Having seen the “Night Watch” again, it is a good plan to study the Gallery of Honour.  To pick out one’s favourite picture is here not difficult:  it is No. 1501, “The Endless Prayer,” by Nicolas Maes, of which I have said something in the chapter on Dordrecht, the painter’s birthplace.  Its place is very little below that of Elizabeth Bas, by Maes’s master.

It is always interesting in a fine gallery to ask oneself which single picture one would choose before all others if such a privilege were offered.  The answer if honest is a sure revelation of temperament, for one would select of a certainty a picture satisfying one’s prevailing moods rather than a picture of any sensational character.  In other words, the picture would have to be good to live with.  To choose from thousands of masterpieces one only is a very delicate test.

If the Dutch Government, stimulated to gratitude for the encomiastic character of the present book, were to offer me my choice of the Ryks Museum pictures I should not hesitate a moment.  I should take No. 2527—­“Woman Reading a Letter” (damaged), by Vermeer of Delft.  You will see a reproduction in black and white on the opposite page; but how wide a gulf between the picture and the process block.  The jacket, for example, is the most lovely cool blue imaginable.

This picture, apart from its beauty, is interesting as an illustration of the innovating courage of Vermeer.  Who else at that date would have placed the woman’s head against a map almost its own colour?  Many persons think that such daring began with Whistler.  It is, however, Terburg who most often suggests Whistler.  Vermeer had, I think, a rarer distinction than Terburg.  Vermeer would never have painted such a crowded group (however masterly) as that of Terburg’s “Peace of Munster” in our National Gallery; he could not have brought himself so to pack humanity.  Among all the Dutch masters I find no such fastidious aristocrat.

He, Vermeer, has another picture at the Ryks—­“De brief” (No. 2528)—­which technically is wonderful; but the whole effect is artificial and sophisticated, very different from his best transparent mood.

Any mortification, by the way, which I might suffer from the knowledge that No. 2527 can never be mine is allayed by the knowledge, equally certain, that it can never be any one else’s.  Money is powerless here.  To the offer of a Rothschild the Government would return as emphatic a negative as to a request from me.

The room in which is Vermeer’s “Reader” contains also Maes’s “Spinning Woman” (see page 230), two or three Peter de Hoochs and the best Jan Steen in the Ryks.  It is indeed a room to linger in, and to return to, indefinitely.  De Hooch’s “Store Room” (No. 1248), of which I have already spoken, is in one of the little “Cabinet piece” rooms, which are not too well lighted.  Here also one may spend many hours, and then many hours more.