Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/152

Rh asked Madame M. if the accounts we had received of the domestic education of women in Germany of the condition of her daughter were true. She said yes; they were taught everything that appertained to house-affairs. We know they do not find this domestic education incompatible with high refinement and cultivation. Knowledge of house-affairs is a necessity for our young countrywomen—perhaps some of them would think it less an evil if they could see Mademoiselle M. in her luxurious home expressing, as did Eve, Penelope, and other classic dames, by the dainty work of her own hands, that she was "on hospitable thoughts intent."

When I entered Bonn through an ineffably dirty street, I little dreamed it could contain a house with the lovely view there is from Madame M.'s window, of gardens and cornfields; and much less did I anticipate sitting with that fearful lady of the steamer over cases of antique gems—some as old as remote epochs of Grecian art—while she expounded them to me; so at the mercy of accident are the judgments of tourists. Madame M.'s house is filled with productions of the arts, pictures, busts, &c., which I was obliged to leave all too soon to go with my party to pay our respects to Schlegel; and I went, half wishing, as L. did on a similar occasion, that then were no celebrated people that one must see.

Schlegel is past seventy, with an eye still brilliant, and a fresh colour in his cheek. He attracted our attention to his very beautiful bust of Carrara marble, and repeatedly averted to the decay of the