I spent
blissful hours in the National Gallery. This choice collection of
paintings, especially the Italian ones, afforded me the intense,
overwhelming delight which poetry, the masterpieces of which I knew
already, could no longer offer me. At the Crystal Palace I was
fascinated by the tree-ferns, as tall as fruit-trees with us, and by the
reproductions of the show buildings of the different countries, an
Egyptian temple, a house from Pompeii, the Lions' den from the Alhambra.
Here, as everywhere, I sought out the Zoological Gardens, where I
lingered longest near the hippopotami, who were as curious to watch when
swimming as when they were on dry land. Their clumsiness was almost
captivating. They reminded me of some of my enemies at home.
Oxford, with the moss-grown, ivy-covered walls, with all the poetry of
conservatism, fascinated me by its dignity and its country freshness;
there the flower of the English nature was expressed in buildings and
trees. The antiquated and non-popular instruction, however, repelled me.
And the old classics were almost unrecognisable in English guise, for
instance, the anglicised _veni, vidi, vici_, which was quoted by a
student.
The contrast between the English and the French mind was presented to me
in all its force when I compared Windsor Castle with Versailles.
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