The head of a young girl, from the same brush, which was left to the nation as recently as 1903, is reproduced opposite page 2.  To me it is one of the most beautiful things in Holland.  It is, however, in no sense Dutch:  the girl is not Dutch, the painting is Dutch only because it is the work of a Dutchman.  No other Dutch painter could compass such liquid clarity, such cool surfaces.  Indeed, none of the others seem to have tried:  a different ideal was theirs.  Apart, however, from the question of technique, upon which I am not entitled to speak, the picture has to me human interest beyond description.  There is a winning charm in this simple Eastern face that no words of mine can express.  All that is hard in the Dutch nature dissolves beneath her reluctant smile.  She symbolises the fairest and sweetest things in the Eleven Provinces.  She makes Holland sacred ground.

Vermeer, although always a superb craftsman, was not always inspired.  In the next room to the “View of Delft” and the girl’s head is his “New Testament Allegory,” a picture which I think I dislike more than any other, so false seems to me its sentiment and so unattractive its character.  Yet the sheer painting of it is little short of miraculous.

Among other Dutch pictures in the Mauritshuis which I should like to mention for their particular charm are Gerard Dou’s “Young Housekeeper,” to which we come in the chapter on Leyden’s painters; Ostade’s “Proposal,” one of the pleasantest pictures which he ever signed; Ruisdael’s “View of Haarlem” and Terburg’s portraits.  I single these out.  But when I think of the marvels of painting that remain, of which I have said not a word, I am only too conscious of the uselessness of such a list.  Were this a guide-book I should say more, mentioning also the work of the other schools, not Dutch, notably a head of Jane Seymour by Holbein, a Velasquez, and so forth.  But I must not.

After the Mauritshuis, the Municipal Museum, which also overlooks the Vyver’s placid surface, is a dull place except for the antiquary.  In its old views of the city, which are among its most interesting possessions, the evolution of the neighbouring Doelen hotel may be studied by the curious—­from its earliest days, when it was a shooting gallery, to its present state of spaciousness and repute, basking in its prosperity and cherishing the proud knowledge that Peter the Great has slept under its hospitable roof, and that it was there that the Russian delegate resided when, in 1900, the Czar convoked at The Hague the Peace Conference which he was the first to break.

In one room of the Municipal Museum are the palette and easel of Johannes Bosboom, Holland’s great painter of churches.  His last unfinished sketch rests on the easel.  No collection of modern Dutch art is complete without a sombre study of Gothic arches by this great artist.  All his work is good, but I saw nothing better than the water-colour drawing in the Boymans Museum at Rotterdam, which is reproduced opposite page 132.