Jan Brueghel the Elder

“ BROEKHUIZEN, JAN VAN [Janus Broukhusius] , (1649–1707) , Dutch classical scholar and poet, was born on the 20th of November 1649, at Amsterdam. Having lost his father when very young, he was placed with an apothecary, with whom he lived several years. Not liking this employment, he entered the army, and in 1674 was sent with his regiment to America, in the fleet under Admiral de Ruyter, but returned to Holland the same year. In 1678 he was sent to the garrison at Utrecht, where he contracted a friendship with the celebrated Graevius ”

“ He seemed to see his fellow-creatures grotesquely, and he was angry with them because they were grotesque; life was a confusion of ridiculous, sordid happenings, a fit subject for laughter, and yet it made him sorrowful to laugh. Brueghel gave me the impression of a man striving to express in one medium feelings more appropriate to expression in another, and it may be that it was the obscure consciousness of this that excited Strickland's sympathy. ”

“ He has an energetic head and is in robust health. It is a broad and vigorous painting, and formerly adorned the Dominican monastery at Antwerp.
Two Pictures painted Partly by Rubens.—Two other pictures by Rubens should be studied. Adam and Eve in Paradise, in which, however, only the figures are by Rubens (Dr. Bredius thinks the horse also) ; while the landscape and other animals are by Jan Brueghel, also called Velvet Brueghel. The latter also painted the landscape in the Naiads Filling the Horn of Plenty, a picture that was once attributed to Van Bolen, but now to Rubens. ”

“ I asked him what he meant, and suggested the possibility of others having been lost under like circumstances, while admitting the improbability of their having reached such a latitude.
"That is not it at all!" he exclaimed; "Jan von Broekhuysen stands alone, and for this reason. Because he is the only living creature of our race who has been put alone in an uninhabited world, and who has never seen nor communicated with a fellow-creature!"
"You mean since he was twenty years old, for I believe the paper says that was his age," said I.
"No," replied Torrence, "I mean nothing of the kind. ”

“ But the waving of no bunting before it can hide out the spectacle which is turning the national triumph to eclipse before the elder woman’s vision.
“I suppose that I ought not to have told even you,” she continues, resisting with mild doggedness her young friend’s attempt to distract her thoughts, even momentarily, from her woes—not having, indeed, a mind hospitable enough often to admit two ideas abreast within its narrow portals. “No ”

“ But, when the pleased old man rambled on of fame and fortune, it must be confessed that Jan but thought of them as the steps to those hours of wealthy leisure in which he could buy paints and indulge the irrepressible bent of his genius without blame. ”

“ O let us have good courage; we shall devour our enemies like bread. I go before you to-morrow; the Lord grant you strength, that you may come to me, as I trust you will. But, my dear brother in the Lord, always watch, for the Lord will come as a thief in the night, when we least expect it, for this was my experience; it is good then, that a man be not sleeping. But, dear Jan, I should have written you more, but my time of delivery came on speedily, hence my flesh begins to tremble somewhat; however this is the nature of the flesh. ”

“ Dazzled, bewildered by the benign manner, and yet more gracious words of his sovereign, the young heir of Buchan remained kneeling for a brief space, as if rooted to the ground, but the deep earnest voice of his mother, the kind greeting of Nigel Bruce, as he grasped his arm, and hailed him companion in arms, roused him at once, and he sprung to his feet; the despondency, shame, doubt, anxiety which like lead had weighed down his heart before, dissolved before the glad, buoyant spirit, the bright, free, glorious hopes, and dreams, and visions which are known to youth alone. ”

“ When we are young we lay up for old age; when we are old we save for death; ”

“ I thought that we," she says, her lips beginning to quiver piteously, and her faithful thoughts, that never wander far from it, straying back to the new bare grave, where one half of that "we" lies sleeping—"I thought that we should have lived to be old together: most people live to be old!" ”

“ Lights are twinkling from the village alehouse; the forge shines like a great dull-red jewel in the surrounding grey; laughing voices of boisterous men are wafted unseemly amongst the graves. Shuddering at the sound, she raises herself up quickly; then, stooping again, kisses yet once more the wet red earth that is now closest neighbour to her brother, and sobbing "Good-bye, my boy, good-bye!—God bless you, Jack!" ”

“ I've stolen green apples myself in my time."
"You have, Elder? That's a comfort. P'r'aps Johnny'll come out all right, then. But you must keep your weather-eye open for him, Elder. Home 'ith me? Ef Mahaly Brooks can't walk home alone she'd better die here! You go along. You've got work afore ye."
But that evening, as the elder sat among his children and saw St. John, with little Peace in his arms and the other children about him like flies about a fallen plum while he told them a Bible story with many embellishments, the elder listened a moment. ”

“ There was also a young maiden named Janneken apprehended for her faith, at Antwerp; who, when she appeared before the lords, freely confessed her faith. The Margrave said: “Janneken, if you will renounce, I will show you favor; do according to my will, and I will give you your life.” But she replied: “The life that you would give me, I desire not; for your promises are vain and as wavering as a reed, and would only bring me into greater sorrow: cursed is every one that trusts in man.” ”

“ In the very nature of things it is such a life as cannot often be repeated. Even if there were many men in the profession capable of living to the age of eighty-four, and then writing their life with fair hope of further travels, it is not reasonable to expect that there could ever be more than a very few lives so full of incidents worthy of being recorded autographically as the marvellous life which we are fresh from perusing. The combination of personal qualities and favorable opportunities in Sir Henry Holland's case is as rare as it is happy. ”

“ Life is a kind of sleep; old men have slept longer than others, and only begin to wake again when they are to die. If, then, they take a retrospect of the whole course of their lives, they frequently discover neither virtues nor commendable actions to distinguish one year from another ”

