fellow-citizens an earnest and lasting exhortation
suited to that stormy period.' The prominence given to the Bible in the
picture, points to it as the last appeal in the great spiritual
struggle. With regard to this noble masterly picture, Kugler has
written, 'Well might the artist now close his eyes. He had in this
picture attained the summit of art; here he stands side by side with the
greatest masters known in history.'

But I prefer to say something of Albrecht Duerer's engravings, which are
more characteristic of him and far more widely known than his paintings;
and to speak first of those two wonderful and beautiful allegories,
'Knight, Death, and the Devil,' and 'Melancolia.' In the first, which is
an embodiment of weird German romance as well as of high Christian
faith, the solitary Knight, with his furrowed face and battered armour,
rides steadfastly on through the dark glen, unmoved by his grisly
companions, skeleton Death on the lame horse, and the foul Fiend in
person. Contrast this sketch and its thoughtful touching meaning with
the hollow ghastliness of Holbein's 'Dance of Death.'

In 'Melancolia' a grand winged woman sits absorbed in sorrowful thought,
while surrounded by all the appliances of philosophy, science, art,
mechanics, all the discoveries made before and in Albrecht Duerer's day,
in the book, the chart, the lever, the crystal, the crucible, the plane,
the hammer. The intention of this picture has been disputed, but the
best explanation of it is that which regards the woman as pondering on
the humanly unsolved and insoluble mystery of the sin and sorrow of
life.

In three large series of woodcuts, known as the Greater and the Lesser
Passion of the Lord, and the Life of the Virgin, and taken partly from
sacred history and partly from tradition, Albrecht Duerer exceeded
himself in true beauty, simple majesty, and pathos. Photographs have
spread widely these fine woodcuts, and there is, at least, one which I
think my readers may have seen, 'The Bearing of the Cross,' in which the
blessed Saviour sinks under his burden. In the series of the Life of the
Virgin there is a 'Repose in Egypt,' which has a naive homeliness in its
grace and serenity. The woodcut represents a courtyard with a dwelling
built in the ruins of an ancient palace. The Virgin sits spinning with
a distaff and spindle beside the Holy Child's cradle, by which beautiful
angels worship. Joseph is busy at his carpenter's work, and a