no drop of blood--the thin scarlet line along the sword-edge is a symbol
if you will--the pale head in the cloth is a mere "thing:" yet we all
know what has been done.

_Earthwork out of Tuscany_ (London, 1895).




THE AVENUE OF MIDDELHARNAIS

(_HOBBEMA_)

PAUL LAFOND


Some small and slender trees, branchless almost to their tops, border
the two sides of a road, which occupies the centre of the picture, and
extend all the way to a village which closes the horizon with several
masts and hulls of ships in profile against a sky where the sun is
veiled; to the right, a nursery-garden of shrubs and rose-trees
separated from the road by a wide ditch full of water; then, in the
middle distance, the buildings of a farm; to the left, a clump of trees
and another ditch, and further back the spire of a church; a huntsman,
with a gun on his shoulder and preceded by his dog, is walking on the
road, and two peasants--a man and a woman--have stopped to chat on the
path that leads across to the farm; a horticulturist is grafting the
shrubs in the nursery-garden; and this corner of a landscape has
sufficed for Hobbema to produce a masterpiece which the National Gallery
of London is justly proud to possess. This youngest of the great