From the salon he went to the street, from exclusive aristocratic circles into the midst of the eddying crowd. For many years in succession Menzel was a constant visitor at the small watering-places in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps. The multitude of people at the concerts, in the garden of the restaurant, on the promenade, at the open-air services, were precisely the things to occupy his brush. The light rippled through the leaves of the trees; women, children, and well-bred men of the world listened to the music or the words of the preacher. One person leaves a seat and another takes it; everything lives and moves. Huge and lofty trees stretch out their arms, protecting the company from the sun. Unusually striking was "The Procession in Gastein": in the centre was the priest bearing the Host, then the choristers in their red robes, in front the visitors and tourists who had hastened to see the spectacle, and in the background the mountain heights. The bustle of people gives Menzel the opportunity for a triumph. In Kissingen he painted the promenade at the waters; in Paris the Sunday gaiety in the garden of the Tuileries, the street life upon the boulevard, the famous scene in the _Jardin des Plantes_, with the great elephants and the vivid group of Zouaves and ladies; in Verona the Piazza d'Erbe, with the swarm of people crowding in between the open booths and shouting at the top of their voices. Many after him have represented such scenes, although few have had the secret of giving their figures such seething life, or painting them, like Menzel, as parts of one great, surging, and many-headed multitude. [Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._ MENZEL. THE CORONATION OF KING WILHELM I.] People travelling have always been for him a source of much amusement: men sitting in the corner of a railway carriage with their legs crossed and their hats over their eyes, yawning or asleep; women looking out of the windows or counting their ready money. Alternating with such themes are those monotonous yet simple and therefore genial landscapes from the suburbs of the great city, poor, neglected regions with machines and men at their labour. Children bathing in a dirty stream bordered by little, stunted willows; small craft gliding over a river, sailors leaping from one vessel to another, men landing sacks or barrels, and great, heavy cart-horses dragging huge waggons loaded with beer-barrels along the dusty country road. Or the scaffolding of a house is being raised. Six masons are at work upon it, and they are working in earnest. A green bush waves (German fashion) above the scaffolding, and further off long rows of houses stretch away, and the aqueducts and gas-works which supply the huge crater of Berlin, and day-labourers are seen wheeling up barrow-loads of stones. For the first time a German painter sings the canticle of labour. [Illustration: MENZEL. FROM KUGLER'S "HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH THE GREAT."]