The picture gallery contains twenty-seven hundred original paintings, including some of the best works of the old and of modern masters. The most celebrated picture is the _Madonna di San Sisto_, of Raphael. The Madonna is rising to heaven with the infant Jesus in her arms, while Pope Sixtus, from whom the picture takes its name, is gazing at them with reverential awe. Below are two cherubs looking upward. Opposite the pope is the kneeling form of St. Barbara, while the background of the picture is made up of "the innumerable company of angels," whose faces cover the canvas, but are hardly noticeable at first. This painting cost forty thousand dollars, and occupies an apartment by itself at one corner of the building. At the opposite end, another room is appropriated solely to the Madonna of Holbein, which is his masterpiece. It represents the burgomaster of Basle, with his family, praying the Virgin to save his dying child. She is laying down the infant Jesus, to take up the sick child. The gallery contains many other remarkable works by Correggio, Titian, Paul Veronese, Van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Albert Dürer, and, indeed, pictures by nearly all the old masters. In the afternoon some of the party rode to the Great Garden, where there is a palace of Augustus II., with eight pavilions for his favorites, and then to the Japanese Palace, so called from the style of some of its rooms, in the new city. It is near the bank of the Elbe, with extensive gardens on the river. It contains antiquities, statuary, mostly ancient, bronzes, collections of porcelain and Dresden china, and some Roman tombs, with urns filled with the ashes and burned bones of the dead. In the evening at six o'clock many attended the opera, which was, "The Master Singer of Nuremberg," by Wagner, introducing Hans Sachs, the author of so many German ballads. The music seemed like a general crash, and the students were unable to appreciate it. The next morning the whole company took the train for Pötzscha. "There is our king," said Mr. Spott, as the train stopped at a station. "Where? Where?" demanded the students. "The old gentleman in a white hat, and that is the queen with him." Most of the students got out of the cars. The king had no attendants whatever, a single policeman clearing the way for them. He wore a dark coat, with striped pants, and the queen was dressed with equal simplicity. There was no mark by which they could be distinguished from other people, and the king might easily have been mistaken for a merchant or farmer. Mr. Lowington thought that he looked like General Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame. Their majesties were attending their daughter, the Duchess of Genoa, who was on her way to Italy, simply coming to see her off. The queen wept like other people, and the king looked very sad.