If, nevertheless, their pictures have not maintained their position as vital works of art, it is due to the fact that they were produced under the pressure of that mechanical idealism which makes all their productions so utterly unattractive to us. The ideal "line of beauty" has turned the figures into bloodless shadows and washed-out theatrical forms. As philosophy was to Cornelius, so to the Düsseldorfers was poetry their Noah's Ark. The interest aroused by the poet was their ally; the breath of the wind that set their boat afloat; the general poetical tendency made up for the deficiency in artistic interest. Had it not been for the support of the poets, their sugary, insipid figures would have from the beginning been unable to hold their own. For after having been retouched by "Idealism," nothing vital remained in those romantic kings, fantastic knights, Jews, and stage princesses; nothing particular and characteristic in their generalisation, nothing generally human. With them a king is always an heroic prince in black harness, a woolly beard, and a scarlet cloak. A queen is represented as proud and dark, or tender and fair-haired. In the much-beloved "couples" from poems, characterisation goes no further than general contrasts: the _brunette_ in red attire with white sleeves; the tender _blonde_ with the complementary garment of pale violet; the one with luxurious _embonpoint_, the other languidly slender--men brown, women white, youths rosy. Knights wear silvery helmets with or without plumes; now with open, now with shut visor; sometimes they sit on poetic palfreys, now of slender, now of sturdy build. The only impressions they are subject to may be interpreted with the assistance of the plaster bust: honour, fidelity, love. And as sentiment and heroism are national virtues of the Germans, they are bound to show sentimental expression whilst killing their adversaries. Even the brigands are generalised lay figures. The Düsseldorf ideal of beauty aimed at a certain tender, vaguely graceful swing of outline that anxiously avoided all manly and strong, energetic and characteristic expression, all that could remind one of nature. They rejected Leonardo da Vinci's advice, to tug at the nipple of Mother Nature, but looked upon her merely as their aunt; and for this, despised Nature took her revenge by making their figures shapeless and phantom-like. And as their "dread of painted stupidities" did not once bring them to make bold mistakes, we can neither praise nor censure their pictures, cannot enjoy them or take offence at them, but look at them _sine ira et studio_, with a lukewarm feeling of utter indifference. FOOTNOTE: [1] As is still the case in most of the German theatres, the programme changed every night. Two or three consecutive performances of one play remain a rarity. CHAPTER VIII THE LEGACY OF GERMAN ROMANTICISM