Its existence was now guaranteed, and however potentates might settle their differences, the town grew and flourished.

When, in 1180, Otto of Wittelsbach founded the dynasty that ruled Bavaria till 1777, Ratisbon declined the honour of being the ducal capital, and managed to secure for itself the status of a free and imperial city. The dukes wanted a residence where neither arrogant ecclesiastics on the one hand nor turbulent burghers on the other could disturb them. They

chose Munich; and henceforth successive princes vied with each other in strengthening, enlarging, and embellishing the town. Duke Lewis II. surrounded it in 1255 with walls, of which some towers and gates still exist in the interior of the city. In 1327 the principal quarters of Munich were destroyed by a fire, and the oldest portions of the city were subsequently rebuilt, much as we see them now. Till quite modern times the city remained a very ordinary German capital; its population of 20,000 in 1580 only rose to 40,000 in 1801, but since that date it has quintupled in number. Munich began to take higher rank among the cities of Germany under Duke Maximilian, head of the Catholic League during the Thirty Years' War. This prince, who in his youth had passed many years in Italy,

and had developed a love for Italian art, constructed a portion of the Old Palace, and by largely adding to the works of his predecessors, gave the entire city such an air of grandeur and elegance, that when Gustavus Adolphus made his victorious entry after the battle of Ingolstadt, and saw so fine a town in the midst of so poverty-stricken a country, he declared that Munich was "a golden saddle on the back of a wretched horse." But it is to a still later date that the chief glories of modern Munich are due. Maximilian Joseph, who became King of Bavaria in 1805, by the favour of Napoleon, traced the plan of the new city, and built some portions of it. His son Lewis went on with the work, and completely transformed the city. This prince was a devoted lover of art, poetry, and music, and, indeed, a worshipper of the beautiful in all its forms;-he pursued his studies with equal ardour amongst the monuments of Rome and amongst the cantatrices and coryphées of the Opera House; he filled Munich with splendid edifices, and made Lola Montes a countess; he wrote poetry and comedies; constructed canals and railways and Greek temples; and during his reign of twenty-three years his capital became completely changed. By his patronage of literature and art he won for Munich the proud title of the German Athens; lodged within it many of the most precious relics of classic and mediæval art; built palaces, museums, libraries, and churches, modelled after the finest specimens of architectural art in all ages; constructed new streets, squares, and promenades; and in fact, as we have said, altogether transformed the city as a whole, whilst leaving the oldest portions untouched.

And so Munich at the present day is in reality made up of two cities, presenting a totally different aspect. There is the old town, with its narrow streets, and its massive gates flanked by great towers, "where," as A. M. Howitt says, "frescoes, bleached by the sun, wind, and rain of centuries, are fading on the walls; where heavy-browed archways reveal mouldering stairs leading up into the tall, many-storeyed houses; where the walls and tall roofs and desolate towers are black with age; and where, beneath low arches, rush dismal rapid streams." And in contrast to this is the new town, with its broad straight streets and immense open spaces. The most fashionable thoroughfare is the Ludwigs-Strasse, where ten carriages can drive abreast of each other, whilst spacious footways afford ample room for the promenaders. There are several favourite promenades in Munich. The English Garden is about four miles long by half a mile broad, and was a marshy waste till, in 1781, Count Rumford transformed it into the likeness of an English park. It is crossed by branches of the Isar, and very pleasant are the walks and drives amongst its groves and shrubberies. The squares and open spaces of Munich are numerous, all plentifully adorned with statues of dukes or kings, or great men of Bavaria. The Hofgarten, near the Royal Palace, is an immense square enclosure planted with trees, while round two sides runs an arcade, with frescoes representing historical events, and numerous landscape scenes from Greece, Italy, and elsewhere, accompanied by verses composed by King Lewis.

