"Rembrandt was powerfully attracted by the ease with which the human emotions could be followed in the looks and gestures of such uncultivated children of nature as sailors, workmen, peasants and the beggars of the towns. . . . The illustrious School of Holland without Rembrandt would have lost its poetry, and the apex of its glory. . . . Rembrandt loves to tell us what ear has never heard, what eye has never seen." Emile Michel") ?>

"Rembrandt pleases the eye, but his superiority over every other painter in Holland, and his rank among the great artists of the world, are largely due to his pleasing the mind and the heart." John C. van Dyke") ?>

The history, the cleanliness, the picturesqueness, the industry and the perseverance of the inhabitants of this country command from all alike admiration and love. Her wind-mills like so many giant birds fighting the elements; her cosey home life nurtured by the frequent inclemency outside; her sturdy, upright burgers with their thrifty dames; her mastery of the very sea itself in her system of dykes which says to Old Ocean, "Thus far and no farther"—all these things and many more besides, attract us to this diminutive kingdom wrested from the sea. We are especially interested to know what this practical people did in the way of picture making, what subjects they selected, and how they treated their chosen subjects. Were there those among her artists that towered above their countrymen, like Raphael and Angelo, Murillo and Velazquez, or like Rubens?

Their art was just what we should expect to find it if we stop to think. The Hollander loved above everything else his home and his country. His religion, that of the Reformed Church, called for no pious pictures to deck the walls of his house to worship, and so from the field in which the Italians flourished he was cut off—that of religious painting. He was not at a loss however, for subjects, for he undertook to draw a portrait of his dear Holland, that is, he painted cosey rooms where home life was enjoyed by the family—they might indeed be but homely and well kept kitchens, but, at all events, they were rooms to long for on a stormy night when the winds rose, and the sea knocked hard at the dykes.

Besides these, there were all those good Dutch housewives, snug and neat, with cap and apron, providing comforts for their families, cutting the bread, paring the vegetables, bending above the garden bed of flaunting flowers and succulent vegetables, plying the provident needle, or occupied with any other of the thousand Things a housewife does to bless her family. Then there were the traveling quacks and the beggars, and now and then a hermit praying.

There were also citizens or burgers who, besides accumulating comfort for themselves and their families, had made themselves dear to their community by looking after its affairs with the same wisdom they had used in their own matters. Further still, there were members of military companies whose valor the country owed its freedom. Surely such men and women as these, although they might be far from handsome, were worthy subjects of the painter's art. The landscape, monotonous at times, perhaps, but ever interesting, with its herds of cattle, its canals with their lazy boats, and the ever present sea with its ladened fleets from distant waters—all over-arched by a varying sky—was another subject dear to the Dutch artist.

Thus we see in kitchens, dames, flowers, beggars, buyers and their guild-halls, landscapes dotted with cattle or diversified with boat-bearing canals, and cloud-flecked skies, the portrait, as I before said, of Holland. This is pre-eminently the type of Dutch painting.

There were great men among the Dutch painters, great even to compare with the Italian artists. Of the average great painter of Holland, perhaps, this may not seem true, but the thought only comes on account of the subjects selected by Dutchmen and Italians. On first thought it seems greater to paint an ecstatic saint or a soaring angel, than to depict the common utensils and surroundings of every day life—the wooden bowl, the shining copper, the homespun clothing, the coarse food—in other words it seems greater to us to paint the ideal than the real thing, greater to be an idealist  than a realist. As we study more we shall come to realize the high place held by each class, and the injustice of comparing them, so different are their themes, so similar are their aims—to represent truth, the great legitimate object of art.

In the rank and file of Dutch artists were Gerhard Dow, whose patience thought it no hardship to spend three days painting a broomstick that it might be perfect in detail; Franz Hals and Van der Helst, who represented the life about them more accurately than a photographer could to-day; Paul Potter, who loved the landscape and enlivened it with cattle; or Ruysdael and Hobbema, whose poetic souls needed no breathing thing to make the landscape live—where clouds, gnarled trees, cascades, an old mill in ruins, turned to the pure gold of a beautiful picture under the alchemy of their touch. Such, as I said before, were the rank and file of Dutch artists, for which we today revere the little country by the sea.

But one there is not listed here, for though he is of Holland he is still unique, above his countrymen and possible above all other artists, in his concentration of thought, in his almost miraculous use of light and shade. Of course I refer to Rembrandt, the subject of this sketch, the mighty master of shadows or, as some one has worthily said, "The Shakespeare of painting." The great master was like the painters of his country in that he painted real people and things. He was unlike them in that he revealed the mystery of the soul, and also in his great versatility as an artist, for you will remember that he painted, etched, and drew with equal facility.

It is difficult to explain his mysterious and soul-stirring qualities, but an illustration may help us somewhat. Many Dutch painters have painted humble family life, and to us their work is expressive. Rembrandt touches his brush and a simple enough picture grows under his hand—"The Carpenter's Household."  There is the humble room with the carpenter's tools upon the wall, the workman at his bench, the mother tending her young babe and the grandma leaning over to caress the sleeping child—the simplest elements, real as life, out of which to construct a characteristic Dutch picture. Rembrandt, however, has put these elements together in such a skilful way that one looking at the picture sees and feels more than the interior. We see toil dignified, the blessedness of the care of little children, in short, the beauty of family life, even though it be in a humble abode where the living room is also the shop where the daily bread is earned. If this illustration does not help to explain the subtle something in Rembrandt's work which so appeals to us, turn to the copies of his pictures and study them. They, at least, cannot long hide their charm.

This great master was born with the wonderful seventeenth century, the echoes of whose wars for freedom still sound in our ears. From all the tumult, however, he stood apart, rapt in his study of life, not the life of princes and saints, but the life of the common people from whom he came.

His native city was Leyden, and the city of his mature life, of his fame and his sorrows, was Amsterdam. They were two cities unique in their history, and interesting in all their details, both bound to impress the thoughtful genius of Rembrandt.

Leyden stands on the verge of the North Sea where the majestic and romantic Rhine river, after dividing and subdividing as it approaches the dunes, finally gives itself grudgingly to the sea. What an aristocratic course it has run, by sunny vineyard slopes, by ivy-covered castles! Yet here at its deathbed how it has become, almost losing itself in the sands! But Leyden is here, and spite of some depressing surroundings, in Rembrandt's time it was rich and beautiful with its wide streets and rose-bordered canals. Perhaps one hundred and fifty bridges joined the ninety islands on which it was built. On an elevation overlooking the town is the Burg, that old tower built by the Saxon Hengist in honor of his conquest of Britain.