to insinuate themselves into the imagination. Of the really
supernatural, there is in it but one touch: and that in the only part
of the drawing which is left vague; it is the confused shapes assumed
by the eddying smoke among the rushes. All the rest is outside the
region of the supernatural: it is problematic in subject, but clear,
harmonious, and beautiful in treatment; the imagination may wander
off from it, but in its presence it must remain passive. With this
masterpiece we would fain compare a picture which seems to deal
with a cognate subject; a picture as suggestive as it is absolutely
artistically worthless. We saw it once, many years ago, among a heap
of rubbishy smudges at a picture-dealer's in Rome, and we have never
forgotten it--a picture painted by some German smearer of the early
sixteenth century; very ugly, stupid, and unattractive; ill drawn, ill
composed, of a uniform hard, vulgar brown. It represented, with no
attempt at perspective, a level country spread out like a map, dotted
here and there with little spired and turretted towns, also a castle or
two, a few trees and some rivers, disposed with a child's satisfaction
with their mere indication, as much as to say--"here is a town, there
is a castle." Some peasants were represented working in the fields, a
little train of horsemen coming out of a castle, and near one of the
chess-board castles a grass plot with half-a-dozen lit stakes, to which
tiny figures were carrying faggots, while men-at-arms and burghers,
no bigger than flies, looked on. In the foreground of the great flat
expanse lay a boor, a fellow dressed like a field-labourer, in heavy
sleep on the ground. Round him on the grass were marked curious circles,
and in them was moving a strange figure, in cloak and helmet, with
clawed wings and horns, leering horridly, moving round on tiptoe, his
arms outstretched, as if gradually encircling the sleeper in order to
pounce upon him; despite the complete absence of artistic skill, the
gradual inevitable approach of the demon, the irresistible network of
circles with which he was surrounding his prey, was perfectly indicated.
Above, in the sky, two figures, half demon, half dragon, floated
leisurely, like a moored boat, as if a guard of the devil below. What
is the exact subject of this picture? No one can tell; but its meaning
is intense for the imagination, it has the frightful suggestiveness
of some old book on witchcraft, prosaic and curt; of