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THE SECOND PICTURE
King Richard the First, afterwards called Coeur de Lion, leaves England with an expeditionary force, to join the Crusade in Palestine for the recovery of Jerusalem from the Saracens. December II, 1189.

Painter—GLYN PHILPOT, R.A. Donor—THE VISCOUNT DEVONPORT

THE King is unostentatiously dressed in his fighting suit of chain mail, with a simple coronet; his tall and powerful figure is thrown up as a splendid silhouette against the background of sky and sea; his gesture is that of a man inspired with the genius of leadership and of devotion to a cause. The men whom he is calling to follow him are typical of soldierly strength and discipline; there is uniformity not only in their armour but in theft solid features, their unemotional expression, and their professionally. clipped moustaches. In strong contrast are the figures and faces on the left, of the Archbishop and his monks and choirboys, all individual and all beautiful—the wisdom of peaceful age, the happiness of peaceful youth. These serve to heighten the effect of the militant groups—those who are called away to war, to the making of history, perhaps to personal renown, certainly to self-sacrifice. Among them may be seen heraldic devices, then new, now old and famous: the two lions combatant of Richard himself, the Plantagenet broom-pods on his white pennon, the argent and azure shield of Henry de Grey, and the lion passant between two mascles of Stephen de Turnham, the Steward of the King’s household. But everything here, however beautiful or interesting, is subordinated to the significance of the central figure.

“Richard as King of England,” says Mr.. George Trevelyan, “was a negligent, popular absentee, as befitted the character of knight errant.” But he says also “the Crusades were the first phase in that outward thrust of the restless and energetic races of the new Europe, which was never to cease until it had overrun the globe.” It is true that Richard was far from being an ideal ruler for a modern nation; that in a reign of ten years the spent barely six months in England; that his generalship, his great strength and courage, his reckless generosity, were not political virtues at all, but merely the virtues of an inspired militarism. Still they were virtues, of a kind dear to the great majority of our race; and the militarism was inspired. Not only was it an impulse natural and necessary to the development of that age, but it transformed mere energy, mere combativeness, into something poetical and devoted. By the unbroken tradition of seven centuries we still give the name of Crusade to any cause, which calls us to enthusiasm and sacrifice; and we never felt the tradition better justified than when a great English commander entered Jerusalem at last—on the nth of December 1917.

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