Of the two Frans Halses, the portrait of a Dutch gentleman is the better; the other was formerly known as the Strandlooper van Haarlem and shows the vigorous brush-work of the master.  It is the head of a saucy fisher-boy, the colour scheme unusual for Hals.  The Quentin Matsys pictures are strong; among others the portrait of Peter Gillis with his shrewd, strongly marked physiognomy.  This is a Matsys town.  Every one looks at his old iron well beside the Cathedral and recalls the legend of the blacksmith, as every boy remembers here Hendrik Conscience and the Lion of Flanders.  Van Reymerswael’s The Tax Gatherers, sometimes called The Bankers or The Misers, hangs in the museum; that realistic picture with the so highly individualised heads, a favourite of the engravers, holds its own.  Both the Boutses, Albrecht and Dirck, are shown in their Holy Families, and both are painters of ineffable grace and devotion.

Four Memlings of seductive beauty light the walls.  One is a portrait of Nicolo Spinelli.  Christ and His Angels, the angels playing in praise of the Eternal and other angels playing various instruments.  The two Van Eycks, Huibrecht (Hubert) and Jan, are well represented.  The St. Barbara, by Jan, is repeated in the Bruges Museum The Donateur or Donor is a repetition of the original at Bruges.  The Adoration of the Lamb is a copy of the original at Ghent.  There is tender beauty in Jan’s St. Barbara, and infinite motherly love expressed in his Holy Virgin.  Hugo van der Goes’s portrait of Thomas Portunari is a marvel of characterisation.  Terburg has a mandolin player and Hobbema a mill scene.  The Van Orleys are interesting, and also the Van Veens.  Gerard David, a painter of exquisite touch and feeling, shows a Repose in Egypt.  Lucas Cranach’s L’Amour is one of his Virgins transposed to the mythological key.  We have barely indicated the richness of this collection, in which, of course, Rubens plays first fiddle—­rather the full orchestra.  And with what sonority and luminosity!

At the Cathedral his three masterpieces draw their accustomed audiences with the usual guide lecturing in three languages, pointing out the whiteness of the cloth in the Descent and the anatomy in the Ascent.  This latter work is always slighted by sightseers because Baedeker, or some one else, had pronounced its composition “inferior” to the Descent, but there are many more difficult problems involved in the Ascent.  Its pattern is not so pleasing as the Descent, the subject is less appealing, and more sternly treated.  There are more virile accents in the Ascent, though it would be idle to deny that in paint quality there is a falling off.  Both pictures show the tooth of time and the ravages of the restorers.  At St. Jacques, with its wonderfully carved pulpit, the St. George of Rubens hangs in a chapel.  It has darkened much during the last twenty years.  Also there is another Rubens family group with wives and other relatives.  They thought well of themselves, the Rubens family, and little wonder.