“ The remembrance of their youth remains green in the heart of old men; they love the places where they lived; and the persons with whom they then began an acquaintance are dear to them; they still affect certain words in use when they first began to speak; they prefer the ancient style of singing and dancing; and boast of the old fashions in dress, furnishing, and carriages; they cannot bring themselves to disapprove of those things which served their passions, and are always recalling them. ”

“ A man is thirty years old before he thinks of making his fortune, but it is not completed at fifty; he begins to build in his old age, and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and glazed. ”

“ Not the cold pavement chilling him through his ragged clothes, not the strange staring and jesting of the rough crowds, not even the hideous sense of the hunchback’s vigilant oversight of him, could destroy his pleasure in the sense of the daily increasing powers of his fingers, in which genius seemed to tremble to create. In the few weeks of his apprenticeship to screeving, Jan had improved more quickly than he might have done under such teaching as the Squire had been willing to procure for the village genius. ”

“ What La Bruyère saw with the spiritual gaze of a moralist rushed upon the vision of Saint-Simon in all the colour, the detail, the intensity, the frenzy, of actual fact. He makes no comments, no reflections—or, if he does, they are ridiculous; he only sees and feels. Thus, though in the profundity of his judgement he falls so infinitely below La Bruyère, in his character-drawing he soars as high above him. His innumerable portraits are unsurpassed in literature. They spring into his pages bursting with life—individual, convincing, complete, and as various as humanity itself. ”

“ Do you wonder that I have never been or lived like other men?"
After a few moments of sympathetic silence, Mr. Van Broecklyn went on, to say:
"I don't think I ever had a moment's doubt that my parents both lay dead on the floor of that great room. When I came to myself—which may have been soon, and may not have been for a long while— the lightning had ceased to flash, leaving the darkness stretching like a blank pall between me and that spot in which were concentrated all the terrors of which my imagination was capable. ”

“ No one bullies Esther; no one oppresses her; no one troubles their head much about her. So as she performs her monotonous, easy, tiresome little duties towards them, the old people have no sort of objection to her enjoying life, if she can. With the aged, comfort and happiness are interchangeable terms: continuous warmth of body, pleasant-tasted meats, a profound stagnant quiet around their arm-chairs, much sleep—these are their summum bonum. They have had love, and have outlived it—excitement also, and grief: they have outlived all but the elemental instincts that refuse to be outlived. ”

“ In the weak superstition of his age, Nigel Bruce had never shared, but firmly and steadfastly he believed, even in his calm and unexcited moments, that there was a link between the living and the dead; that the freed spirits of the one were permitted to hold commune with the other, not in visible shape, but in those thrilling whispers which the spirit knows, while yet it would deny them even to itself. ”

“ No offence, but we are very happy without you—aren't we, Miss Esther? You attend to your own business; we don't offer to help you in that—do we—eh, my dear?"
Baffled and vexed, St. John stands silent; and as he so stands, the young girl lifts her great meek eyes, dumbly grateful, to his. He has forbidden her to speak to him, but he cannot lay an embargo upon the gentle messages sent from those sorrowful shining orbs. His own meet them for an instant; then he turns away with a half-shudder.
"What a churchyard cough that girl has!" ”

“ Jan felt that he expected him to go home. Perhaps at this moment the baker had gone, with the best intentions, to fetch the Cheap Jack, and bring about a family reunion. Terror had become an abiding state of Jan’s mind, and it seized him afresh, like a palsy. He left the penny on the counter, and shook the flour-dust from his fingers, and, stealing with side glances of dread into the street, he sped away once more.
He had no knowledge of localities. He ran “on and on,” as people do in fairy tales. ”

“ An old man who is careless in his dress, or else overdressed, increases his wrinkles, and looks as senile as he really is.
(117.) An old man is proud, disdainful, and unsociable if he is not very intelligent. ”

“ Thus they, after manifold temptations and trials of their faith, were, by the blinded, God-opposing papists, put to death, not on account of any evil deed, but only for the obedience of the truth of Jesus Christ. Michiel van Bruyssel was burned in the Friday Market, and Barberken his wife was beheaded with the sword, in the count’s castle. And thus they remained faithful unto death to their Redeemer and Savior; hence they shall receive an eternal and glorious kingdom, and a beautiful crown, from the hand of the Lord, which no one shall be able to take away from them. ”

“ No feeling in life was more deeply rooted in the heart of Lord Brougham than his intense affection and veneration for his admirable mother. He repaid her early care and judicious guidance by the most ardent and unvarying demotion. He will ingly laid all the triumphs of his career at her feet ; and she lived to see him attain the proudest heights of fame and power. ”

“ The first slash of the whip and dig of the spur changed the nature of Dan's emotions most effectually. He roared, he raged, he twisted about like an eel on a spear. Still fiercely and unmercifully the little jockey plied the lash and the goad. Still he shouted, "Hurrah! jump, you devil, jump!"
Now, Dan swore like a rapparee; now, he called upon every saint in the calendar; but there was no cessation to his torture. In the extremity of his fury, he flung the whisky-bottle at the little rider's head; but as it struck his own foot, it only augmented the terrible agony. ”

“ The least calm of these men who debated upon what we were worth, and just what should become of us, was Brougham. Like most who love to torment, he himself was easily tormented. How does this champion of liberty look as he rises to condemn the policy on the Canadian question as “vacillating, imbecile, and indolent;” as he puts his awkward questions to those whom he calls his “noble friends” or “the noble lords,” all looking marvellously uncomfortable when their names are in that merciless mouth. ”

“ It is not the dread of one day wanting money which renders old men avaricious, for some of them have such a large quantity of it that this cannot make them uneasy; besides, how can the fear disturb them of being in want of the common necessities of life when they are old, since by their own free will they deprive themselves of these to satisfy their avarice. ”