinacy. They had not the malice of the petroleum that
does violence to St Paul's; but they had instead an indomitable patience.
Under the commands of the master Cornelius, they baffled time and all his
work--refused his pardons, his absolutions, his cancelling indulgences--by
a perseverance that nothing could discourage. Who has not known somewhat
indifferent painters mighty busy about their colours and varnishes?
Cornelius caused a pit to be dug for the preparation of the lime, and in
the case of the Ludwig Kirche this lime remained there for eight years,
with frequent stirrings. This was in order that the whole fresco, when
at last it was entrusted to its bed, should be set there for immortality.
Nor did the master fail to thwart time by those mechanical means that
should avert the risk of bulging already mentioned. He neglected no
detail. He was provident, and he lay in wait for more than one of the
laws of nature, to frustrate them. Gravitation found him prepared, and
so did the less majestic but not vain dispensation of accidents. Against
bulging he had an underplot of tiles set on end; against possible
trickling from an upper floor he had asphalt; it was all part of the
human conspiracy. In effect, the dull pictures at Munich seem to stand
well. It would have been more just--so the present age thinks of these
preserved walls--if the day that admired them had had them exclusively,
and our day had been exempt. The painted cathedrals of the Middle Ages
have undergone the natural correction; why not the Ludwig Kirche?

In 1842, then, the nations were standing, as it were, shoulder to
shoulder against the walk of time and against his gentle act and art.
They had just called iron into their cabal. Cornelius came from Munich
to London, looked at the walls at Westminster, and put a heart of
confidence into the breast of the Commission. The situation, he averred,
need not be too damp for immortality, with due care. What he had done in
the Glyptothek and in the Pinacothek might be done with the best results