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"I have been brought up with Adrian, and I know what he is; he is vain and pompous, and every time he looks at you and me he thanks God that he was not made like that. Also he has failings and vices, and he is lazy, being too fine a gentleman to work like a common Flemish burgher, and all the rest of it.
This delightful book dates from the early sixteenth century and is the work of some ingenious and masterly Flemish miniaturist with a fine sense of the open air and the movement of the seasons. But it is hard to be put off with an ordinary bookseller's traveller's specimen instead of the real thing.
At first sight of the bareheaded man in the brown camlet coat and trunk-hose, and plain stiff linen collar, they noticed that he wore no ornaments, carried no cap nor bonnet in his hand, and had neither sword nor purse at his girdle, and one and all took him for a burgomaster sure of his authority, a worthy and kindly burgomaster like so many a Fleming of old times, whose homely features and characters have been immortalized by Flemish painters.
Likewise I will provide you a Flemish horse of the best strain, so that you shall be both furnished and horsed as well as any knight in the world hath ever been."
We called on him, and found him sitting alone in a dugout furnished by odd bits from the wrecked houses, with waxen flowers in a glass case on the shelf, and an old cottage clock which ticked out the night, and a velvet armchair which had been the pride of a Flemish home.
"Though he did not much attend to the works of the great historical painters of former ages, yet he was well aware that the language of the art the art of imitation must be learned somewhere; and as he knew he could not learn it in an equal degree from his contemporaries, he very judiciously applied himself to the Flemish school, who are undoubtedly the greatest masters of one necessary branch of art, and he did not need to go out of his country for examples of that school; from that he learned the harmony of colouring, the management and disposition of light and shadow, and every means of it which the masters practised to ornament and give splendour to their works.
"Truly, Edgar," Albert said, in a low tone, while the ladies were talking together, "I think that I shall change my vocation once again, abandon the cutting of throats, and establish myself as a Flemish merchant."
The Flemish school, a daughter of the Italian, soon vied with its mother for the prize; and, in common with it, gave laws to the whole of Europe in the fine arts. The manufactures and arts, on which the Netherlanders principally founded their prosperity, and still partly base it, require no particular enumeration.
The foam of the wake had the pink tinge of red wine spilt on a white cloth; a highway of gold and rose, edged with purple, went straight from it to the sun. After the sunset, land, the sunk lines of the Flemish coast. There was a stir among the passengers; they plunged into the cabins and presently returned, carrying things.
The whole extent of its surface, from the Flemish to the Brabant shore the scene so lately of deadly combat, and of the midnight havoc caused by infernal enginery was changed, as if by the stroke of a wand, into a picture of sylvan and Arcadian merry-making, and spread with tables laden with delicate viands.
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