dignified design and grandeur of composition, hard and meagre outline, are his defects; truth, originality, and simplicity of thought, good coloring, and the invention, or at least perfecting, of etching on copper, form his contributions to the arts. His contemporary, and, in portraits, superior, was Holbein, best known in England, and whose works, in the reign of Henry VIII., are excellent examples of the school; his successors, in departing from the national style, become blended with the minor Italian masters--for the German school ceases to be original or distinct when it ceases to be Gothic. After Schwartz Rolenhamer, and others of the sixteenth century, who painted history in the Italian manner, Germany sent forth chiefly landscape painters, as Bauer, Elzhaimer, and others, who finished in a style exquisitely delicate and natural. Commercial wealth, the comparative independence and activity which always accompany industrious enterprise, rendered the Flemish cities, from a very early period, famous in painting. In fact, many of their most lucrative branches of trade--tapestry, embroidery, jewellery--depended upon, and, as in the Italian republics, aided the progress of design. Few characteristics of a national style, however, are to be found in the history of art in the Low Countries, as distinct from Germany, prior to the close of the sixteenth century. To John of Bruges, better known as Van Eyck, a Flemish painter about the beginning of the fifteenth century, has been ascribed the discovery of oil colors; but though the discovery appears rather to have been a gradual improvement, commencing from a much earlier date, he certainly first brought the practice into general use. The painters of the Flemish and Dutch schools were thus put early in possession of an advantage, contributing principally to the distinguishing qualities of art in these countries--fine coloring and exquisite finish. The method, indeed, necessarily introduced these properties, as may also be remarked in Italy, where the Venetian masters, who first obtained the secret, continued to surpass, as they had taken the lead, in sweetness and splendor of pencilling. Lucas Van Leyden and Mabeuse, far surpassed Van Eyck, and indeed rivalled their German contemporaries, Durer and Holbein; while, in the subsequent century, artists are numerous who carried to a high perfection the characteristics of the school--imitation of nature, and wonderful minuteness of finish--such as Brill, Stenwyck, Spranger, the Brueghils, and Van Veen.