ery almost
without the knowledge of any; Hobbema died in the poor quarter of
Amsterdam; Steen died in poverty; Brouwer died at a hospital; Andrew
Both and Henry Verschuringh were drowned; Adrian Bloemaert met his
death in a duel; Karel Fabritius was killed by the explosion of a
powder-magazine; Johann Schotel died, brush in hand, of a stroke of
apoplexy; Potter died of consumption; Lucas of Leyden was poisoned.
So, what with shameful deaths, debauchery, and jealousy, one may say
that a great part of the Dutch painters have had an unhappy fate.

In the gallery at Rotterdam there is a beautiful head by Rembrandt; a
scene of brigands by Wouverman, a great painter of horses and battles;
a landscape by Van Goyen, the painter of dead shores and leaden skies;
a marine painting by Bakhuisen, the painter of storms; a painting by
Berghem, the painter of smiling landscapes; one by Everdingen, the
painter of waterfalls and forests; and other paintings belonging to
the Italian and Flemish schools.

On leaving the museum I met a company of soldiers, the first Dutch
soldiers I had seen. Their uniform was dark colored, without any showy
ornaments, and they were all fair from first to last, and wore their
hair long, and almost all of them had a peaceful, happy look, which
seemed in strange contrast with the arms they bore. Rotterdam, a city
of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants, has a garrison of three
hundred soldiers! And it is said that Rotterdam has the name of being
the most turbulent and unruly city in Holland! In fact, some time ago
there was a popular demonstration against the municipality, which had
no consequences but a few broken windows. But in a country like this,
which runs by clockwork, it must have seemed, and did truly seem, a
great event; the cavalry was sent from the Hague, the country was in
commotion. One must not think, however, that this people is all sugar;
the citizens of Rotterdam confess that "the holy rabble," as Carducci
calls it, is stoutly licentious, as is the case in other towns of
worse reputation; the lack of police is rather an incentive to license
than a proof, as some might think, of public discipline.

* * * * *

Rotterdam, as I have already said, is a city neither artistic nor
literary; on the contrary, it is one of the few Dutch cities that have
not given birth to some great painter--an unproductiveness shared by
the whole of Zealand. Erasmus, however, is