" At a later date he writes: "I like Overbeck and the two
Schadows much, and they are estimable both as artists and as men; but
the Catholicism of Overbeck and one of the Schadows excludes entirely
many topics of conversation." Overbeck is elsewhere described as of
"very prepossessing physiognomy, taciturn and melancholy," with a
"proselyting spirit." Bunsen, who no less than Niebuhr deplored these
conversions, writes in 1817 that Overbeck had been for a fortnight in
August a welcome guest at Frascati, that he had finished a water-colour
drawing--a very lovely Madonna with the infant Jesus--"of which he
permitted a copy to be taken, still extant, and valued as a record of
the time and of the short-lived intimacy with the gentle and
heavenly-minded artist, who soon after this period withdrew from all
companions of a different religious persuasion from that which he had
adopted." Among the chief converts are numbered the brothers Schadow,
Veit, Platner, and the critic Frederick Schlegel. Cornelius is not
included, because he was born into Catholicism. He is described as of
"an open and powerful intellect, free from all limitations," "with
habits and convictions rooted as the facts of his existence." He thus
looked on coolly while the new converts were at fever-heat. Yet it is
pleasant to know that these controversies were, in the main, preserved
from personal bitterness, and that whatever might be the difference in
creeds, the broad union of religion and humanity was never torn asunder.
Thus in 1817 Niebuhr, a Protestant and possibly something more, was able
to write: "I associate chiefly, indeed almost exclusively, with the
artists who belong to the religious party, because those who are
decidedly pious, or who strive after piety, are by far the noblest and
best men, and also the most intellectual, and this gives me an
opportunity of hearing a good deal on faith and its true nature." And
the faith of these men we know to have brought forth good works; as were
their belief and their practice, such were their pictures, and it is
scarcely here the place to discuss whether larger views might have given
to their art wider extension.

By a curious coincidence, about the time when these conversions to Roman
Catholicism were going on in Rome the third jubilee of the Reformation
was celebrated at Lubeck. The pietist father of the painter made himself
champion of the cause, and delivered a speech at a meeting of the Bible
Society,