tutor, Baron Stockmar, which I had been reading late the night be'
fore. The book had lost its fascination; how could a good man, feeling
so keenly his obligation "to make princely the mind of his prince," ig'
nore such conditions of life for the multitude of humble, hard'working
folk. We were spending two months in Dresden that winter, given over
to much reading of "The History of Art" and to much visiting of its art
gallery and opera house, and after such an experience I would invari'
ably suffer a moral revulsion against this feverish search after culture.
It was doubtless in such moods that I founded my admiration for Ahbrecht Diirer, taking his wonderful pictures, however, in the most un'
orthodox manner, merely as human documents. I was chiefly appealed
to by his unwillingness to lend himself to a smooth and cultivated view
of life, by his determination to record its frustrations and even the hid'
eous forms which darken the day for our human imagination and to
ignore no human complications. I believed that his canvases intimated
the coming religious and social changes of the Reformation and the
peasants' wars, that they were surcharged with pity for the downtrod'
den, that his sad knights, gravely standing guard, were longing to avert
that shedding of blood which is sure to occur when men forget how
complicated life is and insist upon reducing it to logical dogmas.
The largest sum of money that I ever ventured to spend in Europe
was for an engraving of his "St. Hubert," the background of which was
said to be from an original Diirer plate. There is little doubt, I am
afraid, that the background as well as the figures "were put in at a later
date," hut the purchase at least registered the higlvwater mark of my
enthusiasm.
The wonder and beauty of Italy later brought healing and some re'
lief to the paralyzing sense of the futility of all artistic and intellectual
effort when disconnected from the ultimate test of the conduct it inspired. The serene and soothing touch of history also aroused old
enthusiasms, although some of their manifestations were such as one
smiles over more easily in retrospection than at the moment. I fancy
that it was no smiling matter to several people in our party, whom I induced to walk for three miles in the hot sunshine beating down upon
the Roman Campagna, that we might enter the Eternal City on foot
through the Porta del Popolo, as pilgrims had done for centuries. To be
sure, we had really entered Rome the night before, but the railroad
station and the hotel might have been anywhere else, and we had