At the time Miss Linder started from Munich upon her journey to Switzerland and Italy, her relations with the family of the celebrated painter had already become so intimate, that it was continued in correspondence. Ordinarily it was an Italian-German or double letter, from Carolina and Peter Cornelius, which greeted her; they both recall, with friendly warmth, her residence in Munich, and the message, "We miss you!" was repeatedly wafted after her as she remained longer away. Frau Carolina Cornelius evinced for her a very tender attachment. The genial master himself honored her with confidences from time to time, as to his artistic plans and undertakings. Particularly was this the case when he was commissioned to prepare designs for the Louis-church in Munich, whereby he saw the early realization of a long-cherished and favorite idea of his; when the history of mankind in grand outline, the creation, the redemption, the sending of the Holy Ghost to the church, the last judgment, presented itself to his mind. Then he felt impelled to open his heart to his absent friend, and the postscript, which he appended to a letter of his wife, rises into a veritable dithyrambic. He writes on the 20th of January, 1829: "I cannot better close this letter than by communicating a thing which transports me and in which you, my dear friend, will sympathize. Fancy my good fortune! After completing the _Glyptothek_, I am to paint a church. It is now sixteen years that I have been going about with the idea of a Christian epic in painting--a painted _comoedia divina_--and I have had hours, and longer periods, when it seemed I had a special mission for this. And now my heavenly love comes like a bride in all her beauty to me--what mortal after this can I envy? The universe opens itself before my eyes: I see heaven, earth, and hell; I see the past, the present, and the future; I stand on Sinai and gaze upon the new Jerusalem; I am inebriated and yet composed. All my friends must pray for me, and you, my dear Emily. With brotherly love greets you CORNELIUS." The artistic heroism of this soul--this man whose ideas grasped the world--breathes in these lines with certainly wonderful freshness. In other letters of this happy period his natural humor gains the ascendant, and he indulges in sallies of mirth, afterward begging her indulgence and a friendly remembrance of "the crazy painter Peter Cornelius." Her replies were in a simpler and graver tone, but full of that refreshing independence, which appeared to a nature like his more than aught else. She allowed his geniality full play without compromising her sincerity, or her dignity. He is thus both "charmed and edified" by her letters, and once made the remark of them, "All that your personality led me to fancy of the beautiful and the good finds more artless, more forcible and vivid expression in your letters. {107} It becomes you uncommonly well, whenever you fairly assert yourself."