t flapping hat, worn
alike by men and women, slightly cocked to one side, is the perfection
of picturesque head gear. Equally picturesque, and not in the slightest
degree effeminate on a man like Rubens, is the falling collar of pointed
mechlin, just seen above the cloak draped in large folds.

In his own day Rubens was without a rival as a painter. In a much later
day Sir Joshua Reynolds pronounced Rubens 'perhaps the greatest master
in the mechanical part of the art, _the best workman with his tools_
that ever exercised a pencil.' His consummate excellence lay in his
execution and colouring. It is brought as a reproach against his
painting, that his noblest characters, even his sacred characters, were
but big, brawny, red and white Flemings. His imagination only reached a
certain height, and yet, if it were a very earthly Flemish imagination,
it could be grandly, as it was always vigorously, earthly and Flemish.
At the same time he could be deficient where proportion, and even where
all the laws of art, are concerned.

It is right that I should, with regret and shame, say this of Rubens,
whose geniality bordered on joviality, and whose age was a grosser age
than our own, that he debased his genius by some foul and revolting
pictures.

Of the general distinction between Rubens and some of his predecessors I
should like to quote Mr Ruskin's passage in his defence:

'A man long trained to love the monk's vision of Fra Angelico,
turns in proud and ineffable disgust from the first work of
Rubens, which he encounters on his return across the Alps. But
is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten that, while
Angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was
different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders:--wild seas
to be banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless
marshes to be drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the
frosty clay; careful breeding of the stout horses and cattle;
close setting of brick-walls against cold winds and snow; much
hardening of hands, and gross stoutening of bodies in all this;
gross jovialities of harvest homes, and Christmas feasts, which
were to be the reward of it; rough affections, and sluggish
imaginations; fleshy, substantial, iron-shod humanities, but
humanities still,--humanities which God had his eye upon, and
which won perhaps, here and there, as much favour in His sight
as the wasted aspe