It was in one of these journeys, that to Flushing, that Lucas van Leyden was attacked with the disease which was destined to carry him to the grave. Some people have attributed to poison the suddenness of the attack; but of this there is no proof. Once back in his native town, he lingered on some time, worn out and sinking, yet refusing to condemn himself to idleness. Too feeble to rise, he yet continued to draw and engrave in bed, remaining faithful till the end to the noble passion of his life, to the art he had dignified, and to that nature which he had questioned more closely, and, in certain respects, perhaps better understood than any of his predecessors. It is said that a few hours before his death he desired to be taken up to a terrace of his house, that he might once more admire the setting sun; and there, absorbed in silent contemplation, surrounded by friends and pupils, he for the last time gazed on the place of his birth, and on that heaven from which the light was fading, even as life was ebbing from his bosom. It was a proper conclusion to so pure a life--to one, indeed, of the most irreproachable careers in the history of art. Lucas van Leyden died at thirty-eight, an age fatal to more than one great artist, and which was scarcely attained by three men with whom he seems linked by a similarity of genius, at least as regards early fertility and sincerity of inspiration: Raphael, Lesueur, and Mozart. The impetus given by Lucas van Leyden to the art of engraving was seconded, even during his life, by several Dutch artists who imitated his method more or less successfully. Amongst others, Alart Claessen, an anonymous engraver called the "Maître à l'Écrevisse," and Dirck Star, or Van Staren, generally called the "Maître à l'Étoile." The movement did not slacken after the death of the leader of the school. The engravers of the Low Countries, accentuating more and more the qualities aimed at from the beginning, soon surpassed their German rivals, and seemed alone to be gifted with the knack of dealing with light. Cornelius Cort, who engraved several of Titian's works in Venice in the great painter's studio, and the pupils he educated on his return to Holland, began to exhibit a boldness of touch not to be so clearly discovered in their predecessors; but this progress, real in some respects, was not accomplished without injury to truthful study and the exact interpretation of form, and certainly not without a deplorable exaggeration in the use of means.