e of mystery and romance
could seem to hang more ungracefully than upon that of the uncouth and
clownish Schalken--the Dutch boor--the rude and dogged, but most cunning
worker in oils, whose pieces delight the initiated of the present day
almost as much as his manners disgusted the refined of his own; and yet
this man, so rude, so dogged, so slovenly, I had almost said so savage,
in mien and manner, during his after successes, had been selected by
the capricious goddess, in his early life, to figure as the hero of a
romance by no means devoid of interest or of mystery.

Who can tell how meet he may have been in his young days to play the
part of the lover or of the hero--who can say that in early life he had
been the same harsh, unlicked, and rugged boor that, in his maturer age,
he proved--or how far the neglected rudeness which afterwards marked
his air, and garb, and manners, may not have been the growth of that
reckless apathy not unfrequently produced by bitter misfortunes and
disappointments in early life?

These questions can never now be answered.

We must content ourselves, then, with a plain statement of facts, or
what have been received and transmitted as such, leaving matters of
speculation to those who like them.

When Schalken studied under the immortal Gerard Douw, he was a young
man; and in spite of the phlegmatic constitution and unexcitable manner
which he shared, we believe, with his countrymen, he was not incapable
of deep and vivid impressions, for it is an established fact that the
young painter looked with considerable interest upon the beautiful niece
of his wealthy master.

Rose Velderkaust was very young, having, at the period of which we
speak, not yet attained her seventeenth year, and, if tradition speaks
truth, possessed all the soft dimpling charms of the fail; light-haired
Flemish maidens. Schalken had not studied long in the school of Gerard
Douw, when he felt this interest deepening into something of a keener
and intenser feeling than was quite consistent with the tranquillity of
his honest Dutch heart; and at the same time he perceived, or thought he
perceived, flattering symptoms of a reciprocity of liking, and this
was quite sufficient to determine whatever indecision he might have
heretofore experienced, and to lead him to devote exclusively to her
every hope and feeling of his heart. In short, he was as much in love as
a Dutchman could be. He was not long in making his passion