Christiana and her children came to the Interpreter's House, and were
taken by the master of it into one of his Significant Rooms. In one of
these there was _a man that could look no way but downwards, with a
muck-rake in his hand; there stood also one over his head, with a
celestial crown in his hand, and proffered him that crown for his
muck-rake; but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to
himself the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor_.

The late Sir Noel Paton has taken this as the subject of one of his
most famous pictures. The canvas is a large one, and the figures in it
are of life-size. That of the man with the muck-rake himself first
arrests your eye, and chiefly draws your attention. He is an old man
with a grey beard. His face is a handsome one, and you see that he has
gifts and powers which might have made him wise and venerable in his
old age, if only he had made a good use of them. But instead of the
noble gravity which you might expect to find on such a face, there is
nothing but an eager gleam and a senseless smile of perfectly childish
and foolish delight. He wears on his head an old broad-rimmed hat,
adorned with a gold chain and a peacock's feather. At his belt he has
several bags full of gold, and also a dagger with which he is ready to
defend his possessions. One of the bags has burst, and the coins are
dropping on the ground. On his back he carries a wallet, crammed with
old law-papers and straw. He kneels on one knee, and his whole body is
bent downward. With his left hand he grasps the handle of a rake which
has three long prongs. He is using the rake to draw towards him a lot
of varied stuff that is littered about in front of him--more straw and
papers, a broken necklace of beads, and a heart-shaped brooch, besides
coins and feathers, and other such things. A large black beetle creeps
near his feet. A little further in front of him more rubbish lies in a
heap--a book of fashions, a fan, still more straw, some artificial
roses and withered leaves, an old lamp, a skull, and a king's crown,
all battered and bent and blood-stained. There is a toad crouching
under the fan. Among the other things a snake is crawling, and blowing
out of its mouth beautifully coloured bubbles, airy and unsubstantial.
You can see one of them breaking as it touches a stone. It is on these
bubbles that the eager, delighted gaze of the old man is fixed, and to
grasp them he is st