aulbach adorning the upper staircase
walls of the New Museum are widely admired, but critics differ in the
estimate of their place as works of art. The upper saloons reached by
this staircase show the cartoons of Cornelius, and foreshadow a
grandeur in German art not yet realized.

The third building in the group which holds the chief art treasures of
Berlin is the National Gallery, its pictures partaking, as such a
collection should, strongly of the German spirit as shown in modern
German art. The paintings are of various degrees of merit, many being
of value chiefly as reflecting the national life. A fine portrait of
Mommsen arrested me, on one visit; a striking picture, "Christ healing
a Sick Child in its Mother's Arms," by Gabriel Max, was a continual
favorite; and many others were among those to which we went frequently
and before which we lingered long.

The crowning excellence of all the Royal Art Collections is their
singular method and completeness. The Old Museum, especially, in its
arrangement and illustration of the history of painting in all
schools, is without a peer, and it is particularly rich in the early
Italian masters. The National Gallery in London has been compared in
arrangement with the Berlin Museum, but our observation showed nowhere
else in Europe so great facility for systematic study of art as here.

Quite recently, a writer in the "London Art Journal," in comparing
European art galleries, characterizes the Italian galleries, except
the Pitti, as mere storehouses of pictures, so great have been the
accessions, in late years, of altar-pieces from suppressed convents;
while, on the other hand, the Louvre, and the galleries of Munich,
Dresden, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Madrid still retain their
original characteristics as collections made by persons of taste and
discrimination. "The Berlin Gallery," says this writer, "is neither a
storehouse nor a collection. It stands on a footing of its own. The
studious and organizing Prussian mind soon handed over the management
of all its collections to a body of specialists, trained to study the
objects in their keeping and to arrange them not so much for the
delight as for the information of a studious public. The Berlin
Gallery has been thus arranged, and its additions have been purchased
under the direction of scholars and historians rather than artists and
_dilettanti_. Historical sequence and historical completeness have
been aimed at. The colle