There he continued to practise during several years, and enriched Europe, the Low Countries especially, with a surprising number of pictures almost uniform in excellence. His style, indeed, with all its admirable qualities, was one in which the delicacies of form and expression were never allowed to stand in the way of despatch. His mode of working was to make small sketches, slightly but distinctly; these were delivered to his scholars, who executed pictures from them on a larger scale, which they carried forward almost to the final stage, at which Rubens took them up himself. Thus his own labour was given only to invention and finishing, the only parts of the art in which the painter’s genius is essentially exercised. Wherever his works were dispersed, the demand for them increased, and fortune poured in on him in a golden flood. Rubens’s mode of living at Antwerp was the _beau idéal_ of a painter’s existence. His house was embellished with such a collection of works of art, pictures, statues, busts, vases, and other objects of curiosity and elegance, as gave it the air of a princely museum. In the midst of these he pursued his labours, and it was his constant practice while painting to have read to him works of ancient or modern literature in various languages. It is a strong testimony to the variety of his powers, and the cultivation of his mind, that he was well skilled in seven different tongues. His splendid establishment comprehended a collection of wild beasts, which he kept as living models for those hunting pieces, and other representations of savage animals, which have never been surpassed. Such talents and such success could not fail of exciting envy; a cabal headed by Schut, Jansens, and Rombouts, endeavoured to detract from his reputation, and it is amusing to find him accused, among other deficiencies, of wanting invention! His great picture of the Descent from the Cross, painted for the Cathedral of Antwerp, and exhibited while the outcry against him was at its height, effectually allayed it. Snyders and Wildens were answered in a similar manner. They had insinuated that the chief credit of Rubens’s landscapes and animals was due to their assistance. Rubens painted several lion and tiger hunts, and other similar works, entirely with his own hand, which he did not permit to be seen until they were completed. In these works he even surpassed his former productions; they were executed with a truth power, and energy, which excited universal astonishment, and effectually put his adversaries to silence. Rubens condescended to give no other reply to his calumniators; and he showed his own goodness of heart, by finding employment for those among them whom he understood to be in want of it.