CURRENT LITERATURE.
An Art Student in Munich. By Mrs. Howitt Watts. Two vols. Second edition. (De la Rue and Co.)—This is a new and enlarged edition of a very interesting book very favourably noticed in these columns some twenty-five years ago, and now long out of print. Miss Howitt, as she then was, went to Munich with a friend to study art, and was received into the studio of the great painter Kaulbach. Thus she had every opportunity of studying the art of Munich to the best advant- age, and a very fresh and lively account of it is contained in these two pleasant volumes. No doubt, as the writer says, her account is a little couleur de rose, and she might have added, that it is couleur de rose of the Germanised type,—a little gushing in its sentiment, though gushing after a simple and friendly fashion. The account of Kaulbach is full of interest, and the notice of the Ammergan play of 1850 is a very bright and vivid one, though we cannot at all agree with the writer in her depreciation of the symbolic groups intended to introduce and prefigure the various acts of the Passion. To us, at least, these seemed to be (in the performance of 1870) the most curiously effective of the subordinate elements in the Passion play. But though we cannot always agree with the writer, we can always enjoy her descriptions, and are grateful to her for the new chapters, which tell of the death of Kaulbach and of various other matters, adding new interest to a very charming book.
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