Especially happy is this Museum in its Van Dycks.
Besides those incomparable portraits of Lady Oxford,
of Liberti the Organist of Antwerp, and others better
than the best of any other man, there are a few large
and elaborate compositions such as I have never seen
elsewhere. The principal one is the Capture of
Christ by Night in the Garden of Gethsemane, which
has all the strength of Rubens, with a more refined
study of attitudes and a greater delicacy of tone and
touch. Another is the Crowning with Thorns,—although
of less dimensions, of profound significance in expression,
and a flowing and marrowy softness of execution.
You cannot survey the work of Van Dyck in this collection,
so full of deep suggestion, showing an intellect so
vivid and so refined, a mastery of processes so thorough
and so intelligent, without the old wonder of what
he would have done in that ripe age when Titian and
Murillo and Shakespeare wrought their best and fullest,
and the old regret for the dead,—as Edgar
Poe sings, the doubly dead in that they died so young.
We are tempted to lift the veil that hides the unknown,
at least with the furtive hand of conjecture; to imagine
a field of unquenched activity where the early dead,
free from the clogs and trammels of the lower world,
may follow out the impulses of their diviner nature,—where
Andrea has no wife, and Raphael and Van Dyck no disease,—where
Keats and Shelley have all eternity for their lofty
rhyme,—where Ellsworth and Koerner and the
Lowell boys can turn their alert and athletic intelligence
to something better than war.
A CASTLE IN THE AIR
I have sometimes thought that a symptom of the decay
of true kinghood in modern times is the love of monarchs
for solitude. In the early days when monarchy
was a real power to answer a real want, the king had
no need to hide himself. He was the strongest,
the most knowing, the most cunning. He moved
among men their acknowledged chief. He guided
and controlled them. He never lost his dignity
by daily use. He could steal a horse like Diomede,
he could mend his own breeches like Dagobert, and
never tarnish the lustre of the crown by it. But
in later times the throne has become an anachronism.
The wearer of a crown has done nothing to gain it
but give himself the trouble to be born. He has
no claim to the reverence or respect of men.
Yet he insists upon it, and receives some show of
it. His life is mainly passed in keeping up this
battle for a lost dignity and worship. He is
given up to shams and ceremonies.
To a life like this there is something embarrassing
in the movement and activity of a great city.
The king cannot join in it without a loss of prestige.
Being outside of it, he is vexed and humiliated by
it. The empty forms become nauseous in the midst
of this honest and wholesome reality of out-of-doors.
Hence the necessity of these quiet retreats in the
forests, in the water-guarded islands, in the cloud-girdled
mountains. Here the world is not seen or heard.
Here the king may live with such approach to nature
as his false and deformed education will allow.
He is surrounded by nothing but the world of servants
and courtiers, and it requires little effort of the
imagination to consider himself chief and lord.
Copyrights
Castilian Days from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
