The Attitudes Of These Charm-
Ing Children, Whose Faces Are All Bent Upon Him In
Pity, Have The Prettiest Tenderness And Respect.
The
table on which he lies is supported by elaborate
columns, adorned with niches containing little images,
and with
Every other imaginable elegance; and be-
neath it he is represented in that other form, so com-
mon in the tombs of the Renaissance, - a man naked
and dying, with none of the state and splendor of the
image above. One of these figures embodies the duke
the other simply the mortal; and there is something
very strange and striking in the effect of the latter,
seen dimly and with difficulty through the intervals
of the rich supports of the upper slab. The monu-
ment of Margaret herself is on the left, all in white
merble, tormented into a multitude of exquisite pat-
terns, the last extravagance of a Gothic which had
gone so far that nothing was left it but to return upon
itself. Unlike her husband, who has only the high
roof of the church above him, she lies under a canopy
supported and covered by a wilderness of embroidery,
- flowers, devices, initials, arabesques, statuettes.
Watched over by cherubs, she is also in her robes
and ermine, with a greyhound sleeping at her feet
(her husband, at his, has a waking lion); and the
artist has not, it is to be presumed, represented her
as more beautiful than she was. She looks, indeed,
like the regent of a turbulent realm.
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