"I know how small I am, if you weigh me in the balance with the men of the past," he said. "Good Heavens! where did they get their power, those demi-gods of art? There is a head of Christ by Quentin Matsys, in the Museum at Antwerp, and the eyes that look at you out of the canvas are human eyes, dim with tears. There is a _chasse_ in the hospital at Bruges, painted by Hemling, which you could look at for a year, and find new wonders in it every year. And you remember Van Eyck's Adoration of the Lamb--the crimsons and purples, all the brightness of summer in the green trees and winding blue rivers. The power to paint like that seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. And yet we love our art, and work hard, and do good things, too, in our way. I wonder whether the men of the future will measure themselves against us, centuries after we are dead and gone, and talk despairingly of our power. I suppose every work of genius is sanctified by time, and that if Rubens lived in the next street, we should have plenty to say about the violence of his colour and the audacity of his foreshortening. What should we think of the Pyramids if they had been built yesterday? We go into raptures about those great piles of stone because it is some thousands of years more or less since they were erected; but who ever talks of the monster hotels? And yet I think the monster hotels are quite as wonderful as the Pyramids, and I should just as soon expect domestic comfort in the one as in the other. Depend upon it, Mrs. Champernowne, we are all just a little fooled by the past. If a man sent the Venus de Milo to Trafalgar Square to-morrow, there would be plenty of Art-critics ready to declare that her head was too large for her body, or that her knees were afflicted with white swelling." Many times during that early spring did the siren plead for a glimpse of the picture; but on this point William Crawford was resolute--even to her. "What would you have thought of my Aspasia, if you had seen her a month before she was finished?" he said, when the widow entreated for one peep at the Dido. The inexhaustible _Æneid_ had furnished the subject for the new picture. "I assure you there was a period in which she appeared in the last stage of intoxication. My model is a figurante at Drury Lane. Don't shrug your shoulders so contemptuously, Mrs. Champernowne. She is a very good little girl, though she does dance behind a row of footlights for a guinea a week--a girl with the face of an angel, and the figure of a Dutch doll. I have to find my Dido her arms and shoulders between this and May; but if you will come to my painting-room during the first week in April----" "If I will come!" cried the widow impatiently; "I have a good mind to make my way into your painting-room some night like a burglar, and look at Dido and your Æneas by the light of a bull's-eye lantern, as they say Mr. Morlais painted his 'Queen of Lydia unrobing.' I hope Æneas is handsome."