tricks of his mystery? Pardon, O great chief, magnificent master and
poet! You can DO. We critics, who sneer and are wise, can but pry, and
measure, and doubt, and carp. Look at the lion. Did you ever see such
a gross, shaggy, mangy, roaring brute? Look at him eating lumps of raw
meat--positively bleeding, and raw and tough--till, faugh! it turns
one's stomach to see him--O the coarse wretch! Yes, but he is a lion.
Rubens has lifted his great hand, and the mark he has made has endured
for two centuries, and we still continue wondering at him, and admiring
him. What a strength in that arm! What splendor of will hidden behind
that tawny beard, and those honest eyes! Sharpen your pen, my good
critic, shoot a feather into him; hit him, and make him wince. Yes, you
may hit him fair, and make him bleed, too; but, for all that, he is a
lion--a mighty, conquering, generous, rampageous Leo Belgicus--monarch
of his wood. And he is not dead yet, and I will not kick at him.

SIR ANTONY.--In that "Pieta" of Van Dyck, in the Museum, have you ever
looked at the yellow-robed angel, with the black scarf thrown over
her wings and robe? What a charming figure of grief and beauty! What a
pretty compassion it inspires! It soothes and pleases me like a sweet
rhythmic chant. See how delicately the yellow robe contrasts with the
blue sky behind, and the scarf binds the two! If Rubens lacked grace,
Van Dyck abounded in it. What a consummate elegance! What a perfect
cavalier! No wonder the fine ladies in England admired Sir Antony. Look
at--

Here the clock strikes three, and the three gendarmes who keep the Musee
cry out, "Allons! Sortons! Il est trois heures! Allez! Sortez!" and they
skip out of the gallery as happy as boys running from school. And we
must go too, for though many stay behind--many Britons with Murray's
Handbooks in their handsome hands--they have paid a franc for
entrance-fee, you see; and we knew nothing about the franc for entrance
until those gendarmes with sheathed sabres had driven us out of this
Paradise.

But it was good to go and drive on the great quays, and see the ships
unlading, and by the citadel, and wonder howabouts and whereabouts
it was so strong. We expect a citadel to look like Gibraltar or
Ehrenbreitstein at least. But in this one there is nothing to see but a
flat plain and some ditches, and some trees, and mounds of uninteresting
green. And then I remember how there was a boy at school, a little dum