The painter to whom the direction of the whole work has been entrusted, is professor Heinrich Häss, (or Hess,) one of the most celebrated of the German historical painters. He was then employed in painting the Nativity, stretched upon his back on a sort of inclined chair. Notwithstanding the inconvenience and even peril of leaving his work while the plaster was wet, he came down from his giddy height to speak to us, and explained the general design of the whole. I expressed my honest admiration of the genius, and the grand feeling displayed in many of the figures; and, in particular, of the group he was then painting, of which the extreme simplicity charmed me; but as honestly, I expressed my surprise that nothing _new_ in the general style of the decoration had been attempted; a representation of the Omnipotent Being was merely excusable in more simple and unenlightened times, when the understandings of men could only be addressed through their senses--and merely tolerable, when Michael Angelo gave us that grand personification of Almighty Power moving "on the wings of the wind" to the creation of the first man. But now, in these thinking, reasoning times, it is not so well to venture into those paths, upon which daring Genius, supported by blind Faith, rushed without fear, because without a doubt. The theory of religion belongs to poetry, and its practice to painting. I was struck by the wonderful stateliness of the ornaments and borders used in decorating these sacred subjects: they are neither Greek, nor gothic, nor arabesque--but composed merely of simple forms and straight lines, combined in every possible manner, and in every variety of pure colour. One might call them _Byzantine_; at least, they reminded me of what I had seen in the old churches at Venice and Pisa. I was pleased by the amiable and open manners of professor Hess. Much of his life has been spent in Italy, and he speaks Italian well, but no French. In general, the German artists absolutely detest and avoid the language and literature of France, but almost all speak Italian, and many can read, if they do not speak, English. He told me that he had spent two years on the designs and cartoons for this chapel; he had been painting here daily for the last two years, and expected to be able to finish the whole in about two years and a half more: thus giving six years and a half, or more probably seven years, to this grand task. He has four pupils, or assistants, besides those employed in the decorations only.