In the eighth picture, immediately following this touching group, come the jesters and hideous buffoons, who mock the prisoners with their laughter and ape-like grimaces, and a troop of musicians singing and dancing to the sound of timbrels. After these we have another company of _signiferi_, this time bearing the eagles of the victorious legions and the she-wolf of Rome. Their faces are turned backwards, and their eager, expectant gaze prepare us for the coming of the conqueror, who appears in the last picture seated on a richly sculptured biga with sceptre and palm in his hand, and a laurel crown, which a winged Victory is in the act of placing on his brow. At his feet children shout for joy, and wave laurel boughs in his path; the multitude press round his chariot wheels and a gaily-clad youth, with eager enthusiasm in his upturned gaze, lifts aloft a banner bearing Cæsar’s well-known motto, _Veni, vidi, vici_, to meet the victor’s eyes. This subject now forms the last of the series but Mantegna’s original scheme included a tenth picture which he afterwards abandoned, probably because the hall for which the “Triumphs” were intended was not large enough to contain more than nine. An engraving, however, remains in which a body of Roman citizens, followed by the first ranks of the advancing legions, are represented marching in the conqueror’s progress; and the great procession, after reaching its culminating point, is thus brought to a tranquil close. Goethe, who knew the “Triumphs,” not indeed in the original, but from Andreani’s engravings, and who wrote a masterly criticism on the series, was the first to feel the need of a final scene to satisfy the eye, and to point out that this must have been the artist’s original design. Such, then, are the principal parts of this magnificent work, in which the love of antiquity, which was the ruling power of Mantegna’s genius, found its highest expression. It was a sentiment common to many artists in this age of revived learning, but while other men, like Botticelli or Piero della Francesca, saw pagan themes through the colouring of their own medieval fancies, he alone entered thoroughly into the true spirit of ancient art. A glance at the “Triumphs” is sufficient to show us how profoundly Mantegna had studied classical authors and how much freedom he had acquired in dealing with his subject. [Illustration: PART OF THE TRIUMPHS OF JULIUS CÆSAR. BY MANTEGNA. _At Hampton Court._]