I should have said, that only a German imagination could stand it! It is one of Madame de Staël's clever aphorisms, that on the stage, "Il faut menager les caprices des yeux avec le plus grand scrupule, car ils peuvent detruire, sans appel tout effet sérieux;" but the Germans do not appear to be subject to these _caprices des yeux_; and have not these fastidious scruples about corporeal grace; for them sentiment, however clumsy, is still sentiment. Perhaps they are in the right.
And Mademoiselle Lindner _has_ sentiment; she must have been a fine actress, and is evidently a favourite with the audience. But to return to Madame Haitzinger;--she is handsome, with a fair complexion, and no very striking expression; but there is a heart and soul, and mellowness in her acting, which is delicious. I could not give you an idea of her manner by a comparison with any of our English actresses, for she is essentially German; she never aimed at making points; she was never broadly arch or comic, but the general effect was as rich as it was true to nature. I saw her in some of her favourite parts: in the comedy of "Stille Wasser sind tief;" (our Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, admirably adapted to the German stage by Schroeder;) in the "Mirandolina," (the famous Locandiera of Goldoni,) and in the pretty lively vaudeville composed for her by Holtei, "Die Wiener in Berlin," in which the popular waltzes and airs, sung in the genuine national spirit, and enjoyed by the audience with a true national zest, delighted us _foreigners_. Herr Becker is an excellent actor in tragedy and high comedy. Of their singers I could not say so much--there were none I should account first-rate, except Dobler, whom you may remember in England.
One of the most delightful peculiarities of Frankfort, one that most struck my fancy, is the public garden, planted on the site of the ramparts; a girdle of verdure and shade--of trees and flowers circling the whole city; accessible to all and on every side,--the promenade of the rich, the solace of the poor. Fifty men are employed to keep it in order, and it is forbidden to steal the flowers, or to kill the singing birds which haunt the shrubberies.
And does this prohibition avail much in a population of sixty thousand persons?