Excerpt from Rubens<br><br>The awakening was terrible for these merchants and peaceful Citizens, lulled into security by well being. They were suddenly forced into familiarity with horrible fear, dread Of massacre, pillage and ruin, and in this people, plunged against their will into a life and death struggle, fierce feeling was temporarily aroused and the peaceful equilibrium Of moral qualities was destroyed. It was the sons Of the men who suffered this anguish and disaster who applauded Rubens and his school. They found their own emotions in an art where robust and tranquil health was rent by sudden passion and brutality; they recognised the athletic executioners, the shrieking martyrs, and the suffering, fainting.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.