felt the benefit of the removal of these restrictions, which for nearly
a year has been anticipated, in a growth of population and increased
business.

But the social change is still more important. The restrictions upon
marriage were a serious injury to the state. If Hans wished to marry,
and felt himself adequate to the burdens and responsibilities of the
double state, and the honest fraulein was quite willing to undertake
its trials and risks with him, it was not at all enough that in the
moonlighted beergarden, while the band played, and they peeled the
stinging radish, and ate the Switzer cheese, and drank from one mug,
she allowed his arm to steal around her stout waist. All this love and
fitness went for nothing in the eyes of the magistrate, who referred the
application for permission to marry to his associate advisers, and they
inquired into the applicant's circumstances; and if, in their opinion,
he was not worth enough money to support a wife properly, permission was
refused for him to try. The consequence was late marriages, and fewer
than there ought to be, and other ill results. Now the matrimonial gates
are lifted 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 At