[Illustration: BERLIN: UNTER DEN LINDEN] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE BRANDENBURG GATE] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE ROYAL CASTLE AND EMPEROR WILLIAM BRIDGE] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE WHITE HALL IN THE ROYAL CASTLE] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND FREDERICK'S BRIDGE] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE GENDARMENMARKT] [Illustration: THE COLUMN OF VICTORY IN BERLIN] [Illustration: THE MAUSOLEUM AT CHARLOTTENBURG] [Illustration: THE NEW PALACE AT POTSDAM] [Illustration: THE CASTLE OF SANS SOUCI, POTSDAM] [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE] [Illustration: THE ROYAL PALACE OF SCHÖNBRUNN, NEAR VIENNA (The man on the sidewalk at the left is the Emperor Francis Joseph)] [Illustration: SALZBURG, AUSTRIA] I shall not now give an inventory of the Museum in Berlin, which is rich in pictures and statues; to do this would require more space than is at my command. We find represented here, more or less favorably, all the great masters, the pride of royal galleries. But the most remarkable thing in this collection is the very numerous and very complete collection of the primitive painters of all countries and all schools, from the Byzantine down to those which immediately precede the Renaissance. The old German school, so little known in France, and on many accounts so curious, is to be studied to better advantage here than anywhere else. A rotunda contains tapestries after designs by Raphael, of which the original cartoons are now in Hampton Court. The staircase of the new Museum is decorated with those remarkable frescoes by Kaulbach, which the art of engraving and the Universal Exposition have made so well known in France. We all remember the cartoon entitled "The Dispersion of Races," and all Paris has admired, in Goupil's window that poetic "Defeat of the Huns," where the strife begun between the living warriors is carried on amidst the disembodied souls that hover above that battlefield strewn with the dead. "The Destruction of Jerusalem" is a fine composition, tho somewhat too theatrical. It resembles a "close of the fifth act" much more than beseems the serious character of fresco painting. In the panel which represents Hellenic civilization, Homer is the central figure; this composition pleased me least of all. Other paintings as yet unfinished present the climacteric epochs of humanity. The last of these will be almost contemporary, for when a German begins to paint, universal history comes under review; the great Italian painters did not need so much in achieving their master-pieces. But each civilization has its peculiar tendencies, and this encyclopedic painting is a characteristic of the present time. It would seem that, before flinging itself into its new career, the world has felt the necessity of making a synthesis of its past....