works of nature bear the test of re-inspection after many yearsthose of art often cease to please when we have ceased to project upon them the light of our own passion, or the shadow of our own pain. There is a fine passage in one of Melanchthon's letters, which is so strikingly characteristic of this progress in Albert Dürer's mind, that, although it has been quoted by Kugler and may therefore be familiar to the reader, we cannot forbear to give it a place here as a noble commentary on the highest principle of art: -

'I remember that Albert Dürer the painter, a man excelling in talent and virtue, used to say that when a youth he liked bright and florid paintings, and that he could not choose but rejoice in any work of his own when he contemplated the brilliancy and variety of the colouring. But that after he began to view Nature as an old man, and endeavoured to look in upon her native face, then he understcod that her simplicity was the greatest glory of art. The which, however, as he could not altogether attain to, he said that he was no longer an admirer of his own works as once he had been, but that he rather groaned on looking at his paintings, and thinking of his own infirmity.'

Dürer's visit to Italy at this time gave him great satisfaction. Gian Bellini was not his only friend: he was able to add Titian and Andrea del Sarto to the number: and when he left Venice in the autumn of 1506, he did so at the request of Mantegna, who wrote beseeching Albert to visit him before he died. Mantegna was already on his death-bed: and when Dürer reached Padua, it was unhappily just too late to gratify a wish, of which the expression must have been so flattering to him; the great Mantuan, whose influence may be traced in the works of his German disciple, had himself entered on a longer journey and Dürer pursued his way to Bologna. Here he made some stay; forming an acquaintance with his future eulogist, Dr. Christopher Scheurl, and taking, he tells us, lessons in perspective. He intended to proceed to Rome, though, for some reason, this intention was never carried into effect. It is equally remarkable that he should not have visited Florence, where at that very time Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci were contending for the mastery. For some of the pictures he painted during his Italian tour he received considerable sums of money, and was everywhere praised; or, as he himself called it, 'glorificirt.' He writes thus to Pirkheimer:-As thou writest to me that I 'should come home with speed, I am minded to leave this as * soon as I can. But how I shall shiver after this sunshine! Here I am a gentleman—there, at home, I am only a hangeron of gentlemen.'

Dürer's family party was, after his return to Nüremberg, increased by his taking his mother and youngest brother Hans to live with him. His own account of this arrangement, and of the death of the elder Dürer, in which it originated, is pathetic. Dürer laments that he was not present at the old man's departure, which he thus describes:

The old nurse helped him to rise, and put the close cap on his head, which had become quite damp from the great drops of sweat. He asked for something to drink, so she gave him some Rhine wine, of which he took a very little, and then asked to go back to bed. He thanked her; but no sooner was he laid back upon his pillows than he fell into the last agonies. Then the old woman lit the lamp, and St. Bernard his Verses did she read out to him, when, as she had reached the third verse, his soul had departed! God be gracious unto him! Now, the little serving maid, when she saw that he was a dying, ran swiftly to my chamber and waked me up. I ran down stairs, but there he lay dead. It grieved me sorely that I had not been worthy to be with him at his end. This happened at midnight on the eve of St. Matthias 1502. Then I took my brother Hans to live with us, but we let Andreas go. Later, and two years after my father's death, I took my mother home, for means of subsistence she had none. And there she abode with me till the year 1513, when early on the morning of one Tuesday she fell suddenly and mortally sick. And so she lay. And from that Tuesday when she was taken ill to the other Tuesday, May 17, 1514, when she died, was a year and one day. Then receiving the blessed sacraments, she died like a Christian, two hours before midnight, by whom, at her departing, I also prayed. May God have mercy upon her.'

Tall, fair Barbara Hallerin' has grown a wrinkled, bedridden old woman; she has outlived the husband whose manifold adversities she shared; she has covered the heads of fifteen children with the Nüremberg sods, and it is time she should go to join them all, though Andreas and Hans are gone out into the world, and Albert will be left alone with his wife. Alas! poor Dürer! He, who this year showed us how Faith rides as a good Knight, bravely between Death and the Devil, is to show us what he thinks of Knowledge, now that Love has just been carried out of his house, feet foremost, to a now nameless grave. Here is the Melancholia' set down on his path, as a stone to mark the year 1514. There we may see how that student soul sits in listless sadness. He shows us how she, who was ever learning, never coming to the truth, has at last turned herself from the light, and, with averted face, droops heavily on her hand; round her lie the emblems of her artinstructive, constructive, recreative. Here, at her feet, lies the gold which it commands; but her brow is contracted, and she

will brood on. This print was, we find, a frequent present from Dürer to his friends. A strange gift, and a stranger witness to the struggle he is going through in these years, when fresh knowledge lit up the world, bringing, like the comet he has drawn sweeping across the sky, distress of nations, with perplexity. Patience, good artist! let these dark hours pass; you will live to paint better pictures out of a better mind. This composition has been the subject of infinite criticisms, and of those of Mr. Ruskin among the rest, who admits that it is too deep for him; but it would seem that a step towards the interpretation of it is made by the fact that the date of it is that of his mother's death.

