Schwind, like Rethel, is numbered among the few artists of that period who were able to preserve their absolute simplicity against the great painters of Italy. "I went into the Sistine Chapel," he says of his journey to Rome, "gazed upon Michael Angelo's work, and sauntered back home to work at my 'Ritter Kurt.' I take the greatest possible pleasure in my present picture, although the subject is absolutely crazy. I love to paint trees and rocks and old walls, and I have put plenty of them into it, besides a fellow on horseback and in full armour. What does it matter? _One must work according to one's natural capacity. Even at the time when I was studying at Munich I came to the conclusion that that of which the mind of itself takes hold, and that which takes hold of it, is the one only right thing for every man who has a vocation. Art consists of this unconscious taking hold and being taken hold of. Deus in nobis._ And therefore the young artist will do well to be careful in visiting the museums. You go to the galleries where the works of the great masters are to be seen. There you see, all at once and all together in confusion, works of every school and of every era. It is extremely likely that you are overwhelmed by the mass, and beauties of every kind, belonging to tendencies and epochs altogether diverse, shake the ground under your budding vocation, and like fifty various climates influencing a single plant, arrest a growth which is possible only in one, and that a favourable one. _The imitation of the Italians in especial can as a rule have only the effect of estranging us from our own individuality_, a fact which was once again fully borne in upon me when I saw Overbeck's new altar-piece in the Cathedral of Cologne. It may sound severe and uncalled-for from me, but _every man who has forgotten his mother-tongue is tottering on his feet. The imitation of foreigners is the dangerous blind alley into which our art has betaken itself_. When I exhibited 'Ritter Kurt' people said, 'It is Old German,' and forthwith it stood condemned, as if that were a disgrace, and as if one should not rather have saluted the fact with joy, as the right thing for us Germans. The art of painting which I follow is the German, and glass-painting must be taken as its foundation." [Illustration: SCHWIND. FROM THE WARTBURG FRESCOES.] In Schwind one might imagine an old German master of the race of Albrecht Altdorfer come to life again. In the small, simple pictures of landscape and fairy-tale, which Count Schack has collected in his private gallery for the quiet and devout enjoyment of thousands, he has given us his best work as a painter.