It is certain that we have not in England any historical painters who have given evidence of their genius on so grand a scale as some of the historical painters of Germany have recently done. _We_ know that it is not the genius, but the opportunity which has been wanting, but we cannot ask foreigners to admit this,--they can only judge from results, and they must either suppose us to be without eminent men in the higher walks of art,--or they must wonder, with their magnificent ideas of the incalculable wealth of our nobles, the prodigal expenditure of our rulers, and the grandeur of our public institutions, that painting has not oftener been summoned in aid of her eldest sister architecture. On the other hand, their school of portraiture and landscape is decidedly inferior to ours. Not only have they no landscape painters who can compare with Callcott and Turner, but they do not appear to have _imagined_ the kind of excellence achieved by these wonderful artists. I should say, generally, that their most beautiful landscapes want atmosphere. I used to feel while looking at them as if I were in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump. Of their portraits I have already spoken; the eye which has rested in delight upon one of Wilkie's or Phillips's fine manly portraits, (not to mention Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, and Lawrence,) cannot easily be reconciled to the hard, frittered manner of some of the most admired of the German painters; it is a difference of taste, which I will not call natural but national;--the remains of the old gothic school which, as the study of Italian art becomes more diffused, will be modified or pass away. * * * * * HISTORY. Peter Cornelius, born at Dusseldorf in 1778, was for a considerable time the director (president) of the academy there, and is now the director of the academy of art at Munich: much of his time, however, is spent in Italy. The Germans esteem him their best historical painter. He has invention, expression, and power, but appears to me rather deficient in the feeling of beauty and tenderness. His grand works are the fresco painting in the Glyptothek at Munich, already described. Friedrich Overbeck, born at Lubeck in 1789: he excels in scriptural subjects, which he treats with infinite grandeur and simplicity of feeling. Wilhelm Wach, born at Berlin in 1787: first painter to the king of Prussia and professor in the academy of Berlin: esteemed one of the best painters and most accomplished men in Germany. Not having visited Berlin, where his finest works exist, I have as yet seen but one picture by this painter--the head of an angel, at the palace of Peterstein, sublimely conceived, and most admirably painted. In the style of colour, in the singular combination of grand feeling and delicate execution, this picture reminded me of Leonardo da Vinci.