We passed the summer of 1846 at Munich, we—that is my mother, my brother Charles, and my sister—having taken a clean and comfortable lodging kept by a Frenchman in the Promenade Gasse. Our life here was most enjoyable; the inseparable companionship of my brother Charles was to me a source of untold delight. Our pursuits and pleasures were all in common; we studied the German language together under the tuition of a well-read and accomplished master, and gained great proficiency by our almost daily visits to the theatre. I say daily, because the performance began at an early hour, and often ended before the daylight had waned, leaving us at liberty to accompany my mother in her evening drive, or to spend some hours at a friend’s house before retiring to rest. The dramatic performances—which comprised many of the masterpieces of Schiller, Kotzebue and Iffland, and other eminent writers—were very well given, and the principal actor and actress of the day were a very handsome and talented couple of the name of Dahl. He took the leading part in such characters as Karl von Moor, in The Robbers, and the like, while his pretty wife showed to great advantage in the heroines of the same pieces, and was very much admired, especially by the king, Ludwig of Bavaria, on whom the charms of female beauty were never thrown away.

The tragedies and comedies at the theatres were alternated with opera by both German and Italian composers, and Charles and I seldom missed an evening in the box which was kindly placed at our disposal by the Sardinian Minister.

We became also zealous students of art in our daily visits to the painting and sculpture galleries of that city of treasures, known by the names of Pinacothek and Glyptothek. We passed most of our mornings in these two museums, where the paintings are well arranged to mark the progress of the art, and where every facility is afforded for the study of the different schools and different periods. I think, before I left Munich I knew every statue and picture by heart.

Whatever King Louis’ failings may have been, he was certainly a benefactor to his capital, encouraging art and artists of all degrees, painters, architects, musicians—a builder of palaces, of churches, a patron of the coloured glass for which Munich was so distinguished in his day, and to which was due a revived taste for painted windows in every part of Europe.

The king’s own palace was decorated by frescoes representing scenes from the “Niebelungen Lied,” and other subjects both of history and fiction by such well-known artists as Cornelius and Kaulbach, while two rooms were set apart for the portraits of contemporary beauties. Not a few of these were rather of a shady reputation, but then there was a sprinkling of homely-featured Royalties and other exemplary members of society, designed to lend a respectable colouring to the whole.

An amusing story was told of His Majesty, with respect to this gallery. King Louis was partial to the society of foreigners, and invariably included the English in all invitations to his receptions. A lady was presented to him one evening, and being very much struck with her personal appearance, he requested her to be so good as to give the Court portrait painter a sitting a few days hence, as he was desirous of having her portrait in his collection. The lady smiled and hesitated, but we all know what comes of hesitation. Half flattered, half alarmed, not quite convinced of the prudence of the acquiescence, she demurred for a few moments, when vanity prevailed, and our countrywoman gave her consent. The next day the king—walking as was his wont unattended through the streets of his capital—encountered the lady, who was bent on a sight-seeing expedition. He paused, took off his hat, and made some casual remark, which gave him time to examine the beauty of the preceding evening. After an earnest scrutiny of her countenance, His Majesty stammered out a species of apology to the effect that he would not trouble her to give a sitting to his painter in ordinary. Alas! for the disillusion which daylight had brought about with regard to the candle-light beauty!

There were no end of stories extant about Louis of Bavaria. I was assured that on the morning of his silver wedding, after presenting his wife with the usual offerings of flowers, jewels, and what not, after joining in the religious ceremony, which is very touching and impressive in the German Church, the devoted husband gave the wife so black an eye that it was a question if she could possibly appear at the evening reception.

During the summer most of the society are absent from the capital, and reside at their country estates, so that there were not many houses which “received,” as the phrase was, during the hot season, but the one which we constantly frequented made up to us for the absence of any other. It was that of the Sardinian Minister, whose acquaintance we had already made at Genoa. The Marchese Fabio Pallavicini and his wife Marinetta, with their two sons, formed in themselves a most attractive foundation for the agreeable reunions which were at this time swelled by the officers of the neighbouring camp at Augsburg, and a frequent contingent of travellers passing through on their way to the South.

Andri and Cesari, the two sons, had been my frequent partners and members of our Genoese cavalcade, and it was a source of great pleasure to meet them again, and to make an expedition, as we did one day, in their company to see the review which the king was to hold at Augsberg.

The street of that town, which has so often been described as one of the most picturesque in Europe, was beautifully decorated on that occasion, for the houses actually looked as if they had been built in flowers. We lingered on till late in the night, and escorted by some military friends—one of whom, the noble and handsome Count Karl von Oetting, still lives in my memory—we visited the whole camp and listened to the beautiful part-singing of the troops as they sat at the doors of their tents beneath the glorious moonlight of a July evening.

I, for one, was very sorry when that peaceful summer came to an end—and yet how could I say so when our next destination was Rome! And what a journey that was! never to be forgotten, in its beauty, its brilliancy.

Pope Gregory XVI. had just died, and was succeeded by the popular and liberal Pontiff, Pius the Ninth, on whose accession all prison doors flew open, all political offenders were released, and a festival of three days was announced through every town in the Papal dominions.

Our journey from Munich lay by the twin lakes of Tegern and Aachen, small but beautiful, their banks studded with a profusion of wild-flowers, and the waters of the last-mentioned of a very peculiar hue—what in old days was called mazarine blue or green—and the light caught by the water gave the lake the appearance of a gem—a chrysolite for instance.

When we reached the Italian frontier, our progress assumed an aspect of triumph, for it was vintage time, and we were constantly encountering peasants in the gayest dresses, driving wine-carts with casks and skins full of ruddy liquor, the drivers carrying branches of vine and ivy, as if Bacchus held high revelry. On our arrival at Ravenna, besides the magnificence of the churches and basilica, with their wealth of mosaic and their pride of tradition, there was the interest of a pilgrimage to the tomb of Dante, and it would have been impossible to see Ravenna under a more bewitching aspect, for it was the three-days’ festival. Every house in the principal street had its balcony adorned with rich silks, tapestry, and velvet, not unfrequently embroidered with gold, while all the citizens were in gala dress, and the women, remarkable for personal beauty and dignity of bearing, had donned their richest garb and displayed their choicest ornaments of gold and silver, their magnificent hair transfixed by bodkins, or spadini (of the sword and target shape), many of them wearing innumerable rows of pearls round their stately throats. Even in those days the national costume had been much tampered with, but nothing was too good to do honour to their beloved Pontiff, and the jewel-boxes of every household had been ransacked for the occasion. All along our road the same scene presented itself, making allowance, of course, for the difference of locality.

We spent a morning of exquisite delight in the pine-forest in the neighbourhood of Ravenna. Alas! I hear with deep concern that the chief part of those magnificent trees is mouldering to decay. I remember sitting at my mother’s feet for several hours, drinking in the calm and beauty of the scene, while Shelley’s lines rose to my lips in his description of another Pineta, the one at Pisa—

There was a distant sound of the Adriatic, which mingled with the whisper of the wind among the stone pines, and produced a weird music, forming a species of scale, caused by the trees being all of the same form, though of different altitudes. Numbers of wild-flowers studded the ground, and moths and butterflies of variegated colours skimmed and floated around us. How often did my mother and myself talk over that delicious morning, when