Alas! this laurel, too, has been filched from Holbein's fame. In 1771 the altar-piece was consigned to the collection where it now is; and it was then decided to gild the gold and paint the lily. The work was subjected to one of those crude "restorations" which respect nothing save the frame. And no monarch will ever again compete for its possession. Red is over red and blue over blue, doubtless; but in place of Holbein's rich harmony a jangle of gaudy conflicting colours now sets one's teeth on edge. So that only in a photograph can one even enjoy the composition--all that is left of the Master. But here it can be seen with what art the painter has so combined eight separate and distinct pictures, each a gem, into one, by such a distribution and balance that the whole is as integral as a pearl. The scene on the Mount of Olives, which a great critic once pronounced worthy to compare with Correggio's work, is only to be surpassed by the Entombment. And in every scene--what freedom, action, verve! From the first to the last all passes with the swift step of Calamity, yet all with noble dignity. The Basel Museum possesses also a set of ten washed drawings in Indian ink,--scenes of the Passion designed for glass-painting,--which must be conned and conned again before one can "know" Holbein at all in his deepest moods. They are a great Testament, though they seem unbearably harsh at a superficial glance. But put aside your own ideas and humbly study the ideas of Holbein,--sure that they must be well worth the reverence of yours or mine,--and little by little you will be made free of that Underworld where Holbein's true self has its home; you will pierce its gloom and find its clue and understand its tongue. It is a small matter whether you and I find ourselves in sympathy with that world, or can never be acclimatised. The great matter, the only matter, is to understand it; to see in its skeletons something more than lively bones, in its graves something besides Horror. Without mastering the logical sequence of these ten drawings,--where scene by scene the Divine recedes before our eyes, and the Son of Man assumes more and more the whole burden of Sin and Death,--it is inevitable that the life-size painting of Christ in the Grave, also in the Basel Museum (Plate 10), should seem just a ghastly and "unpardonable" piece of realism. Realism of the most ghastly truthfulness, as to a corpse in the grave, it certainly is. But although it may be questioned whether such a picture should ever be painted, no one who looks through the form to the thought that shapes it would pronounce even this awful utterance "unpardonable."