of the golden renaissance.  We have always held a brief for the Art for Art theory.  The artist must think first of his material and its technical manipulation; but after that, if his pulse beat to spiritual rhythms then his work may attain the heights.  It is not painting that is the lost art, but faith.  Men like the Van Eycks, Rogier van der Weyden, Memling, and Gerard David were princes of their craft and saw their religion with eyes undimmed by doubt.

James Weak has destroyed the legend that Hans Memling painted his St. Ursula for the benefit of St. Jean’s Hospital as a recompense for treatment while sick there.  He was a burgher living comfortably at Bruges.  The museum is a short distance from the hospital.  Its Van Eyck (Jan), La Vierge et l’Enfant—­known as the Donator because of the portrait of George van der Paele—­is its chief treasure, though there is the portrait of Jan’s wife; Gerard David’s Judgment of King Cambyses, and the savage execution companion picture; Memling’s triptych, St. Christopher bearing the Christ Child, and David’s masterpiece, The Baptism of Christ.  Holbein never painted a head with greater verisimilitude than Van Eyck’s rendering of the Donator.  What an eye!  What handling, missing not a wrinkle, a fold of the aged skin, the veins in the senile temples, or the thin soft hair above the ears!  What synthesis!  There are no niggling details, breadth is not lost in this multitude of closely observed and recorded facts.  The large eyes gaze devoutly at the vision of the Child, and if neither Virgin nor Son is comely there is character delineated.  The accessories must fill the latter-day painter avid of surface loveliness with consuming envy.

But it is time for sleep.  The Brugeois cocks have crowed, the sun is setting, and eyelids are lowering.  Lucky you are if your dreams evoke the brilliant colours, the magical shapes of the Primitives of Bruges the Beautiful.

THE MOREAU MUSEUM

Out of the beaten track of sight-seers, and not noticed with particular favour by the guide-books, the museum founded by Gustave Moreau at 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld in Paris, is known only to a comparatively few artists and amateurs.  You seldom hear Americans speak of this rare collection, it is never written about in the magazines.  In September, 1897, Moreau made a will leaving his house and its contents to the State.  He died in 1898 (not in 1902, as Bryan’s dictionary has it), and in 1902 President Loubet authorised the Minister of Public Instruction to accept this rich legacy in the name of the republic.  The artist was not known to stranger countries; indeed he was little known to his fellow-countrymen.  Huysmans had cried him up in a revolutionary article; but to be praised by Huysmans was not always a certificate of fame.  That critic was more successful in attracting public attention to Degas and Rops; and Moreau, a born eclectic, though without any intention of carrying