at the beginning of the seventeenth century was the most formidable on the seas, their commerce became the most widely extended in the world, and in spite of all rivalries yet continues to be world-wide. In the success and profit of colonial enterprise, they have distanced every other country except Great Britain, their present colonial dependencies embracing territories inhabited by 25,000,000 people. By no means least among these enterprises was the part they performed in the settlement of the American colonies. Their feats of arms on land and sea have sustained the reputation for valor of the original Batavians, the inflexible allies of Rome, who furnished the body-guard of the Roman emperors, and were declared by Tacitus to be the bravest of all the Germans. The extent of their contributions to scientific progress is indicated by Niebuhr's remark that no locality in Europe is so memorable in the history of science as the Hall of the Senatus, in the University of Leyden. In many branches of productive industry, they have not only acquired great wealth, but have almost distanced competition. To literature and statesmanship, they have contributed a whole galaxy of illustrious names, and, strangest of all, in nothing have these steady-going, toiling, trading dwellers among the dunes and marshes more distinguished themselves than in art.

While these things have been accomplished in the past, things worthy of them are being done in the present. In education and thoroughness of information, the Dutch are quite abreast with the foremost of their contemporaries, and their societies for the promotion of art, science, music, literature, and philanthropy, and for the discussion of all manner of useful subjects, have no end. These societies have invaluable auxiliaries in great public libraries, and museums of art, science, and history, enriched with the accumulations of centuries, drawn from all parts of the world. A society for promotion of the public welfare, having its headquarters in Amsterdam, and extending its operations throughout the kingdom, aims to establish schools, libraries, lecture bureaus, and reading-rooms, and to encourage various works of charity and mercy. This society now has three hundred and thirty departments, and numbers seventeen thousand members.

Historically, commercially, socially, and in almost every other respect, Holland is epitomized in its chief commercial metropolis. Amsterdam is in various respects a phenomenal city. Said to be, for its population, the wealthiest in the world, there are certainly few others more interesting. Yet, but for the great dykes which hold back the waters of the sea, the ground upon which this richly-stored working hive of three hundred thousand people stands would be submerged to the depth of several feet. The whole city has been built upon wooden piles driven as deeply as possible

into the yielding mold, yet even this costly expedient has not prevented hundreds of buildings from being thrown out of their proper level. The piles have been attacked by wood-worms, and have often yielded to the superincumbent weight. A large grain warehouse built some years ago, immediately upon being filled literally sank down into the mud.

The city is built in the form of a half moon, with its rectilineal side fronting on the muddy estuary of the Zuyder Zee, known as the Ij. It is crossed by six principal canals, which a multitude of smaller ones connect transversely like the threads of a spider's web. The principal thoroughfares are waterways, as in Venice, but the city is in no other respect Venetian. Venice, like Amsterdam, was once the commercial mistress of the world, but Amsterdam has retained her commercial prosperity, while that of Venice has departed. In architecture, and in the quality of their art, the two cities are as wide apart as the poles.

The sombre appearance given to the streets by the monotonous black lines of tall, peaked buildings, is much relieved by long rows of trees which grow luxuriantly on the banks of the canals. The multitudes of little islands into which the land surface of the city is partitioned by its waterways are connected with one another by drawbridges. Being the central point in the national system of fortification, Amsterdam is covered on the land side by a ditch eighty feet wide, and a brick parapet with thirty bastions. In case of military necessity, the entire suburban territory lying outside of these lines may be laid under water.

