We must not forget, however, that under the French influence certain modern Dutch painters have been quickened to celebrate the fact with poetry.  In a little room adjoining the great French room at the Stedelijk Museum will be found some perfect things by living or very recent artists for whom Corot did not work in vain:  a mere by James Maris, with a man in a blue coat sitting in a boat; a marsh under a white sky by Matthew Maris; a village scene by the same exquisite craftsman.  These three pictures, but especially the last two, are in their way as notable and beautiful as anything by the great names in Dutch art.

On the ground floor of the Stedelijk Museum is the series of rooms named after the Suasso family which should on no account be missed, but of which no notice is given by the Museum authorities.  These rooms are furnished exactly as they would have been by the best Dutch families, their furniture and hangings having been brought from old houses in the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht.  The kitchen is one of the prettiest things in Holland—­with its shining brass and copper, its delicate and dainty tiles and its air of cheerful brightness.  Some of the carving in the other rooms is superb; the silver, the china, the clocks are all of the choicest.  The custodian has a childlike interest in secret drawers and unexpected recesses, which he exhibits with a gusto not habitual in the Dutch cicerone.  For the run of these old rooms a guelder is asked; one sees the three rooms on the other side of the entrance hall for twenty-five cents, the church and museum unit of Holland.  But they are uninteresting beside the larger suite.  They consist of an old Dutch apothecary’s shop and laboratory; a madhouse cell; and the bedroom of a Dutch lady who has just presented her lord with an infant.  We see the mother in bed, a doctor at her side, and in the foreground a nurse holding the baby.  Except that the costumes and accessories are authentic the tableau is in no way superior to an ordinary waxwork.

At the beginning of the last chapter I said that the Keizersgracht and Heerengracht do not divulge their secrets; they present an impassive and inscrutable front, grave and sombre, often black as night, beyond which the foreigner may not penetrate.  But by the courtesy of the descendants of Rembrandt’s friend Jan Six, in order that pleasure in their collection of the old masters may be shared, No. 511 Heerengracht is shown on the presentation of a visiting card at suitable hours.  Here may be seen two more of the rare pictures of Vermeer of Delft—­his famous “Milk Woman” and a Dutch facade in the manner of Peter de Hooch, with an added touch of grave delicacy and distinction.  Peter de Hooch is himself represented in this little gallery, but the picture is in bad condition.  There is also an interesting and uncharacteristically dramatic Nicolas Maes called “The Listener”.  But the pride of the house is the little group of portraits by Rembrandt.