splendid, and is specially remarkable for the daring with which
the artist has successfully ventured (what "none but great
colourists can venture") "to paint pure white linen near flesh."
His Christ, continues Sir Joshua, "I consider as one of the finest
figures that ever was invented: it is most correctly drawn, and I
apprehend in an attitude of the utmost difficulty to execute. The
hanging of the head on His shoulder, and the falling of the body
on one side, gives such an appearance of the heaviness of death,
that nothing can exceed it." Antwerp, of course, is full of
magnificent paintings by Rubens, though unfortunately the house in
which he lived in the Place de Meir (which is traversed by the
tram on its way from the Est Station to the Place Verte), which
was built by him in 1611, and in which he died in 1640, was almost
entirely rebuilt in 1703. There is another great Crucifixion by
the master in the Picture Gallery, or Palais des Beaux Arts, which
illustrates his exceptional power as well as his occasional
brutality." The centurion, with his hands on the nape of his
horse's neck, is gazing with horror at the writhings of the
impenitent thief, whose legs are being broken with an iron bar,
which has so tortured the unhappy man that in his agony he has
torn his left foot from the nail." It is questionable whether any
splendour of success can ever justify a man in thus condescending
to draw inspiration from the torture-room or shambles.

One would gladly spend more time in this Antwerp gallery, which
exceeds, I think, in general magnificence the collections at
Brussels and Amsterdam; and gladly would one visit the great
fifteenth and sixteenth century churches of St. Jacques, St.
Andre, and St. Paul, which not merely form together
architecturally an important group of a strongly localized