high, and the young man has not to ask permission of any snuffy old
magistrate to marry. I do not hear that the consent of the maidens
is more difficult to obtain than formerly.

No city of its size is more prolific of pictures than Munich. I do
not know how all its artists manage to live, but many of them count
upon the American public. I hear everywhere that the Americans like
this, and do not like that; and I am sorry to say that some artists,
who have done better things, paint professedly to suit Americans, and
not to express their own conceptions of beauty. There is one who is
now quite devoted to dashing off rather lamp-blacky moonlights,
because, he says, the Americans fancy that sort of thing. I see one
of his smirchy pictures hanging in a shop window, awaiting the advent
of the citizen of the United States. I trust that no word of mine
will injure the sale of the moonlights. There are some excellent
figure-painters here, and one can still buy good modern pictures for
reasonable prices.




FASHION IN THE STREETS

Was there ever elsewhere such a blue, transparent sky as this here in
Munich? At noon, looking up to it from the street, above the gray
houses, the color and depth are marvelous. It makes a background for
the Grecian art buildings and gateways, that would cheat a risen
Athenian who should see it into the belief that he was restored to
his beautiful city. The color holds, too, toward sundown, and seems
to be poured, like something solid, into the streets of the city.