s the only pleasure we
derive from human beings in Rome." The young artists are found to be
wholly without worldly wisdom, a charge to which at least Overbeck might
readily plead guilty. Niebuhr further declares: "I confidently believe
we are on the eve of a new era of Art in Germany, similar to the sudden
bloom of our literature in the eighteenth century." He discerned in the
movement an unaccustomed spiritual phenomenon--one of those
manifestations of the national mind from time to time found in the
history of humanity. He felt once more an outburst of the intellectual
life of Germany, a rising again of the force of genius which had
impelled Lessing, Kant, and Goethe, which had given birth to profound
philosophy and science, and had animated a whole people with patriotism
and a spirit of self-sacrifice to do battle amid national songs and
hymns, even to the death, in the cause of the King and the Fatherland.
Bunsen testifies how Niebuhr showed his affection and care for the
Prussian and German disciples of art; he considered it an agreeable part
of his duty and vocation to render them assistance, to encourage them in
their studies, to give them the time of which he was so sparing to men
of mere show and fashion, also to render them pecuniary assistance when
necessary. To Niebuhr belongs the honour of having been the first to
recognise the new school at the moment when it was "despised, derided,
and vituperated." He befriended the men who had to fight their way
against shallowness and wickedness, against the low and false taste of
connoisseurs and patrons, till the day came when the martyrs of an
exalted aspiration gained the attention and admiration of the world.

Nor in numbering friends must be forgotten Frederick Schlegel, the
avowed champion of the new school. The critic was not without connecting
links and antecedents; he had made himself son-in-law of the Jewish
philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and stepfather of the painter Philip
Veit; and he further qualified himself for his critical duties by
joining the Roman Catholic Church. Overbeck and this rhapsodist on
Christian Art were naturally close allies; each was of use to the other,
and gave and received in turns. The artist strove, it is said, to embody
in pictorial form his friend's teachings; the two, in fact, moved in
parallel lines. Schlegel urged that the new style must be emulative and
aspiring, ever possessed of lofty ideas. Believe not, he writes, that
th