A stoutly built servant is standing behind a table covered with a green cloth, on which are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Nassau earthenware, and a stone pot into which she is pouring milk from a can.  The figure, painted almost full length, stands out against the white wall and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-brown petticoat, a dark-blue apron turned back, and a white cap on the head.  The light falls on the scene through a window to the left, above the table.

This masterpiece is in one of the cabinet galleries.  It displays more breadth than the Lady Reading a Letter, and its colouring is absolutely magical.  The De Hoochs are of prime quality.  Greater art is the windmill and moonlit scene of Hobbema, as great a favourite as his Mill, though both must give the precedence to the Alley of Middleharnais in the Royal Academy, London.  But where to begin, where to end in this high carnival of over three thousand pictures!  The ticketed favourites, starred Baedeker fashion, sometimes lag behind their reputation.  The great Van der Helst—­and a prime portraitist he is, as may be seen over and over again—­is The Company of Captain Bicker, a vast canvas.  When you forget Hals and Rembrandt it is not difficult to conjure up admiration for this work.  The N. Maes Spinner is very characteristic.  Cuyp and Van Goyen are here; the latter’s view of Dordrecht is celebrated.  So is the Floating Feather of Hondecoester, a finely depicted pelican.  The feather is the least part of the picture.  Asselijn’s angry swan is an excellent companion piece.  We wish that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous, the Mierises, and other sterling Dutch painters.  There is the gallery of Dutch and Flemish primitives about which a volume might be written; their emaciated music appeals.  In expressiveness the later men did not excel them.  The newest acquisition, not mentioned in the catalogue supplements, is the work of an unknown seventeenth-century master, possibly Spanish, though the figures, background, and accessories are Dutch.  Two old men, their heads bowed, sit at table.  Across their knees are napkins.  The white is from a Spanish palette.  A youth attired in dark habiliments, his back turned to the spectators, is pouring out wine or water.  The canvas is large, the execution flowing; perhaps it portrays the disciples at Emmaus.

The portraits of Nicholas Hasselaer and his wife Geertruyt van Erp, by Hals, in one of the cabinets, are painted with such consummate artistry that you gasp.  The thin paint, every stroke of which sings out, sets you to thinking of John Sargent and how he has caught the trick of brush-work—­at a slower tempo.  But not even Sargent could have produced the collar and cuffs.  A Whistler, a full-length, in another gallery, looks like an unsubstantial wraith by comparison.  Two weeks’ daily attendance at this excellently planned collection did no more than fix the position of the exhibits in the mind.  There is a goodly