Elizabeth, by Holbein.—The best and perhaps the most faithful picture I have ever seen of her. She is represented in her prime, almost disgustingly fair, or rather white, with pale red hair. The eyes somewhat Albino-like, and almost without eyebrows. There is an artificial good-nature, but a false expression. Vehement passions and a furious temper seem to lie hidden under that pallid exterior, like a volcano under snow; while the intense desire to please is betrayed by the rich and over-ornamented dress. Quite different,—stern, hard, and dangerous to approach,—does she appear in the pictures of her at an advanced age, but even then extremely over-dressed.
Mary of Scotland.—Probably painted in prison, and shortly before her death: it has the air of a matron of forty.—There is still the faultless beauty; but it is no longer the light-minded Mary, full of the enjoyment of life, and of her own resistless charms; but visibly purified by misfortune,—with a sedate expression;—in short, Schiller’s Mary,—a noble nature, which has at length found itself again! It is one of the rarest pictures of the unhappy Queen, whom one is accustomed to see depicted in all the splendour of youth and beauty.
Ignatius Loyola, by Rubens.—A very beautifully painted and grand picture; but which immediately strikes one as a fiction, and no portrait. The sanctified expression, common to so many pictures of saints and priests, is unmeaning. The colouring is by far the finest thing about the picture.
But I should never have done, were I to attempt to go through this gallery. I must take you for a minute into the furthest cabinet, which contains a beautiful collection of enamels, chiefly after designs by Raphael, and a marble bust of the Black Prince, a sturdy soldier both in head and hand,—at a time when the latter alone sufficed to secure the highest renown.
Many valuable Etruscan vases and other works of art, besides the pictures and antiques, decorate the various apartments, and with great good taste are arranged so as to appear as harmonious accessories, instead of being heaped up in a gallery by themselves as dead masses.
It was pointed out to me as a proof of the perfect and solid architecture of the castle,—that, in spite of its age, when all the doors of the suite of rooms are shut, you see the bust placed exactly in the centre of the furthest cabinet, through the keyholes, along a length of three hundred and fifty feet;—a perfection, indeed, which our present race of workmen would never think of approaching. Though, as I told you, the walls of the hall are hung with a great quantity of armour, there is also an armoury, which is extremely rich. Here is the leathern collar, stained with blood blackened by time, in which Lord Brook, an ancestor of the present Earl, was slain at the battle of Litchfield. In one corner of the room lies a curious specimen of art, very heterogeneous with the rest,—a monkey, cast in iron, of a perfection and ‘abandon’ in the disposition of the limbs which rivals Nature herself. I was sorry the ‘châtellaine’ could not tell me who had made the model for this cast. He must be an eminent master who could thus express all the monkey grace and suppleness with such perfect fidelity, in an attitude of the most enjoying laziness.
Before I quitted the princely Warwick, I ascended one of the highest towers, and enjoyed a rich and beautiful prospect on every side. The weather was tolerably clear. Far more enchanting than this panorama, however, was the long walk in the gardens which surround the castle on two sides, whose character of serene grandeur is admirably adapted to that of the building. The height and beauty of the trees, the luxuriance of the vegetation and of the turf, cannot be exceeded; while a number of gigantic cedars, and the ever-varying aspect of the majestic castle, through whose lofty cruciform loop-holes the rays of light played, threw such enchantment over the whole scene that I could hardly tear myself away. We walked about till the moon rose; and her light, as we looked through the darkening alleys, gave to all objects a more solemn and gigantic character. We could therefore only see the celebrated colossal Warwick Vase by lamplight. It holds several hundred gallons, and is adorned with the most beautiful workmanship. We also saw some ancient curiosities which are kept in the Porter’s Lodge; particularly some cows’ horns and wild boar’s tusks, ascribed to beasts which Guy,—a hero of Saxon times, the fabulous ancestor of the first Earls of Warwick,—is said to have destroyed. The dimensions of his arms, which are preserved here, bespeak a man of such strength and stature as Nature no longer produces.
Here at length I took a lingering farewell of Warwick Castle, and laid the recollection, like a dream of the sublime and shadowy past, on my heart. I felt, in the faint moonlight, like a child who sees a fantastic giant head of far distant ages beckoning to it with friendly nod over the summit of the wood.
With such fancies, dear Julia, I will go to sleep, and wake to meet them again in the morning, for another scene of romance awaits me,—the ruins of Kenilworth.
Birmingham, Dec. 29th: Evening.