ers were rather raw
and lacking in refinement. Sir William Temple, in his "Observations,"
published three years after Rembrandt's death, calls the Hollanders
"clownish and blunt," and this typifies them in their attitude towards
intellectual foreign people. Amongst themselves, even in circles where a
taste for art and science was well developed, coarse festivals, excessive
meals, and gross humour was often met with, peculiarities, however, which
the Dutchman had in common with Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and other Northern
races at that time. The sense of independence and self-reliance, then
very strongly developed in the Hollanders, hindered the improvement which
the experience gained from foreign journeys to France and Italy, of a few
patricians, might have brought. There was also the fact of Amsterdam
never having been, like The Hague, a princely residence with its trail of
ambassadors and nobility, for which reason the Hollanders in Amsterdam
remained more themselves, a characteristic even evident in our day. But
if their manners formerly lagged somewhat behind, we must not forget that
most of their natural sterling qualities were allowed to develop freely.
These characteristics do not always strike the foreigner at first sight,
hidden as they are by a certain slowness in expression and heaviness in
deportment, springing from the Hollander's habit of deliberation. What
frequently is taken for coldness, for insensibility, for haughtiness,
appears to be reserve which is put aside only when the Hollander feels
very sure of his opinion. To these typical qualities of a trading nation
must be added a perseverance of will and a determination to attain, which
are often wrongly interpreted as egotism. Any one who has a real friend
among Dutchmen will appreciate him as a very staunch one, although it may
have taken some time to break the reserve! Openness, good-heartedness,
generosity, will then be detected where they were at first not suspected.
It may now be understood that the intercourse with Rembrandt was far from
easy, because he was a typical Hollander, good-natured, but with an extra
amount of impulsiveness and self-esteem, as may be gathered from his
biography and from his work. Consequently, if he had numerous
acquaintances, his real friends were not many. We find for instance few
traces of intimate friendship with other painters, excepting his pupils,
although his fellow-artists were very numerous. The landscap