h imagination for an anti-supernaturalist. He
was a mystic pietist; religion blending with poetry coloured his whole
mind; revelation, nature, and art, were for him one and indivisible. And
this I believe to have been the mental state of the son while yet under
the parental roof. The sequel will show a change; the incertitude of
speculation could not be sustained, and so anchorage was sought within
an "Infallible Church." Yet for the right reading of a character
curiously subtle and complex, it is needful to realise the fact that the
seeds sown in the homestead were never uprooted, that it was, indeed,
the old stock which sustained the new grafting, and that, to the last, a
poetic mysticism dwelt in the chambers of the artist's mind. And as was
the tree so were the fruits; sprung from a family of preachers, the
painter became an evangelist in his art.

The father, Dr. Christian Adolph Overbeck, as the formative type of the
son, merits a further word.[3] If not quite a genius, he was the model
of a scholar and a gentleman; besides being Burgomaster in the city of
his birth, he was Doctor of Laws, Syndic of the Cathedral Chapter, and
served in important political missions to Paris and St. Petersburg. He
is described "Musis Amicus";[4] and not only the friend of poesy, he was
a poet himself, and by virtue of the duality habitual to his mind
dedicated his pen with singular impartiality to Christ and Apollo; one
volume of verses being entitled 'Anacreon and Sappho,' another,
containing a poem, on 'The Love of God.' These products rise somewhat
above the level of respectable mediocrity, yet they have not escaped the
stigma of platitudes. Goethe, however, did not disdain to make
respectful mention of the poet. The painter inherited in some small
degree the paternal gift; he accompanied with verses the engraved and
published drawings, _Jesus as a Child in the House at Nazareth_. By the
father I have also before me a "new edition," published 1831, of a
collection entitled 'Frizchens Lieder,'[5] so called because penned for
the benefit of the youthful Frederick. The preface makes mention of "my
little Frizchen" thus:--"It were better had he been an angel, but he is
just a human child:" then, facetiously, it is added, "he is less ideal
than saucy and conceited." Those who like myself knew only the solemnity
of the painter in advanced years have a difficulty in supposing in the
child such traits compatible. These songs of the domest