could draw the separate groups of the charming relief, the Genii of the
Thiergarten, I do not remember a single stroke of Streichenberg's work,
though I can recall all the better the gay manner of the artist whom we
again met in 1848 as a demagogue.

At the Schmidt school Franz and Paul Meyerheim were among our comrades,
and how full of admiration I was when one of them--Franz, I think, who
was then ten or eleven years old--showed us a hussar he had painted
himself in oil on a piece of canvas! The brothers took us to their home,
and there I saw at his work their kindly father, the creator of so many
charming pictures of country and child life.

There was also a member of the artist family of the Begas, Adalbert, who
was one of our contemporaries and playmates, some of whose beautiful
portraits I saw afterward, but whom, to my regret, I never met again.

Most memorable of all were our meetings with Peter Cornelius, who also
lived in the Lennestrasse. When I think of him it always seems as if he
were looking me in the face. Whoever once gazed into his eyes could
never forget them. He was a little man, with waxen-pale, and almost
harsh, though well-formed features, and smooth, long, coal-black hair.
He might scarcely have been noticed save for his eyes, which overpowered
all else, as the sunlight puts out starlight. Those eyes would have
drawn attention to him anywhere. His peculiar seriousness and his
aristocratic reserve of manner were calculated to keep children at a
distance, even to repel them, and we avoided the stern little man whom we
had heard belonged to the greatest of the great. When he and his amiable
wife became acquainted with our mother, however, and he called us to him,
it is indescribable how his harsh features softened in the intercourse
with us little ones, till they assumed an expression of the utmost