dare to think that
we shall do well to cease from insisting on an adobe wall, and to study
those "incongruous" circumstances to which the will and not the poverty
of Holbein consents. We shall, at least, no longer be dull to "the tears
of things" as he saw them.

But it would be no less a mistake to think of Holbein as one without a
sense of laughter as well. His drawings of open-mouthed peasants
gossiping in a summer's nooning, or dancing in some uncouth frolic,--and
still more his romping children, dancing children, and the chase of the
fox running off with the goose,--all of these are full of boyish fun.
Would that they could be given here without usurping the place of
more important works! But that is impossible. And so, too, with the
costume-figures of Basel, among which is the charming back view of a
citizen's wife, with all the women bent far backward in the odd carriage
that was then "the latest fashion" among them.

He was particularly happy, also, in his drawings of the _Landsknechte_,
those famous Mercenaries of "Blut und Eisen"; always ready to drink a
good glass, and a-many; to love a good lass after the same liberal
fashion; to troll a good song or fight a good fight; and all with equal
zest. He had not mixed with these masterful gentry for nothing; nor they
with him to wholly die. There are a number of drawings where they are
engaged in combat, too, which show that Holbein's heart leapt to the
music of sword and spear as blithely as does Scott's or Dumas's--as
blithely as did the hearts of the _Reislaeufer_ themselves. Look at
the mad rush, the hand-to-hand grapple, in a drawing of the Basel
Collection, for instance (Plate 7). The blood-lust, the heroism, the
savagery, the thrust, the oath, the dust-choked prayer, the forgotten
breathing clay under the bloodstained foot; the very clash and din of
the fray;--all is told with the brush. And yet not one unnecessary
detail squandered. It is as if one watched it from some palpitating
refuge, just near enough to see the forefront figures distinctly and
to make out the interlocked hubbub and fury where the ranks have been
broken through. It would be a great day for Art could we but chance
upon some lost painting for which such a study had served its completed
purpose.

* * * * *

On the 3rd of July, 1520, Holbein fulfilled what was then the
requirement of almost every guild, and purchased his citizenship; a
citizenship to refl