human
The Sorrowing Royal Pair and the
gpt
Leonora by Lessing,
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The Soldier and his Child,
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The Sick Councillor, and
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The Sons of Edward by Hildebrandt, and
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The Lament of the Jews by Bendemann, together with the works of Cornelius, met with the enthusiastic applause of the million, Menzel looked into the world with a sharp glance, undisturbed by idealism; and what enabled him to do this was his unwavering and thoroughly Prussian healthiness, which knew no touch of sentimentalism--a certain coldness and hardness, that sensible, reflective North German trait, which often expresses itself in these days (when German art has become subtle and superior) by a crude naturalism in the Berlin painting. In the beginning of the century, however, it set the Berlin painting, as art of the healthy human understanding, in salutary contrast to the sickliness of Munich and Düsseldorf. Even eighty years ago the people of Berlin were too acute and practical to be Romanticists. The artists whom Menzel found active and honoured at his arrival were Schadow and Rauch, and beside them, as representatives of the _grande peinture_, Begas and Wach. But even these, who were most under the influence of the sentimental tendency, were justly recognised by the thorough-going Romanticists on the Rhine as never having given an unqualified homage to their flag. A clear, realistic method was dominant in the art of Berlin. And in this respect it was as much a corrective--and one by no means to be undervalued--against the inflated sentiment of Munich as against the weak and sickly sentimentalism of Düsseldorf, with its knights and monks and noble maidens. Even Cornelius, who had been called to Berlin by Frederick William IV--that King of the Romanticists on the throne of the eminently unromantic Hohenzollerns--found himself helpless against the ruling taste. And here only, in the stronghold of sharply accentuated common sense, where the old Prussian sobriety set bounds to the twilight kingdom of Romanticism, could Adolf Menzel attain to greatness. His Berlinism kept him from lingering in empty space. To the taste of to-day, formed from Fontainebleau, he will seem too much a creature of the understanding and too little a creature of feeling. Boecklin hit him off admirably when, on being asked what he thought of Menzel, he answered:
human
He is a great scholar. A comparison between him and Mommsen especially suggests itself--a great scholar, a mordant satirist, and a brilliant journalist. But this sober scepticism, this cool spirit of investigation, this