[Illustration:  WILLIAM II.  OF ORANGE From the picture by Van Dyck, in the Hermitage Gallery, Leningrad]

This little Prince had in his veins the blood of William the Silent, and became the father of our William III.  Poor human nature is too easily envious, and some deny the reality, in fact, of the distinction, the grace, of Van Dyck’s portrayed men and women.  Nevertheless, Van Dyck’s vision, guiding his brush, was as rare an endowment as envy is a common one, and has higher authority to show us what to look for, to see, and to enjoy.

Van Dyck was the first painter who taught people how they ought to look, to befit an admirer’s view of their aristocratic rank.  His portraits thus express the social position of the sitter as well as the individual character.  Although this has been an aim of portrait-painters in modern times, when they have been painting people of rank, it was less usual in the seventeenth century.

There was hardly scope enough in Antwerp for two great painters such as Rubens and Van Dyck, so in 1632 Van Dyck left Flanders and settled permanently in England, as Court painter to Charles I. All his life Charles had been an enthusiastic collector of works of art.  Born with a fine natural taste, he had improved it by study, until Rubens could say of him:  ’The Prince of Wales is the best amateur of painting of all the princes in the world.  He has demanded my portrait with such insistence that he has overcome my modesty, although it does not seem to me fitting to send it to a Prince of his importance.’

Two of our pictures, the Richard II. diptych and the Edward VI. of Holbein, were in his collection, besides many we have mentioned, such as Holbein’s ‘Erasmus,’ Raphael’s cartoons, and Mantegna’s ’Triumph of Caesar.’  Before Charles came to the throne he had gone to Spain to woo the daughter of Philip III.  The magnificent Titians in the palace at Madrid extorted such admiration from the Prince that Philip felt it incumbent upon him as a host and a Spaniard to offer some of them to Charles.  Charles sent his own painter to copy the rest.  He kept agents all over Europe to buy for him, and spent thousands of pounds in salaries and presents to the artists at his Court.  As in the time of Henry VIII., there were still no first-rate English painters.  James I. had employed a Fleming, and an inferior Dutchman, whom Charles retained in his service for a time.  Then he experimented with a second-rate Italian artist, who painted some ceilings which still exist at Hampton Court.  Rubens was too much in demand at other Courts for Charles to have his exclusive service, but the courtly Van Dyck was a painter after his own heart.  For the first time he had found an artist who satisfied his taste, and Van Dyck a Court in which he could paint distinction to his heart’s content.  Charles would have squandered money on him if he had then had it to squander.  As it was, he paid him far less than he had paid his inferior predecessors, but Van Dyck continued to paint for him to the end, and by Heaven’s mercy died himself before the crash came, which overthrew Charles and scattered his collection.