banquet given him by the Painters' Guild; at which he tells us, they sat long and joyously together, till it was already late into the night: then we arose: and they accompanied us with torches and all honours home: praying me to have them all in 'friendship and fellowship.' Unlike his father, Albert's disposition was eminently social: always sensitive to the amount of approbation he received, we have seen how grateful to him, in Venice, had been the esteem in which his character and his works were held: now, as then, the artist appears to have been sought out and understood, both by the Flemish burghers and painters, and by those foreigners, whom the interests and occupations of commerce assembled in Antwerp: the consuls of Genoa and Portugal showed him constant kindness, at once appreciating his talents and seeking him for his society. His 'conversation,' says one of his contemporaries, was charming: and he loved joy and diversions, albeit ever in a way that was not opposed to good manners.' These banquets and meetings, when Felix Hüngersberg played on his lute, and Signor Ruderigo reasoned of Vasco di Gama, and of the Brazils, must have reminded Dürer of the bright days of 1506: though a ramble with Vincenzio the Genoese, by the lazy margin of the Scheldt, or a row on the ferry, among the patient steers and the blue-eyed Flemish children, were, at best, but poor substitutes for a discussion on art, with Gian Bellini, in that other, and better, city by the Sea. We read in his Journal; So often have I dined with Signor Ruderigo: 'or, so often . And

6

did Thomasino bid me to his house to dinner; on these occasions, we fear, that Frau Agnes had reason to complain of a want of domesticity in his habits, for my wife ate by herself at the inn, and changed a florin for her expenses.' Albert also left her in Antwerp, when, on one occasion, he was advised to push his way to Brussels, and to present himself at the Court of the Governess of the Netherlands. He approached Margaret by a present of some of his beautiful etchings, and was at last admitted to an audience, in which she acquitted herself, he says, as one, graciously and virtuously disposed towards him.' She promised to be his patron, and from his sketchbook it appears that not only did she sit to him, but that he executed likenesses of several of her ladies and ministers of state, and presented them to her along with a couple of drawings done on parchment, with great pains and diligence :' and with a complete impression of his works (in all worth thirty florins). Unluckily for her royal reputation, there is an entry in the Diary to the effect, that for all the things he did for the Lady Margaret, he had received nothing. Thus the

traveller, who in the Print Room at Berlin, should happen to admire the impression of her august features from the hand of Albert Dürer, will remember with annoyance that the poor draughtsman never was paid for his work. More pleasing will it be there to inspect the portraits of his Portuguese friends: er that of Jacob Bonysius, the head of a great mercantile firm in Brussels, from whom Dürer received no little kindness. 'Dined with Herr Bonysius,' he says; and a little later, he records of Bernhard von Orley, the court painter of the day:

'Meister Bernhard invited me in the name of the painters, and had arranged for me so costly a meal, that I do not think that ten florins will cover the expenses of it: there were invited to meet me the Lady Margaret, her treasurer (whose portrait I have taken), the master of her household, by name Meteni; the royal treasurer, by name Pufladès (to whom I gave a set of the "Passion " in copper); also Erasmus, of Rotterdam: to him I gave a copy of the "Passion," engraved on copper.'

One would willingly have sat at meat that day, in Bernhard von Orley's house. Probably in the presence of Margaret's minister, Dürer and Erasmus would refrain from touching on the spread of the new opinions, or from commenting on the progress of that Lutheran heresy, which was watched both by the artist and by the theologian, with keenest interest: but the fresh discoveries on the new Continents, and their wonderful products, might, perhaps, form the staple of their conversation; for Dürer, who through the Portuguese consuls was already familiar with many curiosities brought from the settlements in Southern India, had just seen, in Brussels, some of the spoils of the Mexican cities:

'Rare things, brought unto the king from the land of gold: a golden sun, six feet in width: in like manner the moon, all in silver, and of the same size; also two rooms full of arms, and of all kinds of weapons belonging to these people: trappings for their horses, bows and arrows, all very wonderful; with the strangest clothes, quilts for beds, and other curious things; they are all so valuable that they are priced as worth many many 1000 gulden. I do not know that I, in all the days of my life, have ever joyed in any sight so much as in this: and as I gazed on these marvellous things, and wondered at the subtile intellects of men in a strange land, I cannot express all the thoughts that I had there.'

Here speaks the true artist. The man who painted so unflinchingly life as he saw it, who never tired of elaborating its simplest truths, or was ashamed of its homeliest details, was yet able to rise to the contemplation of the unapproachable splendours of Apocalyptic vision, and to transfer, by gift of imagin

ation, his sympathy to the minds of men whose faces and tongues were to him unknown: his heart is moved within him, while thinking of the craftsmen in lands that are very far away. Keen in his sorrow, he was not less keen in his joy; kind, simple and unprejudiced, Albert's was a sound and a wholesome mind: like his master Wohlgemuth, his artistic career was to the last one of improvement, because his mental life was progressive: ever open to fresh truths and to new impressions, he was one of the few who love the truth, without seeking to palliate it by any admixture of the lie,' who speak as they 'trow,' paint as they see pray for what they need, and receive the things that they ask, even the peace that surpasses thought. His genius, like the Allegro of our poet, delighted alternately in the uplands and the fallows grey,' and in towered cities;' and the busy 'hum of men' was as congenial to it, as the sylvan recesses of the Franconian valleys, and the rocky scenes to which his St. Eustatius and his St. Jerome introduce us. But beyond social and intellectual pleasures, Dürer reaped little profit from his stay in Brussels: and he returned to his humble life and to the details of his meagre housekeeping in Antwerp, more convinced than ever of the disheartening results of a trust in princes. He reckons with his wife on his return, and finds as follows:

My wife has paid away on her living, needments, and other expenses four florins Rhenish.'

