had been married but a few short months.

Fortunately for Rembrandt, he did not long survive them. In 1669, at
the age of sixty-two, his release came. He was buried in the West
Church, quietly and simply. Thirteen florins his funeral cost, and
even this small expense had to be met by his daughter-in-law. When an
inventory of his possessions was taken, these were found to consist of
nothing but his own wardrobe and his painter's tools.

But better than a mere fortune, his work he left as an heirloom for
all time; his drawings, not the least among them without the stamp of
his genius; his prints, still unsurpassed, though it was he who first
developed the possibilities of etching; his pictures, "painted with
light," as Fromentin has said. His subjects he may have borrowed from
the fashions and traditions of the time; certain mannerisms of
technique and arrangement his pupils may have copied. But for all
that, his work belongs to no special school or group; like all the
world's great masterpieces, whether produced in Spain by a Velasquez,
in Venice by a Titian, in England by a Whistler, it stands alone and
supreme.

[Signature of the author.]

WILLIAM HOGARTH

(1697-1764)

[Illustration: William Hogarth.]

"I was born," says Hogarth, in his Memoirs of himself, "in the city of
London, November 10, 1697. My father's pen, like that of many authors,
did not enable him to do more than put me in a way of shifting for
myself. As I had naturally a good eye and a fondness for drawing,
shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant; and
mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access
to a neighboring painter drew my attention from play, and I was, at
every possible opportunity, employed in making drawings. I picked up
an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learned to draw the
alphabet with great correctness. My exercises when at school were more
remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them than for the exercise
itself. In the former I soon found that blockheads with better
memories could much surpass me, but for the latter I was particularly
distinguished."

To this account of Hogarth's childhood we have only to add that his
father, an enthusiastic and laborious scholar, who, like many of his
craft, owed little to the favor of fortune, consulted these
indications of talent as well as his means would allow, and bound his
son apprentice to a silver-plate engraver. But Hoga