South-west of the city lies the immense treeless waste called the Theresien Wiese, the scene of all great popular festivities and of the periodical fairs of Munich. Upon the western side, on a slightly rising bank, stands the Ruhmeshalle, or Temple of Fame, a Doric portico, with forty-eight columns and a symbolically sculptured frieze. Upon the wall behind the columns are the busts of no less than ninety distinguished Bavarians, and in the open space in front rises a colossal bronze statue of Bavaria, sixty-one feet in height, upon

a pedestal twenty-eight feet high; at her feet a lion crouches; her right hand grasps a sword; in her upraised left hand is the chaplet of fame. It was designed by Schwanthaler, and cast at the royal foundry from Turkish cannon sunk at the battle of Navarino, and brought up by Greek divers. The modelling and casting of the figure occupied ten years of patient labour. It was cast in five portions; the bust alone took twenty tons of molten metal. A staircase conducts up the interior of the statue to the head, in which eight persons can sit down at once, and from a loophole in the immense chignon a splendid bird's-eye view of Munich is obtained.

Of the churches of Munich, the most ancient is the Church of St. Peter, dating from early in the thirteenth century, and adorned with curious Gothic bas-reliefs. The Frauenkirche is the cathedral, a Gothic edifice in red brick, commenced in 1468, and finished in 1488;-its two tall dome-capped towers, so striking a feature in views of Munich, are 318 feet high, and its nave and side aisles are 109 feet; its windows of coloured glass are of fifteenth and sixteenth-century workmanship. In the choir stands the magnificent mausoleum of black marble, with bronze sculptures and ornaments, erected by order of the Elector Maximilian I., in 1622, in memory of the Emperor Lewis IV. There are numerous other monuments and several paintings in the church, and opposite the carved pulpit hangs a Turkish standard, captured by Max Emanuel at Weissenberg in 1688. St. Salvator (now the Greek Church) is a fifteenth-century structure. St. Michael (formerly the Church of the Jesuits) is built in the Italian style, with a vast lofty roof, unsupported by columns, and dates from the next century. Here is a marble monument by Thorwaldsen to Eugene Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg. This church is noted for its grand music, especially at Easter. St. Cajetan was constructed in the seventeenth century; its cupola is supported by Corinthian columns-a copy in miniature of St. Peter's at Rome. The other noticeable churches of Munich are all modern, and were constructed by Lewis I. and his successor. St. Lewis, in the Ludwigs-Strasse, is in the Byzantine style; it was built in 1829-1843, at the king's suggestion, by the city, at a cost of £73,000. It is a brick erection with a limestone façade, has two lofty towers, and is lavishly decorated in the interior with pictures, painted sculptures, and coloured glass. The frescoes which adorn the walls and vaulting of the choir and transepts are much admired; they were designed by Cornelius, and executed by that artist and his pupils. "The Last Judgment," a powerful picture, is the work of Cornelius himself. The figure of Christ the Judge is twelve feet high; amongst the elect is seen the form of King Lewis. The basilica of St. Boniface is a copy of St. Paul's-without-the-Walls, at Rome, and is the largest and most splendid of the modern churches of the city. It was founded in 1835 by King Lewis, in commemoration of his silver wedding, and completed in 1850. The king (who died in 1868) and his queen (who died in 1854) are interred in a sarcophagus in one of the chapels. The main body of the edifice is of red brick, and is almost bare of ornament on the outside: the interior, however, is paved with mosaic, and the vaulted roof, which is supported by seventy-two monolithic columns of Tyrol marble, is painted blue and scattered over with golden stars. The church is 284 feet long and 113 feet broad, the height of the nave being 76 feet t; the walls are adorned with frescoes and pictures, representing the principal scenes in the life of St. Boniface and other saints and martyrs. The Allerheiligen-Kapelle is the Court

chapel, a richly adorned edifice in the Byzantine style. The roof rests on columns of red marble with gilded capitals; the walls are covered to a certain height with marble slabs of different colours, and above that with gorgeous frescoes. Four stalls for the king and his suite communicate with the Palace. There are several other churches in Munich very attractive as specimens of decorative art, but presenting few features of special interest calling for notice here.

