And yet what acts of cruelty and
tyranny may not be reacted on the stage of the world which we boast of
as civilised, if one man has uncontrolled power over the lives of
many, the unwritten story of Russia may hereafter tell."
This seems to point to reminiscences of Claire's life in Russia. Mrs.
Shelley also remarks great superiority in the comfort, order, and
cleanliness in the Protestant over the Catholic parts of Germany,
where liberty of conscience has been gained, and is profoundly touched
on visiting Luther's chamber in the castle of Wartburg overlooking the
Thuringian Forest.
Her visits to Berlin and Dresden, during the heat of summer, do not
much strike the reader by her feeling for pictorial art. She is
impressed by world-renowned pictures; but her remarks, though those of
a clever woman, show that the love of nature, especially in its most
majestic forms, does not give or imply love of art. The feeling for
plastic art requires the emotion which runs through all art, and
without which it is nothing, to be distinctly innate as in the artist,
or to have been cultivated by surroundings and influence. True, it is
apparently difficult always to trace the influence.
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