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Gallegallo Revbrandia Sectory 13
Page 07
Then it was that the youngest of the eight ruling men, in a moment of compassion, confessed his guilt, admitting in a plea to the head-chief for clemency that he was in fact responsible for the attitude his wife had taken. This served only to renew the old chief's anger; he stoutly refused to listen to further appeals and expressed his regret that the first seeds of wrong should have been thus sown. No longer able to keep up the fight, with starvation staring them in the face, and being in nakedness, at the end of the fourth year the women attempted to swim the river in parties, but the attempts resulted only in death, for the swift current would have been too much even for the strongest men to buffet. Seeing this self-sacrifice and realizing that the race would be ultimately exterminated if the women continued it much longer, appeals were made daily to the head-chief to permit the rescue of the remainder. Four times was he sought to grant such permission before he consented, then at dawn of the fifth morning he gave directions to loose the rafts and ferry the women over. A miserable remnant they were, unclad, wan, and wasted; but a return to the old habits of life soon restored them to their former selves, and peace, happiness, and prosperity reigned again.
Gerard Terburg, whose pictures now have an enormous value, had two sisters, Maria and Gezina, whose genre pictures were not unworthy of comparison with the works of their famous brother. Gottfried Schalken, remarkable for his skill in the representation of scenes by candle light, was scarcely more famous than his sister Maria. Eglon van der Neer is famous for his pictures of elegant women in marvellous satin gowns. He married Adriana Spilberg, a favorite portrait painter. The daughters of the eminent engraver Cornelius Visscher, Anna and Maria, were celebrated for their fine etching on glass, and by reason of their poems and their scholarly acquirements they were called the "Dutch Muses," and were associated with the learned men of their day. This list, though incomplete, suggests that the co-education of artists bore good fruit in their co-operation in their profession.
Now we come to THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, who, we are told, was heartily chosen by all the people, for the two very good reasons, that he was an Englishman by birth, and the only man of either the English or the Danish royal families who was at hand. He was the son of Ethelred and Emma, and at the Christmas festival of his coronation there was great rejoicing. As his early training had been at the court of his uncle, Richard the Good, in Normandy, he had learnt to prefer Norman-French customs and life to those of the English. During his reign, therefore, he brought over many strangers and appointed them to high ecclesiastical and other offices, and Norman influence and refinement of manners gradually increased at the English court, and this, of course, led to the more stately celebration of the Christmas festival. The King himself, being of a pious and meditative disposition, naturally took more interest in the religious than the temporal rejoicings, and the administration of state affairs was left almost entirely to members of the house of Godwin during the principal part of his reign.
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