oppose the magistrates. This principle
of statesmanship and forbearance was always honoured by the government of
this city and the consequence was, that the persecuted and the downtrodden
from all countries congregated in this haven of refuge. Tread in its
footsteps and you will be blessed." This attitude, taken by the public
authorities, greatly promoted general welfare, spiritually as well as
materially. We may conclude from Rembrandt's work how prejudices were then
overcome and how freely the leading intellects intermixed: the Calvinistic
Reformed Minister Sylvius, the Mennonite Minister Cornelis Anslo, the
Jewish doctor Ephraim Bonus, the Rabbi Menasseh-ben-Israel, whom we have
mentioned before, were among the master's intimate friends, or were at
least so portrayed by him that we understand from the loving application,
manifested in his work, how deeply he appreciated their highly cultured
mind and heart.

This freedom of religion went hand in hand with an animated mental
evolution and naturally favoured it considerably. At the time of
Rembrandt's settlement in Amsterdam we find proof of this in the
foundation, in 1632, of a classical school, the forerunner of the later
university, called the "Athenaeum illustre," where the celebrated
professors Vossius and Van Baerle (or Barloeus) initiated many youths into
the secrets of philosophy, languages, and other sciences. Within the
leading classes of Amsterdam's population, supported by the great
merchants, interest in matters of art and science strongly develops,
though as we noticed before, in the case of the town-hall architecture,
with a marked preference for classicism and all foreign civilization. It
seems as though these clever merchants could not understand that their own
genial countrymen were sufficiently gifted and quite capable of
astonishing the world by their work; this increasing lack of mutual
appreciation is not so astonishing, if we take into consideration
Holland's, and especially Amsterdam's, rapid growth, making all those
people (aside from the great artists, who were sufficiently confident in
their own powers), feel small and humble in face of the firmly established
fame and merits of the classics and the Italians. The large and fertile
School of Amsterdam painters, Rembrandt foremost among them, felt this
keenly: landscapes of Italy and allegorical and mythological subjects were
preferred to the productions of an art intensely national, the si