t 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 Muehlberg. 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
things. To interpret this masterpiece as the writer has ventured to do,
it is not necessary to assume that Titian reasoned out the poetic
vision, which was at the same time an absolutely veracious presentment,
argumentatively with himself, as the painter of such a portrait in words
might have done. Pictorial genius of the creative order does not proceed
by such methods, but sees its subject as a whole, leaving to others the
task of probing and unravelling. It should be borne in mind, too, that
this is the first in order, as it is infinitely the greatest and the
most significant among the vast equestrian portraits of monarchs by
court painters. Velazquez on the one hand, and Van Dyck on the other,
have worked wonders in the same field. Yet their finest productions,
even the _Philip IV._, the _Conde Duque Olivarez_, the _Don Balthasar
Carlos_ of the Spaniard, even the two equestrian portraits of Charles
I., the _Francisco de Moncada_, the _Prince Thomas of Savoy_ of the
Fleming, are in comparison but