We
thought you were in Halle!"
Explanations followed. H. was speedily transferred to their hotel,
where they had bespoken rooms for us; and we sallied forth to the
court church to hear the music of high mass.
This music is celebrated throughout Germany. It is, therefore,
undoubtedly superior. The organ is noble, the opera company royal. But
more perfect than all combined are the echoes of the church, which
(though the guide book does not mention it) nullify every effect.
Monday, 8. Visited the walks and gardens on the banks of the Elbe. The
sky was clear, the weather glorious, and all nature full of joy. We
almost think this Elbe another Seine; these Bruhlsche gardens and
terraces, these majestic old bridges, and cleft city, another Paris!
Here, too, is that out-of-doors life, life in gardens, we admire so
much. Breakfast in the public gardens; hundreds of little groups
sipping their coffee! Dinner, tea, and supper in the gardens, with
music of birds and bands!
Visited the Picture Gallery. If one were to chance upon an altar in
this German Athens inscribed to the "unknown god," he might be tempted
to suggest that that deity's name is Decency.
The human form is indeed divine, as M. Belloc insists, and rightly,
sacredly drawn, cannot offend the purest eye. All nature is symbolic.
The universe itself is a complex symbol of spiritual ideas. So in the
structure and relation of the human body, some of the highest
spiritual ideas, the divinest mysteries of pure worship, are
designedly shadowed forth.
If, then, the painter rightly and sacredly conceives the divine
meaning, and creates upon the canvas, or in marble, forms of exalted
ideal loveliness, we cannot murmur even if, like Adam and Eve in Eden,
"they are naked, and are not ashamed."
And yet even sacred things love mystery, and holiest emotions claim
reserve. Nature herself seems to tell us that the more sacred some
works of art might be, the less they should be unveiled. There are
flowers that will wither in the sun The passion of love, when
developed according to the divine order, is, even in its physical
relations, so holy that it cannot retain its delicacy under the sultry
blaze of profane publicity.
But it is far otherwise with paintings where the _animus_ is not
sacred, nor the meaning spiritual. No excellences of coloring, no
marvels of foreshortening, no miracles of mechanism can consecrate the
salacious images of mythologic abomination.
The cheek that can forget to blush at the Venus and Cupid by Titian,
at Leda and her Swan, at Jupiter and Io, and others of equally evil
intent, ought never to pretend to blush at any thing. Such pictures
are a disgrace to the artists that painted, to the age that tolerates,
and to the gallery that contains them. They are fit for a bagnio
rather than a public exhibition.
Evening. Dresden is the home of Madame Jenny Lind Goldschmidt.
