paints also partially, tenderly, never
with half his strength; content with uncertain visions, insecure
delights; the truth not precious nor significant to him, only pleasing;
falsehood also pleasurable, even useful on occasion--must, however, be
discreetly touched, just enough to make all men noble, all women lovely:
"we do not need this flattery often, most of those we know being such;
and it is a pleasant world, and with diligence--for nothing can be done
without diligence--every day till four" (says Sir Joshua)--"a painter's
is a happy life."

Yes: and the Isis; with her swans, and shadows of Windsor Forest, is a
sweet stream, touching her shores softly. The Rhine at Basle is of
another temper, stern and deep, as strong, however bright its face:
winding far through the solemn plain, beneath the slopes of Jura, tufted
and steep: sweeping away into its regardless calm of current the waves
of that little brook of St. Jakob, that bathe the Swiss Thermopylae;[26]
the low village nestling beneath a little bank of sloping fields--its
spire seen white against the deep blue shadows of the Jura pines.

163. Gazing on that scene day by day, Holbein went his own way, with the
earnestness and silent swell of the strong river--not unconscious of the
awe, nor of the sanctities of his life. The snows of the eternal Alps
giving forth their strength to it; the blood of the St. Jakob brook
poured into it as it passes by--not in vain. He also could feel his
strength coming from white snows far off in heaven. He also bore upon
him the purple stain of the earth sorrow. A grave man, knowing what
steps of men keep truest time to the chanting of Death. Having grave
friends also;--the same singing heard far off, it seems to me, or,
perhaps, even low in the room, by that family of Sir Thomas More; or
mingling with the hum of bees in the meadows outside the towered wall of
Basle; or making the words of the book more tunable, which meditative
Erasmus looks upon. Nay, that same soft Death-music is on the lips even
of Holbein's Madonna. Who, among many, is the Virgin you had best
compare with the one before whose image we have stood so long.

Holbein's is at Dresden, companioned by the Madonna di San Sisto; but
both are visible enough to you here, for, by a strange coincidence, they
are (at least so far as I know) the only two great pictures in the world
which have been faultlessly engraved.

164. The received tradition respecting the Holbein