wherein he proclaimed Luther the great witness of truth.
"Luther," he declared, "spoke, wrote, thundered, and the power of
darkness was overturned; thus conscience became free, doctrines were
purified, and the precious Bible, as a heavenly treasure, was given back
to the people."[5] It has been assigned as a reason why Overbeck never
returned home, that he could not bear to see the city of Lubeck with her
old walls thrown down; but a less fanciful cause was that other walls
than those of brick and mortar had been set up, dividing kindred and
friends.

Let us now turn from polemics to the pleasing descriptions given by
Niebuhr and Bunsen of the daily lives of the German Brotherhood. It is
not always that archaeologists and literary men are the soundest
counsellors of artists; they place overmuch stress on the inward
conception and motive; they lay down, like Coleridge, the axiom that "a
picture is an intermediate something between a thought and a thing," and
in exalting the "thought" they subordinate the "thing." This was the
last teaching that Overbeck needed. He and his fellows were already only
too prone to ignore technique, to neglect colour, chiaroscuro, texture.
They deemed it all-sufficient to perfect form as the language of
thought; consequently while their works instruct and elevate, they fail
to please or to gain wide popularity.

Nevertheless, taken for all in all, Overbeck and Cornelius must be
accounted most fortunate in their intellectual companionship. The habit
was, when gathered socially together at the Embassy in the Palazzo
Caffarelli, to read books, talk of pictures, and to consort together
generally for the furtherance of the great art revival in which Niebuhr
and Bunsen believed fervently. The attachment became mutual, the
intercourse was prized on both sides. Niebuhr writes of Cornelius and
his wife: "They are, strictly speaking, intimate family friends;" and
again he says: "The society of Cornelius and Overbeck gives an inspiring
variety to the day's occupations, and one or other of these intellectual
companions seldom fails to join our evening walks." In another letter we
read: "Cornelius of Dusseldorf, Platner from Leipzig, Koch from the
Tyrol, Overbeck from Lubeck, Mosler from Coblentz, and William Schadow
from Berlin, were assembled at Bunsen's in the apartments of the painter
Brandis: in different ways and degrees we are attached to them all, and
we think them men of talent. Their society i