In picturing the dogs and donkeys, he was full of jest and merriment; but the kings of moor and forest called forth deeper and sadder sentiments.

That wild animals instinctively flee in frenzied alarm at man’s approach is comment enough on our treatment of them.

The deer, so gentle and so graceful, so innocent and so beautiful, are never followed by man except as a destroyer; and the idea of looking down a rifle-barrel into the wide-open, soulful eyes of a deer made Landseer sick at heart.

* * * * *

To Landseer must be given the honor of first opening a friendly communication between the present royal family and the artistic and literary world.

Wild-eyed poets and rusty-looking, impecunious painters were firmly warned away from Balmoral.  The thought that all poets and painters were anarchistic and dangerous—­certainly disagreeable—­was firmly fixed in the heart of the young Queen and her attendants.

The barrier had first been raised to Landseer.  He was requested to visit the palace and paint a picture of one of the Queen’s deerhounds.  It was found that the man was not hirsute, untamed or eccentric.  He was a gentleman in manner and education—­quite self-contained and manly.

He was introduced to the Queen; they shook hands and talked about dogs and horses and things, just like old acquaintances.  They loved the same things, and so were friends at once.  It was not long before Landseer’s near neighbors at Saint John’s Wood were stricken speechless at the spectacle of Queen Victoria on horseback waiting at the door of Landseer’s house, while the artist ran in to change his coat.  When he came out he mounted one of the groom’s horses for a gallop across the park with the Queen of England, on whose possessions the sun never sets.

These rides with royalty were, however, largely a matter of professional study; for he not only painted a picture of the Queen on horseback, but of Albert as well.  And at Windsor there can now be seen many pictures of dogs and horses painted by Landseer, with nobility incidentally introduced, or vice versa, if you prefer.

It was in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five that Landseer began to paint the pets of the royal family, and the friendly intimacy then begun continued up to the time of his death in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-three.

In the National Academy are sixty-seven canvases by Landseer; and for the Queen, personally, he completed over one hundred pictures, for which he received a sum equal to a quarter of a million dollars.

Landseer’s career was one of continuous prosperity.  In his life there was neither tragedy nor disappointment.  His horses and dogs filled his bachelor heart, and when Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart bayed and barked him a welcome to that home in Saint John’s Wood where he lived for just fifty years, he was supremely content.

His fortune of three hundred thousand pounds was distributed at his death, as he requested, among various servants, friends and needy kinsmen.