In Russet & Silver :: :: University of Virginia Library

So soon as the Prince and Princess of Wales were seated, there was heard music from the Guards' Band. This being ended with a flourish of trumpets and drums, there was discovered an altar, beside which Virgil stood, attired in a long robe of scarlet, with a crown of laurel upon his head, and a staff in his hand. He spoke as follows:—

From my Italian grave I rise to-night,
Once more to move on earth in live men's sight;
The blare of trumpets, music's festal sound,
Disturbed my sacred slumbers underground;
So once I rose, upon the wild hill-side,
When Dante saw the three fierce beasts, and cried;
So hand in hand with him I walked to tell
Of Paradise, of Purgatory, and Hell.

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Know 'tis Athene's will this night that we
Should witness here a matchless pageantry;
Your eyes, unsealed, shall view as much as mine,
And glory in a fabulous design;
Keep silence then, while I declare aloud
What gorgeous pomp shall break from yonder cloud,
What summons brings the gay procession by,
And whence to-night it hither comes, and why.

Ye have heard of old, in proverb and in song,
How that though life be brief, yet art is long;
Upon this stage to-night before we part
Ye shall behold the pedigree of art;
And find for once, beneath my magic rhyme,—
For once concentr'd in one hour of time,—
All that since Art's first dewy days hath sped
By various modes in divers fashions led.

Nor shall the Painters only grace your sight,
The Kings they wrought for shall be seen to-night;
The Soldiers, too, who served adventure far,
And clashed their armour in the storm of war;

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The Poets mild, with laurel round their hair,
And stately Dames imperishably fair,
The scarlet Trumpeter, the snow-white Saint,—
All that the painter's hand delights to paint.

Now first behold, soon as the hautboys cease,
Come shadowy names from fair historic Greece:
Phidias, whose men like marble mountains shone,
And he who reared the stately Parthenon,
Zeuxis, on whom the birds of heaven attend,
With wise Apelles, Alexander's friend;
And midst them all, the mighty statesman moves
Who ruled amid the embowering olive-groves.

The curtain fell, and loud music sounded as before. The inner scene then opened, and revealed part of a street in Athens. On the right hand scaffolding discovered against a building. Among loose blocks of marble in the foreground Pericles consulting Ictinus the architect and Phidias the sculptor respecting the details of the Parthenon. Zeuxis was seen on the left hand, in converse with some Athenian ladies.

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The scene presently closed, and, after orchestral music as before, the band summoned Virgil with a flourish of trumpets, and the scene opening, discovered him ready to speak:—

Ages have passed, and lo! before me stand
The new-born glories of the Tuscan land:
Dante, with whom I trode the shores of hell;
And Beatrice, whom he loved so well;
Giotto, whom wandering Cimabue found,
A mountain-shepherd, scrawling on the ground;
And all whom young Italian spring-tide filled
With godlike rage to paint or carve or build.

No names so great as these the ages know—
Da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo;
All skill, all grace, all power of hand and heart,
These mighty three combined t' enrich their art;
And till the tired world sinks within the sea,
No fourth shall rise to breast the immortal three.

The Adriatic raised her salt-strewn head,
And saw her Venice glow with rosy red;
Not sunset then, nor sunrise, but the brush
Of Giorgione spread this ruddy flush;

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There Titian's noon-day flamed, there the moon set
In Veronese, and night in Tintoret.

After the curtain had fallen, amid music, the inner scene opened again, and was shown divided into three arched compartments, designed to display, as in a triptych, the arts of Florence, Rome, and Venice. In the centre, in a Florentine garden full of cypresses and orange-trees, behind which rose the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, Dante appeared with Beatrice, Petrarch with Laura, Cimabue with Giotto, as a shepherd boy, also Niccolò Pisano, an angel with a zither, and certain ladies of Florence, among whom Boccaccio's Fiametta was discovered.
On the right hand, the scene displayed a terrace in the gardens of the Vatican. Michelangelo, standing on the steps, was showing to Pope Julius II. an architectural design. Cardinal and priests were in waiting on his Holiness. Raphael at the foot of the steps in front gazed upon his great rival.
On the left was seen a glimpse of Venice from a balcony of the Ducal Palace looking on the Grand
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Canal with the column of S. Mark, and the island of San Georgio beyond. A gentleman of the Giorgione period, in the costume of a companion of the Calza, with a mandolin in his hand, sat, looking up at two Venetian ladies nobly habited. A Venetian Senator, an Oriental Ambassador, and Giovanni Bellini were also seen in the balcony, while from the front Titian and Paul Veronese contemplated the group.
The scene then closed, and the band once more summoned Virgil with a flourish of trumpets. The curtains opening, he spoke as follows:—

Plain burghers these, who claimed response from art
To simple instincts of a northern heart,
Dürer, the prince of German handicraft,
And stalwart Visscher, and brave Adam Kraft,
Cranach, the friend of Luther, poet Sachs,
All sturdy subjects of grim Kaiser Max.

Till Holbein came to paint in stately scenes
Our own bluff Henry's court, and half his queens,
No art appeared, in this chill land of ours,
To strew the barren road of life with flowers;
Erasmus, More, Melancthon, these we see,
Great friends of his,—yet none so great as he.

