ng, when the exaggerated length will be seen to be reduced to
something more nearly approaching the height of the usual "Death's
Head."

According to the views which are now officially accepted by the National
Gallery, the persons of this picture are two French Catholics. The one
at our left is Jean de Dinteville, Seigneur of Polisy, Bailly of Troyes
and Knight of the French Order of St. Michael, of which he wears the
badge without the splendid collar--as was permitted, by a special
statute, to persons in the field, on a journey, or in a privacy that
would not require the full dress of a state occasion. Jean de Dinteville
was French Ambassador at the Court of Henry VIII. in 1533; born in 1504,
he was then twenty-nine. He died in 1555.

The man in the scholar's cap and gown is George de Selve, privately
associated with de Dinteville's mission for a few weeks in the spring of
1533. He was born in 1508, nominated Bishop of Lavaur in 1526, and
confirmed in that office in 1529, in which year he was French Ambassador
at the Court of Charles V. He was twenty-five in 1533, and died in 1541.

For myself, holding convictions concerning these portraits utterly at
variance with any published opinions--and that in more than one vital
respect--I am compelled to limit my account to the bare record of its
appearance and catalogued description, until prepared to submit other
facts and conclusions to a verdict.

Two portraits in the Hague Gallery, each with a falcon hooded on the
wrist, show to how much purpose Holbein had studied these birds in the
Steelyard. The one of Robert Cheseman, done in this year, is especially
fine, with a strange, elusive suggestion of something kindred in the
nature of man and bird.

In 1533, also, the Steelyard placed its contribution to the celebration
of Anne Boleyn's coronation in the painter's hands. And the result was,
as Stow tells us, "a costly and marvellous cunning pageant by the
merchants of the Stilyard, wherein was the Mount Parnassus, with the
Fountaine of Helicon, which was of white marble; and four streams
without pipe did rise an ell high and mette together in a little cup
above the fountaine; which fountaine ran abundantly with Rhenish wine
till night. On the mountaine sat Apollo, and at his feet sat Calliope;
and on every side of the mountaine sate four Muses, playing on severell
sweet instruments."

But of more importance to his living fame were the two large oil
paintings--the Triu