Yet Schwind was one of the first to feel and give expression to that modern sense of longing desire which turns back from a nervous, colourless age, from the prosiness of everyday life, towards a vanished Saturnian era, when man still lived at peace and undisturbed in happy union with nature. For even this proclaims him our contemporary, that the temper of his pictures develops itself from the landscape. A landscape painter through and through--almost in Boecklin's sense, who transformed the temper of Nature into the contemplation of living beings--he spoke of the rest and peace of German forests, of that hour of summer's night when no wind blows, no leaflet moves, when to the solitary wanderer in the woods the mists rising from the meadows are transformed into white veils of the elves, and the gold-rimmed waves of the sea into the yellow hair of mermaids frolicking in the moonlight to the magic notes of their golden harps. He felt and loved his landscapes rather than studied them, yet they are saturated with an entirely modern sentiment for Nature. No German, at that time, had caught and understood the interweaving of the forest boughs with such intimate familiarity. The fresh sunshine of the morning breaks through the light green of the young beeches, and leaps from bough to bough, transforming the glittering dewdrops into diamonds, and the beetle, creeping comfortably over the soft moss, into gold and precious stones. "_Da gehet leise nach seiner Weise der liebe Herrgott durch den Wald_" ("The dear God holy, He passeth slowly, as His wont is, through the wood"). With a few boldly drawn lines and light colours we are transported into the midst of the forest world, and all around us opening buds and verdurous green, sweet scents, and the murmur of leaves. "When one has set one's love and joy on a beautiful tree so fully," he said to Ludwig Richter, "one depicts all one's love and joy with it, and then the tree looks quite different from an ass's fine daub of what he thinks it should be." [Illustration: _Albert, Helio._ SCHWIND. A HERMIT LEADING HORSES TO A POOL.] Only so intimate a connection with Nature could enable Schwind to imagine landscapes, which in their virginal old-world mood form at once the echo of the figures and of their actions. These green meadows and flower-besprent hills, these gloomy wooded slopes, these smooth valleys through which glittering waters glide murmuring along, are fit and suitable dwelling-places for the delicate fabulous beings of the flower-entwined old fairy legends. Schwind _lived_ with Nature. He gave the name of Tanneck (Fir-tree Corner) to the little country house which he built for himself on the Starnberger See, and the fresh scent of pinewood, the rustling sound of German forests, pour forth from his pictures. Like young Siegfried, he understood the language of birds, and went eavesdropping to hear what the pine trees whispered to one another. [Illustration: SCHWIND. THE WEDDING JOURNEY.]