melancholy and gentlemanlike, but not quite so dignified as on the canvass of Vandyke. This is the very picture that Horace Walpole mentions as lost or abstracted from the collection at Windsor. How it came into Schamp's collection, I could not learn. A very small head of an Italian girl by Correggio, or in his manner, hung close beside a Dutch girl by Mieris: equally exquisite as paintings, they gave me an opportunity of contrasting two styles, both founded in nature—but the nature, how different! the one all life, the other life and soul. Schamp's collection is liberally open to the public, as well as many others; if artists fail, it is not for want of models.

MEDON.

Perhaps for want of patronage? Yet I hear that the late king of the Netherlands sent several young artists to Italy at his own expense, and that the Prince of Orange was liberal and even munificent in his purchases—particularly of the old masters.

ALDA.

When I went to see the collection of the Prince of Orange at Brussels, I stepped from the room in which hung the glorious Vandykes, perhaps unequalled in the world, into the adjoining apartment, in which were two unfinished portraits disposed upon easels. They represented members of the prince's family; and were painted by a native artist of fashionable fame, and royally patronised. These were pointed out to my admiration as universally approved. What shall I say of them? Believe me, that they were contemptible beyond all terms of contempt! Can you tell me why the Prince of Orange should have sufficient taste to select and appropriate the finest specimens of art, and yet purchase and patronize the vilest daubs ever perpetrated by imbecility and presumption?

MEDON.

I know not, unless it be that in the former case he made use of others' eyes and judgment, and in the latter, of his own.

ALDA.

I might have anticipated the answer; but be that as it may, of all the galleries I saw in the Netherlands, the small but invaluable collection he had formed in his palace pleased me most. I remember a portrait of Sir Thomas More, by Holbein. A female head, by Leonardo da Vinci, said to be one of the mistresses of Francis I., but this is doubtful; that most magnificent group, Christ delivering the keys to St. Peter, by Rubens, once in England; about eight or ten Vandykes, masterpieces—for instance, Philip IV. and his minister Olivarez, and a Chevalier le Roy and his wife: all that you can imagine of chivalrous dignity, and lady-like grace. But there was one picture, a family group, by Gonsalez, which struck me more than all the rest put together. I had never seen any production of this painter, whose works are scarcely known out of Spain; and I looked upon this with equal astonishment and admiration. There was also a small, but most curious collection of pictures, of the ancient Flemish and German schools, which it is now the fashion to admire, and, what is worse, to imitate. The word fashion does not express the national enthusiasm on this subject which prevails in Germany. I can understand that these pictures are often most interesting as historic documents, and often admirable for their literal transcripts of nature and expression, but they can only possess comparative excellence and relative value; and where the feeling of ideal beauty and classic grace has been highly cultivated, the eye shrinks involuntarily from these hard, grotesque, and glaring productions of an age when genius was blindly groping amid the darkness of ignorance. To confess the truth, I was sometimes annoyed, and sometimes amused, by the cant I heard in Germany about those schools of painting which preceded Albert Durer. Perhaps I should not say cant—it is a vile expression; and in German affectation there is something so very peculiar—so poetical, so—so natural, if I might say so, that I would give it another name if I could find one. In this worship of their old painters, I really could sympathize sometimes, even when it most provoked me. Retzsch, whom I had the delight of knowing at Dresden, showed me a sketch, in which he had ridiculed this mania with the most exquisite humour: it represented the torso of an antique Apollo (emblematical of ideal grace), mutilated and half buried in the earth, and subject to every species of profanation; it serves as a stool for a German student, who, with his shirt-collar turned down, and his hair dishevelled, and his cap stuck on one side, à la Rafaelle, is intently copying a stiff, hard, sour-looking old Madonna, while Ignorance looks on, gaping with admiration. No one knows better than Retzsch the value of these ancient masters—no one has a more genuine feeling for all that is admirable in them; but no one feels more sensibly the gross perversion and exaggeration of the worship paid to them. I wish he would publish this good-humoured little bit of satire, which is too just and too graceful to be called a caricature.

I must tell you, however, that there were two most curious old pictures in the Orange Gallery, which arrested my attention, and of which I have retained a very distinct and vivid recollection; and that is more than I can say of many better pictures. They tell, in a striking manner, a very interesting story: the circumstances are said to have occurred about the year 985, but I cannot say that they rest on any very credible authority.

Of these two pictures, each exhibits two scenes. A certain nobleman, a favourite of the Emperor Otho, is condemned to death by his master on the false testimony of the Empress (a sort of Potiphar's wife), who has accused him of having tempted her to break her marriage vow. In the back-ground we see the unfortunate man led to judgment; he is in his shirt, bare-footed and bare-headed. His wife walks at his side, to whom he appears to be speaking earnestly, and endeavouring to persuade her of his innocence. A friar precedes them, and a crowd of people follow after. On the walls of the city stand the Emperor and his wicked Empress, looking down on the melancholy procession. In the foreground, we have the dead body of the victim, stretched upon the earth, and the executioner is in the act of delivering the head to his wife, who looks grim with despair. The severed head and flowing blood are painted with such a horrid and literal fidelity to nature, that it has been found advisable to cover this portion of the picture.

In the foreground of the second picture, the Emperor Otho is represented on his throne surrounded by his counsellors and courtiers. Before him kneels the widow of the Count: she has the ghastly head of her husband in her lap, and in her left-hand she holds firmly and unhurt the red-hot iron, the fiery ordeal by which she proves to the satisfaction of all present the innocence of her murdered lord. The Emperor looks thunderstruck; the Empress stands convicted, and is condemned to death; and in the back-ground, we have the catastrophe. She is bound to a stake, the fire is kindled, and she suffers the terrible penalty of her crime. These pictures, in subject and execution, might be termed tragico-comico-historical; but in spite of the harshness of the drawing, and the thousand defects of style and taste, they fix the attention by the vigour of the colouring and the expression of the heads, many of which are evidently from the life. The story is told in a very complete though very inartificial manner. The painter, Derick Steuerbout, was one of the very earliest of the Flemish masters, and lived about 1468, many years before Albert Durer and Holbein. I have heard that they were painted for the city