108 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



ment of Jan Fyt's work with that of the " Poul- 

 terer's Shop," by Van Mieris, which hangs in the 

 National Gallery of London, and in which a pretty 

 tortoise-shell pussy, soft-furred and innocent-eyed, 

 looks wistfully at a dead cluck hanging well out of 

 her reach. The Flemish painter felt, and felt with 

 reluctant admiration, the lawlessness of the animals 

 he drew ; the Dutchman transferred to canvas his 

 own sleepy pet, curled up in the warmest corner of 

 his hearth. His cat is as gentle, for all her greed, 

 as is that comfortable beast, so drowsy and uncon- 

 cerned, in Jordaens's tumultuous " Twelfth Night ; " 

 or the mother puss who watches her five kittens 

 with tender and over-anxious solicitude in Jan 

 Steen's equally uproarious "Revellers." 



Such pictures seem made for cats. To paint a 

 kitchen without one would be like painting a mea- 

 dow without cows. Worse, indeed ; for there is 

 no such air of destitution, of utter and melancholy 

 incompleteness about a cowless meadow, as about 

 a catless kitchen. No effort of imagination was 

 needed to introduce Pussy into a Dutch interior. 

 She was there by virtue of natural selection, of 

 justifiable and inevitable proprietorship ; but to 

 gently insinuate her into the company of saints and 

 angels required more courage, or more affection. 

 Only now and then an early Flemish painter ven- 

 tured upon such a flight of fancy. There is in 



