The Flemish costumes were correct and beautiful. The Prince of Orange, in particular, looked as if he had just walked out of one of Vandyke's pictures.
After seeing this fine tragedy--surely enough for one evening's amusement--I was at home and in bed by half-past ten. They manage these things better here than in England.
_Friday._--Dinner at the French ambassador's _five_ o'clock. I mark this, because extraordinarily late at Munich. The plebeian dinner hour is twelve, or earlier; the general hour, one; the genteel hour, two; the fashionable hour, _three_; but five is super-elegant--in the very extreme of finery--like a nine o'clock dinner in London. There were present some French and Austrians of high rank, who had all visited England; and the conversation turning on our English aristocratic society--the only society they knew any thing about--I had another proof of the ridicule with which foreigners treat our assumption of superior morality and domestic happiness. But the person who fixed my attention was Leo von Klenze, the celebrated architect, and deservedly a favourite of the king, who has, I believe, bestowed on him the superfluous honours of nobility. With the others, I had no sympathies--with him a thousand, though he knew it not. I looked at him with curiosity--with interest. I liked his plain, but marked and clever countenance, and his easy manners. I felt an unconscious desire to be agreeable, and longed to make him talk; but I knew that this was not the place or the moment for us to see each other to the greatest advantage. We had, however, some little conversation--a kind of beginning. He told me at dinner that the Glypthothek, (the gallery of sculpture here,) was planned and built by the present king, when only prince royal, and the expenses liquidated from his private purse, out of his yearly savings. He spoke with modesty of himself--with gratitude and admiration of the king, of whose talent, vivacity, impatience, and enthusiasm for art and artists I had already heard some characteristic anecdotes.
After coffee, part of the company dispersed to the opera, or elsewhere; others remained to lounge and converse. After the opera, we re-assembled with additions, and then tea, and cards, and talk, till past eleven. Madame de Vaudreuil receives almost every evening, and this seems to be the general routine.