of bed and force him to sleep on the table: “J’etois forcé la nuit de dormir sur la table de la salle ou je faisais mettre des matelas et des draps ... pour éviter les punaises dont tous les lits sont fort infectés.” A similar experience he has in San Lorenzo, near Viterbo, the charming little town of countless fountains. But we must take leave of our noble traveling companion and visit the painters’ studios of the time to see if we cannot find in their work pictures of the taverns and signs we have heard so much about. [Illustration: ·THE·ROWING·BARGE·WALLINGFORD·] CHAPTER VI TAVERN SIGNS IN ART--ESPECIALLY IN PICTURES BY THE DUTCH MASTERS [Illustration: The Trumpeter before a Tavern From a Painting by Du Jardin in Amsterdam] CHAPTER VI TAVERN SIGNS IN ART--ESPECIALLY IN PICTURES BY THE DUTCH MASTERS “Als de vien es in der man dan is de wiesheid in de kan.” Carlyle once complained that the artists preferred to paint “Corregiosities,” creations of their own fancy, instead of representing the historic events of their own times. Only the Dutch painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in so far as they keep clear of the Italian influence, may justly be called true historical painters, certainly with greater reason than the school of historical painting in the nineteenth century, which tried to reconstruct events of epochs long past with the antiquarian help of old armor, swords, costumes, and the like. We will find, therefore, in the works of the Dutch masters the truest historical documents for our modest sphere of investigation. While Greek art reflected, as in a pure mirror, the harmony of worldly and religious life in Hellas, the mediæval art essentially served religious ideas, but in giving them a visible form used the worldly elements of contemporary costume and architecture. Great artists like Giotto, whose merits the proud words on his tombstone characterize, “Ille ego sum per quem pinctura extincta revixit,” proved themselves the best historians, because they possessed, besides deep religious concentration, the gift of true observation, thus introducing in their works valuable information about the life of their own time.