aps the
crown of the collection. If colour ever appeared in its glory as a
daughter of heaven, if there ever was a play of light and shade, in
which the noblest emotions of the soul were awakened; if delight,
inspiration, poetry and truth and dignity of character, were ever fixed
in figures and colouring upon canvas, it was done in that picture,
which was more than painting and enchantment. I must break off, not to
forget myself. These pictures were the principal; but a Hemling, a
magnificent Annibal Carracci, a little picture of Christ among the
soldiers, a Venus, perhaps by Titian, would have been well worth
mentioning, and there was not a piece in this cabinet which would not
have made any lover of the arts a happy man. And, imagine, conceive the
singularity of the old gentleman; a short time before his death all
these pieces disappeared, disappeared without leaving a trace behind.
Did he sell them? He never answered this question, and his books must
have afforded evidence of the fact after his death, but they contained
no reference to it. Did he give them away? But to whom? One cannot help
fearing, and the thought is heart-rending, that in a sort of raving
melancholy, because he would not resign them to any other man on earth,
shortly before his death he destroyed them. Destroyed them! Can you
conceive, is it possible for a man to form an idea of so dreadful a
distraction, if my conjecture is well founded?"

The old man was so agitated that he could not restrain his tears, and
Eulenboeck drew an immense yellow silk handkerchief out of his pocket,
to dry his dark red face with theatrical pathos. "You no doubt
remember," he began sobbing, "that singular picture of Quintin Messys,
in which a young shepherd and a girl were represented in a strange
dress, both admirably executed, and of which the old gentleman used to
maintain that the figures looked like his son and your daughter." "The
likeness was at that time striking," answered Erich; "but you have
still forgotten to mention the St. John, which might at least vie with
the Guido. It was perhaps a picture of Dominichino, or at least was
extremely like his celebrated one. The eye of the youth upraised
towards heaven, the inspiration, the longing, and at the same time the
melancholy, that he had already seen the divine person on earth, had
embraced him as a friend and understood him as a teacher, this
reflexion of a past epoch on the mirror of his noble countenance was