nd which are mentioned in the inventory of his goods when
seized for debt."

He then goes on to give a list of the works so seized. Be this as it may
he certainly never derived any advantage from them. He had collected a
great variety of old armor, sabres, flags, and fantastical vestments,
ironically terming them his antiques, and frequently introducing them
into his pictures.

Rembrandt had already brought both the arts of painting and engraving to
very great perfection (in his own way), when a slight incident led him
to fame and fortune. He was induced by a friend to take one of his
choicest pictures to a picture-dealer at the Hague, who, being charmed
with the performance, instantly gave him a hundred florins for it, and
treated him with great respect. This occurrence served to convince the
public of his merit, and contributed to make the artist sensible of his
own abilities. In 1630 he went to Amsterdam, where he married a handsome
peasant girl (frequently copied in his works), and settled there for
life. His paintings were soon in extraordinary demand, and his fame
spread far and wide; pupils flocked to his studio, and he received for
the instruction of each a hundred florins a year. He was so excessively
avaricious that he soon abandoned his former careful and finished
style, for a rapid execution; also frequently retouched the pictures of
his best pupils, and sold them as his own. His deceits in dating several
of his etchings at Venice, to make them more saleable, led some of his
biographers to believe that he visited Italy, and resided at Venice in
1635 and 1636; but it has been satisfactorily proved that he never left
Holland, though he constantly threatened to do so, in order to increase
the sale of his works. As early as 1628, he applied himself zealously to
etching, and soon acquired great perfection in the art. His etchings
were esteemed as highly as his paintings, and he had recourse to several
artifices to raise their price and increase their sales. For example, he
sold impressions from the unfinished plates, then finished them, and
after having used them, made some slight alterations, and thus sold the
same works three or four times; producing what connoisseurs term
_variations_ in prints. By these practices, and his parsimonious manner
of living, Rembrandt amassed a large fortune.

REMBRANDT'S WORKS.

His works are numerous, and are dispersed in various public and private
collections of Euro