Dort is perhaps the most painted of all Dutch towns, and with reason; for certainly no other town sits with more calm dignity among the waters, nor has any other town so quaintly medieval a canal as that which extends from end to end, far below the level of the streets, crossed by a series of little bridges.  Seen from these bridges it is the nearest thing to Venice in all Holland—­nearer than anything in Amsterdam.  One may see it not only from the bridges, but also from little flights of steps off the main street, and everywhere it is beautiful:  the walls rising from its surface reflected in its depths, green paint splashed about with perfect effect, bright window boxes, here and there a woman washing clothes, odd gables above and bridges in the distance.

Dordrecht’s converging facades, which incline towards each other like deaf people, are, I am told, the result not of age and sinking foundations, but of design.  When they were built, very many years ago, the city had a law directing that its roofs should so far project beyond the perpendicular as to shed their water into the gutter, thus enabling the passers-by on the pavement to walk unharmed.  I cannot give chapter or verse for this comfortable theory; which of course preceded the ingenious Jonas Hanway’s invention of the umbrella.  In a small and very imperfect degree the enactment anticipates the covered city of Mr. H.G.  Wells’s vision.  A Dutch friend to whom I put the point tells me that more probably the preservation of bricks and mural carvings was intended, the dryness of the wayfarer being quite secondary or unforeseen.

Dort’s greatest artist was Albert Cuyp, born in 1605.  His body lies in the church of the Augustines in the same city, where he died in 1691—­true to the Dutch painters’ quiet gift of living and dying in their birthplaces.  Cuyp has been called the Dutch Claude, but it is not a good description.  He was more human, more simple, than Claude.  The symbol for him is a scene of cows; but he had great versatility, and painted horses to perfection.  I have also seen good portraits from his busy brush.  Faithful to his native town, he painted many pictures of Dort.  We have two in the National Gallery.  I have reproduced opposite page 30 his beautiful quiet view of the town in the Ryks Museum.  Dort has changed but little since then; the schooner would now be a steamer—­that is almost all.  The reproduction can give no adequate suggestion of Cuyp’s gift of diffusing golden light, his most precious possession.

Another Dort painter, below Albert Cuyp in fame, but often above him, I think, in interest and power, is Nicolas Maes, born in 1632—­a great year in Dutch art, for it saw the birth also of Vermeer of Delft and Peter de Hooch.  Maes, who studied in Rembrandt’s studio, was perhaps the greatest of all that master’s pupils.  England, as has been so often the case, appreciated Maes more wisely than Holland, with the result that some of his best pictures are here.