of Titian's genius has been preserved, even though it be shorn of some
of its original beauty. Splendidly armed in steel from head to foot, and
holding firmly grasped in his hand the spear, emblem of command in this
instance rather than of combat, Cæsar advances with a mien impassive yet
of irresistible domination. He bestrides with ease his splendid
dark-brown charger, caparisoned in crimson, and heavily weighted like
himself with the full panoply of battle, a perfect harmony being here
subtly suggested between man and beast. The rich landscape, with a gleam
of the Elbe in the distance, is still in the half gloom of earliest day;
but on the horizon, and in the clouds overhead, glows the red ominous
light of sunrise, colouring the veils of the morning mist. The Emperor
is alone--alone as he must be in life and in death--a man, yet lifted so
high above other men that the world stretches far below at his feet,
while above him this ruler knows no power but that of God. It is not
even the sneer of cold command, but a majesty far higher and more
absolutely convinced of its divine origin, that awes the beholder as he
gazes. In comparison with the supreme dignity of this ugly, pallid
Hapsburger, upon whom disease and death have already laid a shadowy
finger, how artificial appear the divine assumptions of an Alexander,
how theatrical the Olympian airs of an Augustus, how merely vulgar and
ill-worn the imperial poses of a Napoleon.

[Illustration: _Charles V. at the Battle of Mühlberg. Gallery of the
Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement & Cie._]

No veracious biographer of Titian could pretend that he is always thus
imaginative, that coming in contact with a commanding human
individuality he always thus unfolds the outer wrappings to reveal the
soul within. Indeed, especially in the middle time just past, he not
infrequently contents himself with the splendid outsides of splendid