Leyden’s earliest painter was Lucas Jacobz, known as Lucas van Leyden, who was born in 1494.  He painted in oil, in distemper and on glass; he took his subjects from nature and from scripture; he engraved better than he painted; and he was the friend of Duerer.  Leyden possesses his triptych, “The Last Judgment,” which to me is interesting rather as a piece of pioneering than as a work apart.  After settling for a while at Middelburg and Antwerp, he returned to Leyden, where he died in 1533.

In spite of her record as the mother of great painters, Leyden treats pictures with some indifference.  The Municipal Museum has little that is of value.  Of most interest perhaps is the Peter van Veen, opposite “The Last Judgment,” representing a scene in the siege of Leyden by the Spaniards under Valdez in 1574, which has a companion upstairs by Van Bree, depicting the Burgomaster’s heroic feat of opportunism in the same period of stress.

Adrian Van der Werf was this Burgomaster’s name (his monument stands in the Van der Werf park), and nothing but his courage and address at a critical moment saved the city.  Motley tells the story in a fine passage.  “Meantime, the besieged city was at its last gasp.  The burghers had been in a state of uncertainty for many days; being aware that the fleet had set forth for their relief, but knowing full well the thousand obstacles which it had to surmount.  They had guessed its progress by the illumination from the blazing villages; they had heard its salvos of artillery on its arrival at North Aa; but since then, all had been dark and mournful again, hope and fear, in sickening alternation, distracting every breast.  They knew that the wind was unfavourable, and, at the dawn of each day, every eye was turned wistfully to the vanes of the steeples.  So long as the easterly breeze prevailed, they felt, as they anxiously stood on towers and house-tops that they must look in vain for the welcome ocean.  Yet, while thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving; for even the misery endured at Harlem had not reached that depth and intensity of agony to which Leyden was now reduced.  Bread, maltcake, horse-flesh, had entirely disappeared; dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin were esteemed luxuries.  A small number of cows, kept as long as possible, for their milk, still remained; but a few were killed from day to day, and distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support life among the famishing population.  Starving wretches swarmed daily around the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement; while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily devoured.

“Women and children, all day long, were seen searching gutters and dung hills for morsels of food, which they disputed fiercely with the famishing dogs.  The green leaves were stripped from the trees, every living herb was converted into human food, but these expedients could not avert starvation.  The daily mortality was frightful,—­infants starved to death on the maternal breasts, which famine had parched and withered; mothers dropped dead in the streets, with their dead children in their arms.