I remember that when travelling in the Netherlands, at a time when the people were celebrating the _Fête-Dieu_, I saw a village carpenter busily employed in erecting a _réposoir_ for the Madonna, of painted boards and draperies and wreaths of flowers. In the mean time, as if to deprecate criticism, he had chalked in large letters over his work, "_La critique est aisée, mais l'art est difficile_." I could not help smiling at this application of one of those undeniable truisms which no one thinks it necessary to remember. When I recall the pleasure I derived from this noble work of Thorwaldson, all the genius, all the skill, all the patience, all the time, expended on its production, I think the foregoing trifling criticisms appear very ungrateful and impertinent; and yet, as a friend of mine insisted, when I was once upon a time pleading for mercy on certain defects and deficiencies in some other walk of art, "Toleration is the nurse of mediocrity." Artists themselves, as I often observe,--even the vainest of them--prefer discriminating admiration to wholesale praise. In the Frauen Kirche, there is another most admirable monument, a _chef d'oeuvre_, in the Gothic style. It is the tomb of the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, who died excommunicated in 1347; a stupendous work, cast in bronze. At the four corners are four colossal knights kneeling, in complete armour, each bearing a lance and ensign, and guarding the recumbent effigy of the emperor, which lies beneath a magnificent Gothic canopy. At the two sides are standing colossal figures, and I suppose about eight or ten other figures on a smaller scale, all of admirable design and workmanship.[13] It should seem, that in the sixteenth century the art of casting in bronze was not only brought to the highest perfection in Germany, but found employment on a very grand scale. In the evening there was a concert at the Salle de l'Odeon--the third I have attended since I came here. This concert room is larger than any public room in London, and admirably constructed for music. Over the orchestra, in a semi-circle, are the busts of the twelve great German composers who have flourished during the last hundred years, beginning with Handel and Bach, and ending with Weber and Beethoven. On this occasion the hall was crowded. We had all the best performers of Munich, led by the Kapelmeister Stuntz, and Schechner and Meric, who sang _à l'envie l'une de l'autre_. The concert began at seven, and ended a little after nine; and much as I love music, I felt I had had enough. They certainly manage these social pleasures much better here than in London, where a grand concert almost invariably proves a most awful bore, from which we return wearied, yawning, jarred, satiated. Count ---- amused me this evening with his laconic summing up of the rise, progress, and catastrophe of a Polish amour;--se passioner, se battre, se ruiner, enlever, épouser, et divorcer; and so ends this six-act tragico-comico-heroico pastoral.