Let us close our catalogue and wander about the galleries.  German and English are the tongues one hears, Dutch seldom, French occasionally.  The Potter bull with the wooden legs is stared at by hundreds.  As a picture painted by a very young man it is noteworthy.  The head of the beast is nobly depicted.  But what of the remainder of this insignificant composition with its toad and cows, its meaningless landscape?  The Weenix swan is richer in paint texture.  The Holbeins are—­two anyhow—­of splendid quality.  Of the Rubenses it is better to defer mention until Antwerp is reached.  They are of unequal value.  The same may be said of the Van Dycks.  Look at that baby girl standing by a chair.  A Govert Flinck.  How truthful!  The De Heems are excellent fruit and flower pieces.  Excellent, too, the Huysums, Hondecoeters, and Weenixes.  There is a dead baby of the Dutch school (1661) which is as realistic as a Courbet.  We admired the small Memlic, or Memling, and, naturally, the Metsus, Mierevelts, and Mierises.  The Holy Virgin and Infant Christ, by Murillo, is tender and sleek in colour.  It hangs near the solitary Velasquez of the museum, a portrait of Charles-Baltasar, son of King Philip IV of Spain.  It is not a remarkable Velasquez.

The Pieter Lastman, a Resurrection of Lazarus, is of interest because this painter was a preceptor of Rembrandt.  William Kalf’s still-life is admirable, and the Aert Van den Neer moonlight scene (purchased 1903) is a lovely example of this artist.  Indeed, all the minor Dutchmen are well represented.  Potter’s much-praised Cow in the Water is faded, and the style is of the sort we smile over at our own Academy exhibitions.  The Van Goyen waterscapes are not all of prime quality, but there are two that are masterpieces.  Amsterdam excels in both Van Goyens and Jacob Ruisdaels.  The Distant View of Haarlem of the latter proved a disappointment.  The colour is vanished quite, the general effect flat.  The Bol portrait of Admiral de Ruyter is a sterling specimen.  The Van de Veldes and Wouvermans are excellent.  The Good Housekeeper of Dou, a much-prized picture, with its tricky light and dark.  The Teniers and Ostades no longer interest us as they did.  Perhaps one tires soon of genre pictures.  The inevitable toper, the perambulating musician, the old woman standing in a doorway, the gossips, the children, and the dog not house-broken may stand for the eternal Ostade, while the merry-makings of David Teniers are too much alike.  However, this touch of spleen is the outcome of seeing so many bituminous canvases.

Probably in no other painter’s name have so many sins been committed as in Rembrandt’s.  His chiaroscuro is to blame for thousands of pictures executed in the tone of tobacco juice.  All the muddy browns of the studio, with the yellow smear that passes for Rembrandtish light, are but the monkey tricks of lesser men.  His pupils often made a mess of it, and they were renowned.  Terburg’s