wood and drawer of water, the proletarian, in a word—­for his theme, Meunier observed closely and reproduced his vision in terms of rugged beauty.  The sentiment is evidently socialistic.  Like Prince Kropotkin and the brothers Reclus, the Belgian sculptor revolts against the cruelty of man to man.  He shows us the miner crouched in a pitiful manner finding a pocket of coal; men naked to the waist, their torsos bulging with muscles, their small heads on bull necks, are puddlers; other groups patiently haul heavy carts—­labour not in its heroic aspect, but as it is in reality, is the core of Meunier’s art.  That he is “literary” at times may not be denied, but power he has.

The early Flemish school of the fifteenth century is strongly represented in several of the galleries up-stairs.  And Rogier de la Pasture, otherwise known as Rogier van der Weyden, is shown in five pictures, and at his best.  The Chevalier with the Arrow, a bust portrait, will be familiar to those who have visited the Rijks Museum, where a copy hangs.  The robe is black, the hat, conical, is brown, the background blue-green.  The silhouette is vigorously modelled, the expression one of dignity, the glance penetrating, severe.  What characterisation!  The Christ is a small panel surpassingly rich in colour and charged with profound pity.  The body lies in the arms of the Mother, Magdalen and John on either side.  The sun is setting.  The subject was a favourite of Weyden; there is a triptych in Berlin and a panel at The Hague.  This Brussels picture has evidently been shorn of its wings.  There are replicas of the Virgin and Child (No. 650 in the catalogue) at Berlin, Cassel, and Frankfort, also in the recently dispersed collection of Rudolph Kann.  Another striking tableau is the head of a woman who weeps.  The minutest tear is not missing.

Hubert and Jan Van Eyck’s Adam and Eve are the wings (volets) from the grand composition in the Cathedral of St. Bavo, Ghent.  They are gigantic figures, nude, neither graceful nor attractive, but magnificently painted.  These portraits (they don’t look as if they had been finished in paradise) of our first parents rather favour the evolutionary theory of development.  Eve is unlovely, her limbs lanky, her bust mediaeval, her flanks Flemish.  In her right hand she holds the fatal apple.  Adam’s head is full of character; it is Christ-like; his torso ugly, his legs wooden.  Yet how superior to the copies which are now attached to the original picture at Ghent.  There the figures are clothed, clumsy, and meaningless.

Dierick Bouts’s Justice of Emperor Otho III is a striking picture.  The subject has that touch of repulsive cruelty which was a sign of the times.  Hans Memling’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian is another treasure; with his portraits of a man, of Guillaume Morel and of Barbara de Vlandenberg making an immortal quartet.  The head of the man is the favourite in reproduction.  Morel is portrayed as in prayer, his hands clasped, his expression rapt.