, and on the upturned face is a look of love and
tenderness and trust, combined with womanly strength, that hushes us into
tears.

Surely there is an upward law of gravitation as well as a gravitation
that pulls things down. Titian has shown us this. And as he drew over and
over again in his pictures the forms and faces of the men and women he
knew, so I imagine that this woman was a woman he knew and loved. She is
not a far-off, tenuous creature, born of dreams: she is a woman who has
lived, suffered, felt, mayhap erred, and now turns to a Power, not
herself, eternal in the heavens. Into this picture the artist infused his
own exalted spirit, for the mood we behold manifest in others is usually
but the reflection of our own spirit.

In some far-off eon, ere this earth-journey began, some woman looked at
me that way once, just as Titian has this woman look, with the same
melting eyes and half-parted lips, and it made an impression on my soul
that subsequent incarnations have not effaced.

I bought the photograph in Venice, at Ongania's, and paid three dollars
for it. Then I framed it in simple, unplaned, unstained cedar, and it
hangs over my desk now as I write.

When I am tired and things go wrong, and the round blocks all seem to be
getting into the square holes, and remembrances of the lawyer who cheated
me out of a hundred pounds come stealing like a blight over my spirit, I
look up at the face of this woman who is not only angelic but human. I
behold the steady upward flight and the tender look of pity, and my soul
reaches out, grasping the hem of the garment of Her who we are told was
the Mother of God, and with Her I leave the old sordid earth far beneath
and go on, and on, and up, and up, and up, until my soaring spirit
mingles and communes with the great Infinite.

ANTHONY VAN DYCK

His pieces so with live objects strive,
That both or pictures seem, or both alive.
Nature herself, amaz'd, does doubting stand,
Which is her own and which the painter's hand,
And does attempt the like with less success,
When her own work in twins she would express.
His all-resembling pencil did outpass
The magic imagery of looking-glass.
Nor was his life less perfect than his art.
Nor was his hand less erring than his heart.
There was no false or fading color there,
The figures sweet and well-proportioned were.

--_Cowley's "Elegy on Sir Anthony Van Dyck"_

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