or us whatever: this, of course, is entirely apart
from the intrinsic sources of enjoyment. Next we are affected by the
way in which the subject is treated; and this, too, is a moral or
intellectual appreciation, rather than an aesthetic one. Perhaps, as a
general rule, the enjoyment of landscapes precedes that of figures,
and expression strikes us sooner than form, while color comes last of
all; but this differs with different temperaments. I suppose there are
few who do not feel a little stupid amusement at first at inaccuracies
of costume and accessories in the older pictures, but we soon become
as indifferent to them as the painters were themselves. One grows so
accustomed to see scriptural personages presented in the dress and
surrounded by the architecture or landscape of Southern Europe of
three centuries ago that the anachronism or inconsistency ceases to
strike one. Perhaps it is because armor and flowing robes, colonnades
and branching trees, never seem out of keeping with events of a
certain dignity. I am not sure that the traveler ever becomes quite
unconscious of the incongruity of the old Flemish dress and
decorations, in most cases strongly enhanced by the prim composure
which is the elementary expression of the earlier Netherlandish faces:
this is still discernible through all transitory emotions of fear,
hate, love or anguish, and does not fail to produce very tragi-comic
combinations. I remember a group of a man in the dress of an Antwerp
burgher sitting on a three-legged stool, with his head on the knee of
a discreet-looking woman in a long-waisted, plain-skirted gown, with a
high square bodice closed by a plaited neckerchief, her hair drawn
tightly back under a close round cap, her pocket hanging from her
girdle on one side, and on the other a small array of housewifery
implements, among others a pair of scissors, with which she is
clipping his locks: her expression is so placid and thrifty withal
that it seemed clear she was saving a penny for her goodman instead
of sending him to the barber. But this was not the painter's idea: the
two were Samson and Delilah. Better than this was a painting of
Susannah and the elders, where the chaste Susannah is depicted clothed
to the throat like a Dutch burgomaster's wife, with a close cap and
long veil, while her perilous ablutions are typified by a small
wash-basin on the ground beside her. Another almost as grotesque was a
Massacre of the Innocents by Peter B