Peaceful lives make dull biographies, and in prosperity is small
romance.

We may search long before finding a life so full to overflowing of
material good things as that of Rubens. All he touched turned to gold.
From the time he returned to Antwerp in Sixteen Hundred Eight to his
death in Sixteen Hundred Forty, his life-journey was one grand triumphal
march. His many diplomatic missions were simply repetitions of his first
Spanish embassy, with the Don John incident left out, for Don John seems
to have been the only man who was not at home to the gracious Rubens.

Mr. Ruskin has said: "Rubens was a great painter, but he lacked that last
undefinable something which makes heart speak to heart. You admire, but
you never adore. No real sorrow ever entered his life."

Perhaps we get a valuable clue in that last line. Great art is born of
feeling, and the heart of Rubens was never touched by tragedy, nor the
rocky fastnesses of his tears broken in upon by grief. In many ways his
was the spirit of a child: he had troubles, but not sufficient to prevent
refreshing sleep, and when he awoke in the morning the trials of
yesterday were gone.

Even when the helpful, faithful and loving Isabella Brandt was taken away
from him by death, there soon came other joys to take the place of those
that were lost.

We have full fifty pictures of his second wife: she looks down at
us--smiling, buxom, content--from every gallery-wall in Europe. Rubens
was fifty-three and she was sixteen when they were married; and were it
not for a twinge of gout now and then, he would have been as young as