Dürer, though he cried out of the depths, did not long sit with his own Melancholia' on the ground; and the years which followed were those in which his genius began to take a wider and bolder sweep. His progress in his native country had. hitherto been slow. In 1511 he had finished a large picture for the Elector Frederic of Saxony (that which now adorns the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna); and in the following year he painted an Ascension of the Virgin, for J. Heller, of Frankfort: but Dürer did not always find this branch of art remunerative; and in 1509 he says, in a letter to the same J. Heller, I paint, and paint with all diligence, but nothing comes of it. I mean, therefore, to fall back upon my engraving: had I done so sooner, I should have been richer by 'some 1000 florins at this day.' His earliest wood-engravings were published at Nüremberg in 1498. They consist of sixteen cuts of folio size representing subjects from the Apocalypse of St. John; and, although these works are coarser than his later productions, they unquestionably mark an important era in the history of wood-engraving. The two series of woodcuts, known as the Greater and Lesser Passion of Our Lord, he published in 1510-11:-the one contains thirteen pieces; the other, thirty-seven of which the blocks are now in the British Museum. Some of these have all the faults of his manner: broken lines, ungainly attitudes, positive ugliness of feature, and overcrowding of the space; while one of them, the Touch 'me not, Mary!' is a most beautiful composition-touching from its simplicity, and from the Easter freshness of the solitude, in which Mary sought and found her Lord, newly risen from his garden grave. The Life of the Virgin (1511) was a favourite series with the artist himself. It abounds with curious illustrations of homely life in the burgher houses of that time, and is full of domestic details: and while the most German and national of his works, as regards its spirit, the curious in wood

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engraving have given it a high place, on account of its execution. Several of Dürer's Madonnas belong to this date, as also three representations of St. Jerome, all well known to collectors.

The year 1512 was an eventful one in Albert's social life, for he received from his admirer, the Emperor Maximilian, letters of nobility, and the promise of a pension: the latter was not, however, to be fulfilled till 1520, when Charles V., shortly after his coronation, confirmed the grant, and enjoined the magistrates of Nüremberg to pay annually to Dürer the sum of 100 florins. 'Truly,' comments the recipient of royal bounty, it was not 'till after much labour and trouble that this was secured.'

A new source of interest opened for Dürer in the autumn of 1514, in a correspondence between himself and Raphael. It is said that one of his drawings served as a guide to the painter of Urbino, in the well-known picture of Lo Spasimo:' it is certain that it had already been Raphael's judgment on the works of the German, truly this one would surpass us all had 'he, as we have, the masterpieces of art always under his eyes!' and the exchange of courtesies thus begun ended in Raphael's receiving the portrait of Dürer, painted by himself in water colours a memorial which, on the early death of the former, came into the possession of Giulio Romano. The genial and mutual appreciation of these two artists is pleasant to contemplate, and in Albert's mind the interest did not wear out. Thus he writes in his diary:

' Item. — Raphael of Urbino, his effects, have been all scattered since his death, but one of his disciples, by name Thomas Polonius' (he means Tommaso Vincidore of Bologna), 'a good painter, is here, and has desired to make himself known to me. To this Thomas Polonius I have entrusted a whole impression of my works, which he is to take to Rome, or send by another painter, so as to get things of Raphael of Urbino for me in exchange. This was on the Monday after St. Michael's Day. Item.-Polonius has finished a likeness of me, which he is going to take with him to Rome.'

A sketch of this same Thomas Polonius, out of Dürer's sketchbook in the Netherlands, is now preserved in the Print Room at Berlin.

In 1515 Dürer finished for his Imperial patron those mythological drawings which are known as the Prayer Book of the Emperor Maximilian.' The work consisted of forty-three borders, curiously and minutely drawn by hand: and no where has Dürer left such abundant traces of his imagination. A rich and tender fancy peeps through the quaint symbolism of his subjects: while to furnish these, both Scripture and mythology have been ransacked: and all are set off by the firm and delicate touch which

distinguished every piece that came from his burin. In 1518 he visited Augsburg, where the diet of the Empire was being held, and he obtained the patronage and friendship of several of the men of note assembled by that circumstance in the city. Among these were Albert of Brandenburg, Cardinal Archbishop of Mentz, Ulrich von Hütten, Fugger the merchant, and others. The emperor Maximilian, who had long been his most constant and powerful patron, again sat to him, and our artist began shortly after to prepare the designs for the wellknown Triumph of Maximilian. Unluckily for Dürer that imperial friend died in the following year, and it became necessary for him to seek new patrons, and fresh employment in another country. We quote his own words, from the opening of the Diary of his Travels in the Netherlands, 1520-21:

of my

'It was on the Thursday after St. Chilian's Day that I, Albert Dürer, at my own costs and expense, did leave Nüremberg, in the company wife; and as we passed through Erlangen the same day that we started, so we lay that night at Baiersdorff. We came on the second day to Forchheim. From thence I journeyed to Bamberg, where I made a present to the bishop of a painting of Our Ladye, from the Life of the Virgin, one from the Apocalypse, and an engraving worth one gülden. He invited me to be his guest, gave me a pass to clear the tolls, and two letters of introduction. He likewise delivered me of my charges at the hotel, where I had spent one gulden.'

Dürer goes by water to Schweinfürt and Frankfort. The following extract may give an idea of the expenses of travelling in those days:

'Spent 6 silver pence and some farthings; to the boy, 2 silver pence. For a night's lodging, 6 pence

I have made a bargain to be taken from Frankfort to Mainz for the sum of 1 florin 2 silver pence; to the boy, 6 Frankfort farthings. For a night's expenses, 8 silver pence.

For lading and unlading, 1 silver penny.

For meat to put into the ship, 10 farthings.
For eggs and pears, 9 farthings.'

He makes a short stay at Mainz, (then the focus of bitter religious controversy,) and goes by Boppart on the Rhine to Cologne, where he visited his cousin, Nicholas Unger, or Dürer, and where, he tells us, that he was treated to a collation at the Convent of the Barefooted Friars. He passes into the diocese of Liege, crosses the Meuse, enters Antwerp, his destination, and there takes up his abode in the inn of one Job Planckfelt. His time now sped merrily enough: one of the few entries in his Diary, with which we are familiar, is the account of the