It is difficult to refrain from what would appear an over-use of the superlative in dealing with John van Eyck's works, but if the writer might be allowed an indulgence he would unhesitatingly avail himself of it to the full in connection with the exquisite panel (Plate V.) for the possession of which we are indebted to the honourable wounds which were the seal of Major-General Hay's part in the battle of Waterloo. After wandering about Europe as the cherished possession first of Don Diego de Guevara, councillor of Maximilian and Archduke Charles and Major-domo of Joan, Queen of Castile; next of Margaret of Austria, Governess of the Netherlands; subsequently of Mary of Hungary, and eventually of Charles III. of Spain, it fell into the acquisitive hands of the French invader of the Peninsula, and by some strange freak of fortune strayed to the apartments at Brussels in which the gallant major-general was nursed to recovery, from whose landlord he purchased it, the National Gallery in the end becoming its owner, in 1842, for the trifling sum of £730. It is the picture of a newly married couple in a homely Flemish interior, and in their attempts to solve an imaginary riddle critics have given their somewhat prolific powers of imagination an unusually free rein. For instance, the peculiar manner in which the bride sustains the gathered folds of her skirt--shown by comparison with figures of virgin saints in other of Van Eyck's paintings to have been a passing fashion of the day, if an ungraceful one--suggested to some the near approach of her lying-in, the bedstead in the background as well as the figure of St. Margaret (a favourite of women in expectation of childbirth) surmounting the back of the arm-chair naturally tending to confirm the impression; in corroboration of which the attitude of husband and wife--though the direction of look in neither lends support to the theory--is explained as a venture in chiromancy, the adept bridegroom endeavouring to read in the lines of his wife's hand the future of the coming infant: a variant elucidation representing the husband as solemnly protesting his paternity to an inexistent crowd of neighbours at the open door, seeing that the ingenious reflection of the scene in the circular convex mirror on the far wall reveals but two additional figures, probably the painter and his apprentice. Without recourse to fancy, the attitude of bridegroom and bride, hand in hand, might readily have been seen to symbolise the perfect union begot of a happy marriage. John's love of domesticity is abundantly displayed in all the detail of the work--the chandelier, with lighted taper, dependent from the ceiling, the aumbry with its couple of oranges, the cushioned bench by the window, the dainty pair of red shoes on the carpet by the bedside, the pattens of white wood with black leather latchets in the foreground, even to the dusting-brush hung on the arm-chair, and the pet griffin terrier, all