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The tableau displayed the interior of a studio in which Albrecht Dürer was explaining to the Emperor Maximilian his print called the “Triumph” of that potentate. In the group supporting the Emperor were Holbein, Peter Visscher and Lucas Cranach.
The scene closed, and, after music, the curtain again parted and revealed Virgil, who spoke as follows:—

From Flemish guilds in towns on dune and dyke
Come forth the fur-robed forms of each Van Eyck;
There Van der Weyden walks; there grave and staid
Tall Memlinck bends above the shrine he made,
While sparkling, jewel-like and dewy-bright,
Their clean enamelled paintings bask in light.

The Dutch, when wealth and wisdom clipped their wings,
First learned the loveliness of homely things;
But looked beyond, for Rembrandt trained their eyes,
And marked the changes of their northern skies;

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Then silvery Terburg came, and golden Cuyp,
And each flushed votary of the pot and pipe.

The curtain fell, and, after music, the scene rose and displayed an old Dutch house and garden in Haarlem, once the home of Franz Hals and of Jan van der Meer. On the right were a group drinking and talking around a table, Rembrandt lifting his glass to Cuyp; Ostade and Teniers watching a game of bowls.
The scene closed, and, after a flourish of trumpets, Virgil appeared once more, and spoke as follows:—

To that pale court where passion burned in flame,
With silver gifts and bronze, Cellini came;
There chained to pleasure, art and beauty lay,
And all the Pleiad with their crowns of bay;
At Francis' feet the mighty Potter laid
The coloured fish and snakes and weeds he made,
And round them wondering those French faces drew
That Clouet's brush and Goujon's chisel knew.

The scene represented a terrace in front of the palace of Fontainebleau; Francis I. receiving Benvenuto Cellini, who was taking specimens of gold
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and silver plate from his pupils Paolo Romano and Ascanio da Tagliacozzo, and presenting them to the King.
Virgil appeared again, as the scene closed, and spoke as follows:—

The Spanish Don, pragmatical and proud,
Disdained the simple arts that please the crowd;
Murillo's gay Madonnas charmed the court,
But painting's days in Spain were starv'd and short;
Yet long enough to add Velasquez' name
To that brief deathless roll of finished fame.

The scene represented the studio of Velasquez, in Madrid, on the occasion of a royal visit. The Master was pointing out to King Philip IV. and his Queen his picture of “Las Meniñas,” which stood upon an easel. Alonzo Cano was standing behind the painter, and Cardinal Gaspar de Borja, in company with Doña Marcella de Ulloa, behind the Queen. The King, leaning on the arm of Cardinal Rospigliosi, was in the act of decorating Velasquez with the order of the cross of Santiago.
At the close of the scene, Virgil being again summoned by the drums and trumpets, spoke thus:—

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Prince of the world of painters, Rubens comes
And storms it with his trumpets and his drums;
Then on our aching ears less rudely strike
The courtlier accents of the grave Vandyke,
Whose brush the secret from a Charles could wring
How sorrow sits on eyelids of a king.

Now, in the days when German Georges ruled
And bullying Fritz his stiff-backed squadron schooled,
Hogarth appears,—in whom the graver's gift
Ranks with the pen of Fielding and of Swift,
Since, like the Beadle of the Morals, he
Lashed through the streets the cur Hypocrisy.

And here, at last, the English painters come,
Sir Joshua's glowing palette on his thumb,
Angelica, unfortunate and fair,
And Gainsborough with his liberal wealth of air;
George Morland, Wilson, Romney, close the race,
The last of Englishmen to dress with grace.

The tableau represented a hemicycle in a pyramidal shape, rising between columns. At the summit stood Charles I. in hunting costume, and Queen Henrietta
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Maria, in conversation with Rubens; just below them stood Vandyke, painting a portrait of the King, and on successive steps, broadening to the base, were Hogarth, standing a little aloof from the others, Sir Joshua Reynolds conversing with Angelica Kauffmann, and Gainsborough.
The scene closed, and Virgil, appearing for the last time, addressed the company as follows:—

Prince and Princess, the show is done, and these
Once more retire across your narrow seas,
Since few of all this glorious train were bred
With the English leopards flying o'er their head;

Yet have we too an art that England claims,
Nor this unwedded to illustrious names;
Fresco and oils we learned from over sea
But no one drew in aqua-tint till we;
And, now in all lands, cunning artists use
To paint in English wise, in watery hues.

These who have passed before your eyes to-night
Pursue this art, transparent, graceful, light,
Content to move along the humbler road,
And bend their painting to this native mode,

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Proud to remember Girtin's ruined scene,
The tender wash of Cozens' silver-green,
Glover's soft touch, Paul Sandby cold and stern,
The trees of Edridge and the streams of Hearne,
Turner whose wondrous art summed up the rest,—
Great Nature's boldest pupil and her best,—
The new Prometheus, who from Heaven has won,
Not fire, but light, but splendour of the sun;
And with him all who since his day have striven
To paint our world beneath the arch of heaven.

Then, ere I vanish, ah! let Virgil plead
For this home growth of art, this British weed:
And still among your foreign flowers find room
Close to your hearts for one wild English bloom.

With which the whole ended, and the company began to dance.

THE END