Frau Agnes does not seem to have been guilty of any great extravagance here: and one would have thought the items were hardly worth recording: but Dürer's note-book served also for his account-book: and we have the result of all the experiences of his mind and of his purse, so that it is not uncommon to find the notice of a pamphlet, of a visit to court, or of a picture, side by side with the price of onions, chalk, and firewood. He kept also a register of all the dinners he gave and received: as for example:

'Dined eight times with the Portuguese gentlemen; once with the comptroller of the Exchequer; with Thomasino ten times. Then gave four stivers as a fee to his servant; with Lazarus Rasenspürger once; with W. von Rogensdorff once; with Bernard Stecher once; with Hanolt Meyting once; with Gaspar Leventer once; dined in the house alone at my own charges, nine times. Did a likeness of Felix Hungersberg, in his book, kneeling. Paid upon St. Catherine's Eve to Job Planckfelt, mine host, ten gold crowns, towards paying my reckoning. Dined twice with the Portuguese; gave nineteen stivers for parchment.'

Perhaps this last item of expenditure becomes more interesting when we remember that many of Durer's best studies were done

with the pen on vellum: and that there are three drawings now in the British Museum, marked with the date 1520: and which may, for all we know, have been traced by the simple-hearted master, upon this identical nineteen stivers' worth of 'perga

'ment.'

From time to time we read of his sales: -Item: I have 'already sold 3 thick books for an ounce of gold. Cleared 29 'stivers by selling things of art." But he clearly gave away more than he could hope to sell: and though he received in his turn presents, as when he records that Erasmus, of Rotterdam, had given him a Spanish mantle, and that the Portuguese consuls had sent to his inn wines, both French and Portuguese, he was not slow in returning good offices: for instance :

'I have packed up, and sent from Antwerp, by the hands of Herr Gilgen, a present to the sculptor named Meister Konrad, who lives at the Court of Kaiser Max's daughter, the Lady Margaret. His equal in the art I have never seen. I have given him my St. Jerome, an Anthony, a Veronica, a Melancholy, and two new Marys. To Meister Gilgen himself, a St. Eustatius and a Nemesis. I gave to the Portuguese factor a carved statuette of a child; moreover, I have given him an Adam and Eve, a St. Jerome, a Hercules, etc. then the Life of the Virgin, the Apocalypse, the Great Passion; after these the Passion in copper, in all worth five florins. I gave exactly the same to Signor Ruderigo.'

The prices given for works of art are remarkable-sometimes when he does a portrait, he gets nothing from the sitter but the chalks with which it was executed: sometimes an invitation to dinner is considered an equivalent: sometimes twelve stivers are paid for a set of the Lesser Passion; sometimes a paroquet, some preserved sugar, a great piece of fish scale, two 'pieces of white coral, a pocket of brown satin, or a box full of ' good electuary,' are received as compensation for one of those sketches, which any collector now would gladly cover with gülden could he obtain it for that sum. They are now very rare —and it has not always been possible to trace their fate.

About fifty years ago, in the archives of the now extinct patrician family of the Pfinzings, a sketch-book of Albert Dürer's was discovered at Nüremberg, containing the portraits of nearly all the persons he had found at Augsbürg in 1518, and those he took in the Netherlands in all about seventy original sketches. M. de Derschau, a captain in the Prussian army, then residing in Nüremberg, became the proprietor of this book, which he added to a large and valuable collection, the result of a long life's labour. But these drawings were not all in the state in which Dürer left them: many of

them were separated from each other, some had to be traced as far as Leipzig, while the greater part had been, by a person apparently suffering from a lack of better employment, carefully cut out by their outlines, and pasted down upon fresh sheets such as they were, M. de Derschau sold about half of them to M. de Nagler, postmaster-general of Prussia. Upon the death of this gentleman, they were purchased, along with the rest of his collection, by the Prussian Government; and since 1829 have therefore reposed in the print rooms of Berlin-Portraits of Margaret of the Netherlands, of Tho'mas Polonius,' and of the Portuguese Consuls are among the number. Nearly the other half of the Dürer drawings in M. de Derschau's possession he sold, at a later period, to the Mr. J. Heller of Bamberg whose labours we have already noticed : among them were thirty-one of the portraits mentioned in the diary. All that did not pass into Heller's hands were put up to public auction in 1825; and their fate has not been ascertained since that date. Wilibald Pirkheimer was the owner of a quantity of the productions of his friend's pencil, which he valued as much for their own as for the artist's sake. He had no son, and Felicita, his daughter, transferred herself, her father's wealth, and his collection to the family of the Imhoffs, by whom the latter was treasured during many generations, until, like too many treasures in Nüremberg, it was broken up, and a portion of it became the property of Lord Arundel. The collections of the late Duke Albert of Sachsen Teschen, and that of J. Heller, as bequeathed by him to the town of Bamberg, afford perhaps, on the whole, the best examples of Dürer's varied studies, and of the peculiar and thoughtful treatment of his subjects. Nothing escaped his observation. Illuminations, copies from Paris Bordone, studies from the nude, skulls, armour and madonnas, are mixed up with coats of arms, horoscopes, plans of fortifications, architectural designs, nameless faces of men and women, costumes, trees, wings of birds, sprays of forget-me-not, and bunches of violets, as blue and bright as if fresh picked in some Franconian field. Of his diligence we may form some idea, from the fact that shortly before his death his own list enumerated no less than 1254 pieces: in which he did not probably include those impressions which were from time to time taken from his engraved blocks.

In its mechanical turn, the genius of Dürer had something in common with that of Leonardo da Vinci: both applied their attention to engineering; and as Nüremberg owed part of her fortifications to Albert, so did Urbino to Leonardo, who designed the fortress of that place in 1502. Leonardo was born twenty