'Hail and Farewell!' Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 Excerpt: ...a last bite of the cake of earthly satisfactions should be his. The baron loved his horse, and declared that he chose to ride him through the town. No one divined a ruse in this choice. The baron was free for the time being, and putting spurs to his horse he jumped over the parapet into the moat, and swam the animal across it, and so escaped. But at the end of three years he was again taken prisoner; this time the usual gratification allowed to prisoners was refused him; he was put forthwith on the wheel, and his limbs broken one by one with an iron bar. And looking at the wheel, I said to Edward: 'You wouldn't have been broken, but I should, had I lived in those times; and Luther would not have escaped had it not been for the Elector of Saxony.' I We discovered the great monk's portrait in the museum, and a splendid piece of portraiture it is, Cranach fixing upon our minds for ever a bluff face with a fearless eye in it. We looked into the panel tenderly, thinking of the stormy story of his life--quite a little panel, eight or ten by six or seven inches, containing but the head and shoulders, and so like Luther! Those fifteenth-century painters convince us, giving in a picture a likeness more real than any photograph, and doing this because they were able to look at nature innocently. We wondered at his Adam and Eve, two little panels, hanging close by, single.figures, covering with their hands 'certain ridiculous but necessary organs,' in modern pictures generally hidden by 'somebody else's elbow, or a flying gull, or a flying towel, or what not.' Modern painting is uninteresting because there is no innocency left in it. Blessed are the innocent, for theirs is the kingdom of Art! Edward admired these nudes as much as I did, and when he said it was not a p...