e back of a chair. He faces the
spectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. His
collar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These are
rather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost
morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and the
Letter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is a
masterpiece of paint and character.

The Old Lady Dreaming, by N. Maes, and the Jan Steen (The Operator)
are good though not remarkable examples. Jacob Jordaenses flood the
various galleries; Rubens run to seed as far as quality, yet
exhibiting enormous muscularity, is the trait of this gross painter.
The King Drinks--his kings are always drinking or blind drunk--his
nudes, which look like the contents of the butcher shops in Brussels,
attract throngs, for the anecdote is writ large across the wall, and
you don't have to run to read. Panoramas would be a better title for
these robust compositions. David Teniers's La Kermesse is the most
important work he ever finished. It is in good preservation. Amsterdam
has not its superior. There is an ordinary El Greco, a poor Goya, and
a Ribera downstairs. The French art is not enlivening.

Philip Champaigne's self-portrait is familiar: it has been reproduced
frequently. Jean Baptiste Huysmans, a landscape with animals; he is
said to be an ancestor of the late Joris Karel Huysmans. The Mors
(Antonio Moro) is of value. But the lodestone of the collection is the
Primitives.

The pictures in the modern gallery are largely Belgian, some French,
and a few Dutch and English. It is not a collection of artistic
significance. In the black-and-white room may be seen a few original
drawings of Rops.

The Musee Wiertz is worth visiting only as a chamber of horrors. When
Wiertz is not morbid and repulsive he is of the vasty inane, a man of
genius gone daft, obsessed by the mighty shades of Rubens and Michael
Angelo. Wiertz was born in 1806 and died in 1865. The Belgian
Government, in order to make some sort of reparation for its neglect
of the painter during his troubled and unhappy lifetime, acquired his
country residence and made it a repository of his art. The pictures
are of a scale truly heroic. The painter pitted himself against Rubens
and Michael Angelo. He said: "I, too, am a great painter!" And there
is no denying his power. His tones recall the _pate_ of Rubens without
its warmth and splendour. When Wiertz was c