Pesne. Picture
approved by mankind there and then. And it still hangs on the wall, in a
perfect state, in Charlottenburg Palace; where the judicious tourist may
see it without difficulty, and institute reflections on it.

A really graceful little Picture; and certainly, to Prussian men,
not without weight of meaning. Nor perhaps to Picture-Collectors and
Cognoscenti generally, of whatever country,--if they could forget, for
a moment, the correggiosity of Correggio, and the learned babble of the
Sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer; and think, "Why it is, probably,
that Pictures exist in this world, and to what end the divine art of
Painting was bestowed, by the earnest gods, upon poor mankind?" I could
advise it, once, for a little! Flaying of Saint Bartholomew, Rape of
Europa, Rape of the Sabines, Piping and Amours of goat-footed Pan,
Romulus suckled by the Wolf: all this, and much else of fabulous,
distant, unimportant, not to say impossible, ugly and unworthy, shall
pass without undue severity of criticism, in a Household of such
opulence as ours, where much goes to waste, and where things are not on
an earnest footing for this long while past! As Created Objects, or as
Phantasms of such, pictorially done, all this shall have much worth,
or shall have little. But I say, Here withal is one not phantasmal;
of indisputable certainty, home-grown, just commencing business, who
carried it far!

Fritz is still, if not in "long-clothes," at least in longish and
flowing clothes, of the petticoat sort, which look as of dark-blue
velvet, very simple, pretty and appropriate; in a cap of the same; has
a short raven's feather in the cap; and looks up, with a face and
eyes full of beautiful vivacity and child's enthusiasm, one of the
beautifulest little figures, while the little drum responds to his bits
of drumsticks. Sister Wilhelmina, taller by some three years, looks on
in pretty marching attitude, and with a graver smile. Blackamoor, and
accompaniments elegant enough; and finally the figure of a grenadier, on
guard, seen far off through an opening,--make up the background.

We have engravings of this Picture; which are of clumsy poor quality,
and misrepresent it much: an excellent Copy in oil, what might be called
almost a fac-simile and the perfection of a Copy, is now (1854) in Lord
Ashburton's Collection here in England. In the Berlin Galleries,--which
are made up, like other Galleries, of goat-footed Pan, Europa's Bull,