This city is celebrated for having given birth to Agrippina the mother of Nero, but it has derived more lustre from the immortal Rubens having been born here in 1640: the house in which he resided is still preserved and exhibited with great pride to strangers. This illustrious man was no less a scholar than a painter, and hence his allegorical works are more purely classical than those of any other master: of this the gallery of the Luxembourg and the banqueting-room at Whitehall bear ample testimony. Whilst he painted he used to recite the poems of Homer and Virgil, which he knew by heart, by which he infused the divine spirit of poetry into the productions of his pencil. After having studied a few years in Italy, his renown as an artist spread through Europe, whilst his learning, amenity of manners, elegant accomplishments, and amiable mind, secured to him the esteem and regard of all whom he approached. He was particularly cherished by the kings of England, Spain, and other monarchs: he was even employed upon a very delicate occasion to communicate proposals from the cabinet of Spain to that of London, and Charles I. was so delighted with his various talents, that he conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. The number of his paintings is prodigious. Sir Joshua Reynolds said that the most grand, as well as the most perfect piece of composition in the world, was that of Rubens’s picture of the Fall of the Damned, formerly in the gallery of Dusseldorf; that it combined such a varied, heterogeneous and horrible subject, in such a wonderful manner, that he scarcely knew which most to admire, the invention or the composition of the master. The last of Rubens’s paintings was the Crucifixion of St. Peter, with his head downward, which he presented to St. Peter’s church in this city one day after taking a copy of the register of his birth from its archives: the tasteless and mercenary heads of the church received this invaluable present with little expressions of gratitude, and were disappointed that the donor had not given them money in lieu: when Rubens heard of their dissatisfaction, he offered them 28,000 crowns for the picture, which, merely in consequence of the offer, they considered to be worth infinitely more, and therefore refused to sell him the work of his own hands, and it was preserved with great veneration in the church, where it continued till Cologne became one of the cities of the French empire. Rubens, to the powers and graces before ascribed to him, united the virtue of a christian: from motives of piety and benevolence he adorned many churches and convents with his matchless productions; which, as if the hallowed purpose to which they were devoted had inspired him, whilst he painted, were generally the most masterly efforts of his pencil.