of three nations considered it an honour to be painted by him. Religious pictures were also produced by him at this time with amazing rapidity. In 1632 he came to England. He had already paid a short visit in 1620-21, when he had painted James I., and was in receipt of a grant from the Exchequer "for special service performed for His Majesty." This first visit to England seems to have been due to the initiative of the celebrated connoisseur, the Earl of Arundel. At the court of Charles I. Van Dyck came at once into the highest favour. Sir Kenelm Digby, a gentleman of the bedchamber, was his bosom friend, and on his first presentation to Charles I. he obtained permission to paint the king and queen. He was appointed painter to the court, was knighted, and received a pension of £200. A town-house was given him at Blackfriars, and a country-house at Eltham. He "always went magnificently dressed, had a numerous and gallant equipage, and kept so good a table in his apartment that few princes were more visited or better served." In England alone there are said to be twenty-four portraits of the king by Van Dyck, and twenty-five of Queen Henrietta Maria. Every one of distinction desired to have his or her features immortalised by the court-painter, and for seven years he worked at the portraits of the English aristocracy with indefatigable industry. Some 300 of these portraits exist in this country. The painter's health gradually began to fail, from the constant drain upon his strength caused by the incessant labour necessary to procure the means of gratifying his luxurious tastes, and also by his irregular mode of life. Van Dyck, says Mr. Law in his Catalogue of the Hampton Court Gallery, "loved beauty in every form, and found the seduction of female charms altogether irresistible." In 1639 he married Mary Ruthven, grand-daughter of the unfortunate Lord Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie--a marriage promoted by the king, who hoped thereby to effect a change in the painter's habits of life. Margaret Lemon, the celebrated beauty, who lived with Van Dyck for some time at Blackfriars, resented the marriage most bitterly, and tried to maim the painter's right hand. In 1640-41 he travelled abroad with his wife, but returned to this country a dying man. The king offered a special reward to any doctor who could save the painter's life; but he expired in his house at Blackfriars on December 9, 1641, at the early age of forty-two. Two days afterwards he was buried in the old cathedral of St. Paul's, and the king erected a monument to record the death of one "who in life had conferred immortality on many." A magnificent collection of his works was shown at the Royal Academy in the winter exhibition of 1900.