The best general view of Amsterdam and its environs is obtained from the tower of the City Hall, now known as the Royal Palace. From this elevation the eye takes in at one glance the entire web of streets, canals, and lines of peaked houses with their forked chimneys. Fronting all is the Ij, with its great docks and forests of masts extending to the broad bay of the Zuyder Zee, the plane of whose waters is higher by several feet than that of the streets below. Outside the fortifications the city is encircled by a garden patchwork of green, gold, red, and scarlet, beyond which lies an indefinite extent of verdant meadow and polder-land, crossed by the silvery threads of numberless canals, and diversified with farm-houses and villages, countless windmills, and grazing herds of dappled cattle. Eastward are descried the spires of Utrecht; westward, beyond the great Haarlemmer Polder, rises the huge tower of St. Bavon, in Haarlem; northward are seen the glittering red roofs of Alkmaar and Zaandam; and beyond these, skirting the horizon, stretches the line of dome-shaped dunes thrown up by the winds and waves of the North Sea.

The art of Holland centres chiefly at Amsterdam, but, like her com

merce, its range and influence are world-wide. There is no important picture-gallery in Europe of which it is not an essential and conspicuous part. Rembrandt's marvels of chiaroscuro; Ruisdael's deep forest-scenes and riotous Norwegian cascades; Adrian Van der Velde's Claude-like landscapes, with their astonishing perspectives; the serene and poetic pastoral scenes of Hobbema, Both, Wynants, Berchem, Cuyp, Van Goyen, and Everdingen; the wonderful cattle-pieces of Paul Potter; the exquisite battle and hunting scenes of Wouverman; the bold animal painting of Rubens's apt scholar, Snyders; the superb marines of Backhuysen, Koekkoek, and Van der Velde the younger; the unsurpassed poultry and stilllife of Hondecoeter and Weenix; the exquisite flower-pieces of the "first of female painters," Rachael Ruysch; and the realistic genre of Jan Steen, Brauwer, Metsu, Mieris, Dou, Brueghel, Van Ostade, and Frans Hals-all these are known as well, and honored as highly, in London, Paris, Dresden, Munich, Vienna, Madrid, and Rome, as they are in Amsterdam or the Hague. Even hyperborean St. Petersburg has whole rooms full of Rembrandt's, Wouverman's, and Cuyp's, and Paul Potter is greater there than in England or, if possible, even than in Holland. The Dresden gallery has a large collection of the finest Vanderwerff's, and a score of Rembrandt's, including the magnificent Ganymede. Before relinquishing the Low Countries, the Spaniards took good care to enrich their capital with the treasures of Dutch art, of which the galleries of Florence and Rome have also managed to obtain a liberal share.

In its physical aspects no country would seem to offer less incitement to thoughts or creations of the poetic and the ideal than the flat, sandy marshes of the Rhine delta. Yet how many of the common things of that commonplace region-that ignominious death-bed of a noble river-have the wizards of Dutch art transformed by their alchemies of color into things of perpetual living beauty! Seeing not, yet believing, with what potential fancy they have evoked from their dull polders the ideal truth of nature, and painted it fair as an Arcadian dream! An artist, said Delaroche, must compel nature to pass through his intellect and his heart, and this the Dutch artists have done. "A dead tree, by Ruisdael, may touch the heart; a cow, by Paul Potter, may speak eloquently; a kitchen, by Kalf, may contain a poem." Cuyp, the Dutch Claude, painted interiors so captivating that his native country could not retain them; Van der Neer reproduced nature with simple truth, and yet with such ideal beauty that he was called "the poet of the night"; while Rembrandt, the "greatest painter of the north," changed reality into a "supernatural vision."

The rise of art in the Netherlands began with the achievement of their

VOL. XXII.-No 1.-5

national independence. The same revolution which created a political Holland, says Quinet, created also Dutch art. But while the art of Holland derived its opportunity from her changed political life, its individuality sprang from an entirely different source. That source was the master mind of Rembrandt van Ryn. Born in the beginning of the seventeenth century-the century in which his country accomplished nearly all that has made her illustrious in art-this marvelous genius, like Claude Lorraine, was of lowly origin, self-taught, and within the self-created sphere of his activity without a rival. Tradition affirms that he was born and had his first studio in his father's mill; that his name derives its suffix, Van Ryn, from this fact; and that, from the effect of the single beam of light which streamed into the gloomy interior of the mill through its ventilator at the top, he obtained his first hints in the use of light and shadow.

