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
Athenian who should see it into the belief that he was restored to
his beautiful city. The color holds, too, toward sundown, and seems
to be poured, like something solid, into the streets of the city.

You should see then the Maximilian Strasse, when the light floods the
platz where Maximilian in bronze sits in his chair, illuminates the
frescoes on the pediments of the Hof Theater, brightens the Pompeian
red under the colonnade of the post-office, and streams down the gay
thoroughfare to the trees and statues in front of the National
Museum, and into the gold-dusted atmosphere beyond the Isar. The
street is filled with promenaders: strangers who saunter along with
the red book in one hand,--a man and his wife, the woman dragged
reluctantly past the windows of fancy articles, which are "so cheap,"
the man breaking his neck to look up at the buildings, especially at
the comical heads and figures in stone that stretch out from the
little oriel-windows in the highest story of the Four Seasons Hotel,
and look down upon the moving throng; Munich bucks in coats of
velvet, swinging light canes, and smoking cigars through long and
elaborately carved meerschaum holders; Munich ladies in dresses of
that inconvenient length that neither sweeps the pavement nor clears
it; peasants from the Tyrol, the men in black, tight breeches, that
button from the knee to the ankle, short jackets and vests set
thickly with round silver buttons, and conical hats with feathers,
and the women in short quilted and quilled petticoats, of barrel-like
roundness from the broad hips down, short waists ornamented with
chains and barbarous brooches of white metal, with the oddest
head-gear of gold and silver heirlooms; students with little red or
green embroidered brimless caps, with the ribbon across the breast, a
folded shawl thrown over one shoulder, and the inevitable
switch-cane; porters in red caps, with a coil of twine about the
waist; young fellows from Bohemia, with green coats, or coats trimmed
with green, and green felt hats with a sti