The Palace at Munich is a somewhat complicated agglomeration of edifices of all ages and all styles, the three chief parts of which are the Alte Residenz, or Old Palace; the Königsbau, or Modern Palace; and the Festsaalbau, or Palace of Festivals. The Old Palace, erected by Maxin.ilian I., of the Thirty Years' War celebrity, at the end of the sixteenth century, is very extensive, but in modern eyes possesses no great claims to architectural beauty, although at the time of its erection it was looked upon as one of the marvels of the age. The grand façade is 650 feet in length; two Doric porticoes, adorned with bronze statues, form the principal entrance. Within are four irregular courtyards, with monumental fountains. In one of the gateways there is a huge black stone chained to the pavement. It is said that Christopher the Leaper, an ancestor of the reigning family, and a muscular Christian of the fifteenth century, hurled this stone to a considerable distance. A nail in the wall, about twelve feet from the ground, shows the height reached by this worthy's heel in leaping. We need not describe in detail the various rooms and halls of the Palace, where wealth has been abundantly lavished to render them luxurious and splendid. The Treasury contains the Crown jewels and regalia: amongst them a fine blue thirty-six-carat diamond, the half black Palatinate pearl, and other noted gems. Perhaps the most remarkable portion of the Old Palace is the Reiche-Kapelle, paved with jasper, porphyry, and amethyst. The walls are lined with Italian mosaics, and the altar is declared to be of solid silver. Amongst the pictures is a "Descent from the Cross," by Michael Angelo; and here also is preserved the prie-dieu upon which Mary Queen of Scots knelt before her execution.

The adjacent New Palace fronts upon the Max-Josephs-Platz. It was constructed in 1826-35 upon the plans of Van Klenze, who took for his model the Pitti Palace at Florence; the pile therefore resembles in some degree the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. Schnorr, Zimmermann, Kaulbach, Schwanthaler, and other Bavarian artists and sculptors, took part in the decoration of the superb interior. Everything is copied from the antique or the Renaissance, and King Lewis would not even allow modern furniture to intrude on the general effect. The king's apartments are adorned with fresco paintings and reliefs, of which the subjects are taken from Homer, Pindar, Anacreon, and other classic poets. The queen's apartments are decorated with scenes from Schiller, Klopstock, and other German writers. In one set of halls the whole Niebelungenlied is pictorially displayed by Julius Schnorr.

The Festsaalbau, or Palace of Fêtes, is of the same period as the New Palace, and contains apartments for regal and distinguished visitors, and State saloons for royal festivities. The ball-room, 123 feet long and 47 broad, is ornamented with pictures representing Greek dances; the adjacent card-rooms, called the Halls of Beauties, contained the portraits by Stieler of three dozen beautiful women (mostly Bavarian) who had attracted

the aesthetic notice of King Lewis-queen, actress, sempstress, all are here. In the Banquet Hall are Bavarian battle-scenes. The Hall of Charlemagne displays twelve pictures of that monarch's career. The Hall of Barbarossa and Hall of Rudolph of Hapsburg also indicate by their names the subjects chosen for the paintings. The Throne-room, 106 feet long and 73 wide, is a stately hall, containing gilt bronze statues of the princes, electors, and kings of Bavaria. There are two winter gardens filled with choicest exotics within the Palace enclosures. Munich contains two or three other palaces of no special interest.

The Max-Josephs-Platz is one of the grandest squares on the Continent. In the centre stands a bronze equestrian statue of Maximilian Joseph, erected by the citizens in 1835. On the south side stands the Post Office, beside which the Hofgraben leads down to the Marienplatz. In the Hofgraben are the curious old Mint erected in 1573, and the Alte Hof, the original residence of the Electors of Bavaria. On the north side of the Marienplatz stands the new Town Hall, a brick edifice with a pinnacled stone gable, in the old German style of architecture. In front is a bronze fountain, known as the Fisch-brunnen, which commemorates the following circumstances connected with the guild of butchers :In 1623 the city of Munich was desolated by a great plague, and on its abatement it was difficult to restore public confidence; so, in order to set at rest the minds of their fellow