On the south side are the Binnenhof and the Mauritshuis—­in the Mauritshuis being the finest works of the two greatest Dutch painters, Rembrandt of the Rhine and Vermeer of Delft.  It is largely by these possessions that The Hague holds her place as a city of distinction.

Rembrandt’s “School of Anatomy” and Paul Potter’s “Bull” are the two pictures by which every one knows the Mauritshuis collection; and it is the bull which maintains the steadier and larger crowd.  But it is not a work that interests me.  My pictures in the Mauritshuis are above all the “School of Anatomy,” Vermeer’s “View of Delft,” his head of a young girl, and the Jan Steens.  We have magnificent Rembrandts in London; but we have nothing quite on the same plane of interest or mastery as the “School of Anatomy “.  Holland has not always retained her artists’ best, but in the case of Rembrandt and Hals, Jan Steen and Vermeer, she has made no mistakes.  Rembrandt’s “School of Anatomy,” his “Night Watch,” and his portrait of Elizabeth Bas are all in Holland.  I can remember no landscape in Holland in the manner of that in our National Gallery in which, in conformity with the taste of certain picture buyers, he dropped in an inessential Tobias and Angel; but for the finest examples of his distinction and power as a painter of men one must go to The Hague and Amsterdam.  In the Mauritshuis are sixteen Rembrandts, including the portrait of himself in a steel casque, and (one of my favourites) the head of the demure nun-like and yet merry-hearted Dutch maiden reproduced opposite the next page, which it is impossible to forget and yet difficult, when not looking at it, to recall with any distinctness—­as is so often the case with one’s friends in real life.

If any large number of visitors to Holland taken at random were asked to name the best of Rembrandt’s pictures they would probably say the “Night Watch”.  But I fancy that a finer quality went to the making of the “School of Anatomy”.  I fancy that the “School of Anatomy” is the greatest work of art produced by northern Europe.

To Jan Steen and his work we come later, in the chapter on Leyden, but of Vermeer, whom we saw at Delft, this is one place to speak.  Of the “View of Delft” there is a reproduction opposite page 58, yet it can convey but little suggestion of its beauty.  In the case of the picture opposite page 2 there is only a loss of colour:  a great part of its beauty is retained; but the “View of Delft” must be seen in the original before one can speak of it at all.  Its appeal is more intimate than any other old Dutch landscape that I know.  I say old, because modern painters have a few scenes which soothe one hardly less—­two or three of Matthew Maris’s, and Mauve’s again and again.  But before Maris and Mauve came the Barbizon influence; whereas Vermeer had no predecessors, he had to find his delicate path for himself.  To explain the charm of the “View of Delft” is beyond my power; but there it is.  Before Rembrandt one stands awed, in the presence of an ancient giant; before Vermeer one rejoices, as in the presence of a friend and contemporary.