The National tribune., 1898-01-20
TOPIC For THE WEEK.
Horny VIII and Hans Holbeni-Wivss of
"Bluff King Hal"
Tokens.
BY OLA BELL HoTHAM.

The gipsies scatter punched leaves and grasses
That one, coming after may know
By these speaking signs, as he inward passes,
Where the wandering nomadS GO
In the scented dim of forest by-ways
The signs of their passing seen,
And along the glare of dusty highways
Are the leaves and grasses green.
So, long ago, in the early morning
Or a glad yet fear-fraught time,
The patriots, blight of bondage scorning.
Made trail unto nights sublime.
At each onward step they left token,
And we. coming after. may see
The way they made, so sure and unbroken,
And left for posterty.
And we follow the trail by the light that
Up the nights from the thrilling past.
From the spark that was struck on the Rock OF
Plymouth
By the sturdy iconoclast.
We gather and garner the leaves and grasses
By the hands of the patriots flung
On the uplands steep, in the dark mOrasses,
When the Nation we love was young.
And never leaf of the trail shall wither
And never blade he lost,
For by bonds of faith they are held together,
And by love fraternal embossed.
Art has been great conservator of history.
Indeed, pictorial representation, in one form
and another, constitutes all the history we
have of remote periods. The pictorial hero
glyphics on the tombS and obelisks of Egypt
have survived all other forms of chronological
record
Almost all that England has in the way of
art and music she owes to Germany and to
Hans Holbein, the German Court painter of
Henry VIII. History owes him a debt for
the preservation of portraits of the noted
men of the times, as we'll as for his portrayal
of the spirit of the age in his celebrated,
Dance of Death"
Hans Holbein was born a few years after
Columbus discovered America He was the
son of a painter, decorator of houses and
churches, and acquired the art from his
father as he followed him from place to
place. At Basel he met the great Erasmus,
who gave him letter to Sir Thomas More,
long a favorite of Henry VIII, but who
shared the usual fate of that monarchs
favorites by having his head struck off at
blow about the time of the burnings at
Smthheld.
Hans Holbein seemed to get along well
enough with the King. and lived long enough
to lose his life in the great plague which al
most swept London from the face of the
earth about the middle of the 18th century.
IStE1Stu llDcIdl ptliSlDl III It-
turn for which he painted King Henry at
the several stages of his kingly brutality,
though idealized, no doubt, which is a way
the artists have in portraying men to whom
they owe their living The most famous of
these portraits shows much beruffled, burly,
over-fed man, with broad face, small eyes.
and a double chin. 1t is said that every
man has his prototype in some animal, and
Henry VIII. would very readily suggest the
wild swine, stall-fed and doubly cruel from
wallowing in greed.
The Dance of Death " was a favorite
theme with painters of the Medieval Ages
At the great Church carnivals of the 18th
century masked figures would appear, with
the appreciation of the clergy, claiming the
privilege of taking by the hand and dancing
with whomsOever they might meet. 1t was
with this custom in mind that Holbein
painted a succession of % distinct and diverse
scenes. in the course of which Death assumes
a great variety of costumes, meeting and
overcoming people in every rank and con-
ditiOn Of life.
Holbcin's dance of Death " reproduces
the people and costumes as he saw them,
combining sublimity and grotesqueness such
as cannot be imagined. Persons of all ranks
and ages are seen dancing together, not know
ing that they are led to the grave by the
skeleton form of death
There are some sights and scenes which,
one cannot recall them in detail,
always leave an impression both pleasant and
elevating But sight of Holben's Dance
of DEATH" forming a series around a section
of an art gallery, leaves an impress of horror
and repulsion such as time can never efface
In very much the same way are we affected
by knowledge of the Dance of Death"
which Henry Will provided for his people,
EDITOR NATIONAL TRIBUNE