Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/89

Rh is painted in armour, and every feature bears marks of a ferocious and sanguinary disposition. He is the general of an army of executioners, deliberating in cold blood the depopulation of provinces, the sack of towns, and the massacre of defenceless women and children. It is impossible to look at this portrait without feeling an emotion of involuntary horror; and the heart turns with sickness from this faithful representation of a human monster.

The virtuous republican Barneveldt, an enlightened statesman, and strenuous defender of Dutch freedom, by Paul Moreelse, affords the spectator some relief after the contemplation of the fiendlike Spaniard.

But the picture of most excellence is the candle-light portrait of William III. of England, by Schalken. It was the custom of this artist to place his subject and a candle in a dark room, and looking through a small hole, he painted by day-light what he saw in the dark apartment. Tradition relates, that when he drew William, the tallow of the candle ran down upon the king's fingers, to