This is the fourth time I have seen this splendid and truly royal palace, but will make no memoranda till I have gone over the whole with Leo von Klenze. He has promised to be my cicerone himself, and I feel the full value of the compliment. Count V---- told me last night, that he (De Klenze) has made for this building alone upwards of seven hundred drawings and designs with his own hand.
_Oct. 13._--Called on my English friends, the C * * s, and found them pleasantly settled in a beautiful furnished lodging near the Hofgarten, for which they pay twenty-four florins (or about two pounds) a month. We had some conversation about music, (they are all musicians,) and the opera, and Malibran, whom they have lately seen in Italy; and Pasta, whom they had visited at Como; and they confirmed what Mr. J. M. Stuntz and M. K. had all told me of her benevolence and excellent character. I could not find that any new genius had arisen in Italy to share the glory of our three queens of the lyrical drama,--Pasta, Malibran, and Schröder Devrient. Other singers have more or less talent and feeling, more or less compass of voice, facility, or agility; but these three women possess _genius_, and stamp on every thing they do their own individual character. Of the three, Pasta is the grandest and most finished artist; Malibran the most versatile in power and passion; while Schröder Devrient has that energy of heart and soul--that capacity for exciting, and being excited, which gives her such unbounded command over the feelings and senses of her audience.[33] So far we were agreed; but as the conversation went on, I was doomed to listen to a torrent of commonplace and sarcastic criticism on the private habits of these and other women of the same profession: one was accused of vulgarity, another of bad temper, and another of violence and caprice: one was suspected of a _penchant_ for porter, another had been heard to swear, or--something very like it. Even pretty lady-like Sontag was reproached with some trifling breach of mere conventional manner,--she had used her fingers where she should have taken a spoon, or some such nonsense. My God! to think of the situation of these women! and then to look upon _those_ women, who, fenced in from infancy by all the restraints, the refinements, the comforts, the precepts of good society,--the one arranging a new cap, the other embroidering a purse, the third reading a novel, all satisfied with petty occupations and amusements, "far, far removed from want and grief and fear,"--now sitting in judgment, and passing sentence of excommunication on others of their sex, who have been steeped in excitement from childhood, their nerves for ever in a state of tension between severest application and maddening flattery; cast on the world without chart or compass--with energies misdirected, passions uncontrolled, and all the inflammable and imaginative part of their being cultivated into excess as a part of their profession--of their material! O when will there be charity in the world? When will human beings, women especially, show mercy and justice to each other, and not judge of results, without a reference to causes? and when will reflection upon these causes lead to their removal? They are evils which press upon few, but are reflected on many, inasmuch as they degrade art and the pursuit of art;--but all can sneer, and few can think.