His character has the same mixture of Philistine contentment and genial comedy which gleams from his works with the freshness of dew. A touch of the sturdy Philistinism of Eichendorf is in these provincial idylls of Germany; but at the same time they display an ability which even at the present day must compel respect. The whole of Romanticism chirps and twitters in the Spitzweg Album, as from behind the wires of a birdcage. Everything is here united: the fragrance of the woods and the song of birds, the pleasures of travelling and the sleepy life of provincial towns, moonshine and Sunday quiet, vagabonds, roving musicians, and the guardians of law, learned professors and students singing catches, burgomasters and town-councillors, long-haired painters and strolling players, red dressing-gowns, green slippers, night-caps, and pipes with long stems, serenades and watchmen, rushing streams and the trill of nightingales, rippling summer breezes and comely lasses, stroking back their hair of a morning, and looking down from projecting windows to greet the passers-by. In common with Schwind he shows a remarkable capacity for placing his figures in their right surroundings. All these squares, alleys, and corners, in which his provincial pictures are framed, seem--minutely and faithfully executed as they are--to be localities predestined for the action, though they are painted freely from memory. Just as he forgot none of the characteristic figures which he had seen in his youth, so he held in his memory the whimsical and marvellous architecture of the country towns of Swabia and Upper Bavaria which he had visited for his studies, with such a firm grip that it was always at his command; and he used it as a setting for his figures as a musician composes an harmonious accompaniment for a melody. [Illustration: KAUFFMANN. A SANDY ROAD.] [Illustration: KAUFFMANN. RETURNING FROM THE FIELDS.]