better than any of his contemporaries had it in their power to do. As Gurlitt is connected with the present by Achenbach, Morgenstern is connected with it by _Eduard Schleich_. The Munich picture rendering a mood took the place of Rottmann's architectural pictures. Instead of the fair forms of the earth's surface, artists began to study the play of sunlight on the plain and amid the flight of the clouds, and instead of the build of the landscape they turned to notice its atmospheric mood. Through Morgenstern Schleich was specially directed to Ruysdael and Goyen. In Ruysdael he was captivated by that profound seriousness and that sombre observation of nature which corresponded to something in his own humour; in Goyen by the pictorial harmony of sunlight, air, water, and earth. Schleich has visited France, Belgium, Hungary, and Italy, yet it is only by exception that he has painted anything but what the most immediate vicinity of Munich might offer. He chose the plainest spot in nature--a newly tilled field, a reedy pond, a stretch of brown moorland, a pair of cottages and trees; and under the guidance of Goyen he observed the changes of the sky with great care--the retreat of thunderclouds, the sun shrouded by thin veils of haze, the tremulous moonlight, or the hovering of the morning and evening mists. The Isar district and the mossy Dachauer soil were his favourite places of sojourn. He had a special preference for rain and moonlight and the mood of autumn, in rendering which he toned brown and grey hues to fine Dutch harmonies. His keynote was predominantly serious and elegiac, but he also loved scenes in which there was a restless and violent change of light. Over a wide plateau the sunlight spreads its radiance, whilst from the side an army of dense thunderclouds approaches, threatening storm and casting dark shadows. Over a monotonous plain, broken by solitary clumps of trees, the warm summer rain falls dripping down. Trees and shrubs throw light shadows, and the plain glistens in the beams of the sun. Or else there is a wide expanse of moor. Darkling the clouds advance, the rushes bend before the wind, and narrow strips of moonlight glitter amid the slender reeds. By such works Schleich became the head of the Munich school of landscape without having ever directed the study of pupils. Through him and through Achenbach capacity for the fresh observation of the life of nature was given to German painters. [Illustration: ACHENBACH. FISHING BOATS IN THE NORTH SEA.]