Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/47

1857.] But we are delaying too long in these halls of the old painters. We have scarcely looked at a tithe of the eleven hundred pictures that hang around, and we must pass by with only a glance the long lines of German, Flemish, and Dutch works, and the rows of pictures by the great Spanish masters. We can but see how much there is for pleasure and for study, and wish in vain to pause before Rembrandt, and Cuyp, and Ruysdael, and Vandyck, before Murillo and Velasquez.

We come out into the nave, and, forgetting for a time pictures as works of art, let us look at them as representations of men, as we pass along before the portraits of British worthies, with which the two sides of this great hall are hung. It is a gallery of which every one of British blood may be proud; for no other country could show such a long line of the portraits of her famous men, and feel at the same time that so many of her greatest were not to be found in the collection. The gallery begins with a portrait of King Henry IV.; it ends with that of Mr. Prescott. After nearly four hundred English worthies, at last one American,—and only one; for in the whole collection there is but one other portrait of an American,—West, the painter,—and he was English by adoption, though not by birth. We could spare his fame without great loss, but it would not do for us to give up that of our popular historian. In the next great assemblage of the portraits of the worthies of the English race and speech, perhaps those born on this side of the Atlantic may appear in larger numbers and in even rank of honor.

The first portrait on the catalogue is that of King Henry IV.; but he has displaced here, as in life, his predecessor on the throne. Henry VI. and Richard III. follow in near succession; but it is not till Henry VIII.'s time that we really enter upon the field of English portraiture. We begin with the king himself. Here is Holbein's famous picture of him; a picture that represents a man so gross, so sensual, so disgusting in appearance, that one recognizes its truth, and wonders that the court-painter did not lose his head for such a libellous sincerity.

Wolsey is near his master; his face is that of a man "exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading"; he has a large, full brow, narrow and shrewd eyes, a delicate nose, and somewhat heavy and sensual cheeks. A little later the portraits become more numerous. Of Queen Elizabeth there are seven here, and in them may be traced the great changes of her face,—from that of the plain, awkward, not altogether unpleasing, red-haired girl, to that of the hard, bitter, disappointed old woman. Some of her courtiers surround her;—Leicester, with a treacherous uncertainty of expression; and Burleigh, riding on a mule, and holding flowers in his hand,—an odd representation of the great Lord Treasurer. And here, too, is Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, finding a deserved place among the chief men of his time,—for he was Shakspeare's friend, and to him the "Rape of Lucrece" was dedicated, with the words, "What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have devoted yours." Here is Holbein's portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh, with the face of a true knight. Sidney is not here, but "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," has an honored place,—and though her portrait is not of so "fair" a woman as one might desire to have seen her, it has the look of a woman "wise and good." And here are Shakspeare and Ben Jonson themselves;—the Chandos portrait of Shakspeare, with which all the world is familiar, more interesting from its own fame than from its being either an authentic or a satisfactory likeness of the poet; and Ben Jonson close by, with his strong features and manly face. And Fletcher, and Shirley, and Dick Burbadge, who first acted Hamlet, and whose picture explains why the queen should say, "He's fat and scant of breath,"—and others of the same great band of contemporaries. Their heads