ause he once drew a mill, was
supposed to have been born. But there was no reason for Neeltjen to
move from a comfortable house in town into such rustic quarters, and
it is more likely that Rembrandt's birthplace was the house pointed
out in the Nordeinde Street. A commercial career had been chosen for
his four older brothers. But Harmen, his means allowing the luxury,
decided to make of his fifth son a man of letters and learning, and
Rembrandt was sent to the University of Leyden. That letters, however,
had small charm for him, was clear from the first. Better than his
books he loved the engravings of Swanenburch, better still, the
pictures of Lucas van Leyden, which he could look at to his heart's
content on gala days, when the Town Hall, where they hung, was thrown
open to the public. His hours of study were less profitable than his
hours of recreation when he rambled in the country, through his
father's estate, and, sometimes as far as the sea, a sketch-book, the
chances are, for sole companion. Certainly, by the time he was
fifteen, so strong were the proofs of his indifference to the classics
and his love for art, that his father, sacrificing his own ambitions,
allowed Rembrandt to leave the university for the studio of Van
Swanenburch. From this day forth, his life's history is told in the
single word--work; his indeed was the genius of industry.

Van Swanenburch had studied in Italy; but his own painting, to judge
by the few examples still in existence, was entirely commonplace.
Three years were more than enough to be passed under his tuition. At
the end of the third, Rembrandt went to Amsterdam, and there entered
the studio of Lastman. His second master also had studied in Italy,
and also was a painter of mediocre talent, popular in his own
times--the Apelles of the day, he was called--but remembered now
chiefly because of his relations to his pupil. From the first,
Rembrandt, even if obliged to paint the stock subjects of the day, was
determined to treat them in his own way, and not to follow set forms
that happened to be adopted in the schools. He used real men and women
for models, and painted them as he saw them, not as he was bidden to
look at them through his teacher's spectacles. In six months he had
learned at least one thing, that Lastman had nothing more to teach
him. The man of genius must ever be his own master, though he remain
the hard-working student all his days. Back to Leyden and to his
fath