Paul Veronese, three hundred years ago, painted that bright Alexander, with his handsome, flushed Venetian face, and that glowing uniform of the Venetian general which he wears; and before him, on their knees, he set those golden ladies, who are pleading in pink and violet; and there he is, and there are they, in our National Gallery; he, flushed and handsome--they, golden and suppliant as ever. It takes an oldish man to remember the comet of 1811. Who remembers Paul Veronese, nine generations since? But not a tint of his thoughts is unfixed, they beam along the walls as fresh as ever. Saint Nicholas stoops to the Angelic Coronation (26), and the solemn fiddling of the Marriage at Cana is heard along the silent galleries of the Louvre. ("Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter")--yes, and will be so when you and I have cleaned our last palette, and "in the darkness over us, the four-handed mole shall scrape." 205. OUR SAVIOUR AND THE VIRGIN. _Quentin Metsys_ (Flemish: 1460-1530). Metsys--whose name appears also in the forms Matsys, Massys, and Messys--was the first of the great Antwerp painters and the last who remained faithful to the traditions of the early Flemish school. The gold background here recalls the earliest Flemish pictures in the Gallery. "He retained," says Sir F. Burton, "the technical method introduced by the Van Eycks, but with a softer and broader handling, and with a wonderfully subtle modelling which gave perfect relief and rounding without dark shadows." Among the most important monuments of his skill are the large altar-pieces in the public galleries of Brussels and Antwerp respectively. There are in other galleries pictures similar to the two figures here before us. Metsys was also fond of depicting merchants or money-changers counting their gains--a subject imitated by Marinus van Romerswael (see 944). Metsys was a native of Antwerp, and a person of consequence in his native town. A romantic legend was formerly associated with his name. He was, it is said, a locksmith, but became a painter to obtain the consent of his wife's father to his marriage. Hence the inscription--_connubalis amor de mulcibre fecit Apellem_. But this story, it now appears, belongs to another Metsys, of Louvain. Our painter was twice married. Portraits of himself and his second wife are in the Uffizi at Florence. These figures are remarkable for their serenity and dignity. Characteristic also is the care lavished on the jewellery and edgings. The figure of our Saviour somewhat resembles the "Salvator Mundi" of Antonella da Messina (673)--the Italian painter who introduced the Flemish influence to his country. 296. THE VIRGIN ADORING THE INFANT CHRIST.