Amsterdam and the Hague are the best places to study Rembrandt. In Amsterdam, where he spent most of his life, we find his crowning masterpiece miscalled the Night Watch, in which the magical possibilities of light and its contrasts are revealed as no other canvas ever revealed them. The subject of this picture is extremely simple-almost commonplace-but with such dramatic power of color and chiaroscuro is its action displayed as to produce one of the sublimest creations in art. A band of civilian musketeers is seen issuing from its guild-house, led-as we learn from a list of names at the bottom of the picture-by the seignior of Purmerland, Captain Frans Banning Cock. The moving musketeers are examining their weapons preparatory to action, their drummer is beating a call, and their ensign unfolds a standard displaying the escutcheon of the city. Two blonde-haired maidens-the foremost richly dressed and carrying a pistolrun after the leaders, but the figures are all self-possessed, and we observe no overwrought action or straining for effect. The foremost members of the party have reached the exit of the building, and so strong is the light which falls upon them through the ceiling windows that the shadow of the captain's hand is thrown darkly upon the jerkin of his lieutenant. Behind this effulgence is a twilight interior, wherein the remaining figures are sharply individualized, even in the shadow. These are simple details, but, as portrayed by Rembrandt, they have more beauty and strength of expression than the wildest battle-scene which Salvator Rosa ever drew.

In an adjoining room hangs another famous Rembrandt known as The Syndics, which contains little else than the portraits of five directors of the clothmakers' guild and a servant. The directors, dressed in black, wear high, broad-brimmed hats and broad linen collars, and are seated at a red-covered table, except one, who stands in a listening attitude. The

figures all look toward the spectator, and so intense and vivid is their realism that the effect is almost startling. There is but little color in the picture, and no very strong light, but its chiaroscuro is managed with such consummate art that those sedate, undemonstrative figures produce a stronger impression than the most violent action.

Van der Helst's Banquet of the Civic Guard hangs in the same room with the Night Watch, with which it has been said to compare, like the Meyer Madonna with the Madonna di San Sisto. The strength, dignity, and calmness of Dutch character are admirably portrayed in this masterpiece of Van der Helst's, but its effect might have been improved if the artist had contracted his focus and limited his leading action to fewer figures. Rembrandt, it is plainly noticeable, is careful not to disperse his light over so large a surface or among so many objects.

A striking example of the effect of concentration is seen in Hondecoeter's picture in this collection, known as The Floating Feather. Beside a pond, which is surrounded by rich vegetation, are grouped various fowls, including several kinds of geese and ducks, a crane, a pelican, and a flamingo, all superb in drawing and color. But the central object of the picture-the one which instantly fixes the attention—is a curled feather which swims on the smooth surface of the water, so buoyant, so salient, so natural, that we expect to see it move before some passing breeze. The fabled grapes of Zeuxis could hardly have been more perfect.

Amsterdam possesses three public galleries of painting, the Hague two, and Rotterdam one. The Rotterdam gallery contains few works of conspicuous merit, and may be passed by without regret, but the Hague vies with Amsterdam in the extent and merit of its accumulation of Dutch masterpieces. The bright particular gem of the Hague collection is Rembrandt's School of Anatomy, which a French critic has characterized as one of the few creations of men which are faultless and perfectly beautiful. We might further say of it that it is one of the few pictures in which we seem to see men think-which betrays the very process of their thoughts. It is thus described in Burger's Musées de la Hollande :

"This picture represents the celebrated anatomist Nicolaus Tulp, a friend and patron of Rembrandt, in a vaulted saloon, engaged in explaining the anatomy of the arm of a corpse. He wears a black cloak with a lace collar, and a broad-brimmed soft hat. With his half-raised left hand he makes a gesture of explanation, while with his right he is dissecting a sinew of the arm of his subject. The corpse lies on a table before him. To the right of Tulp is a group of five figures, and two other men are sitting at the table in front. These listeners are not students but mem