ne on the contrary may not be at all luminous. There is not a student
in the schools who does not know that. With the colourists, then, the
light depends exclusively upon the choice of the colours employed to
render it and is so intimately connected with the tone that we may
truthfully say that with them light and colour are one. In the _Night
Watch_ there is nothing of the kind. Tone disappears in light as it does
in shade. The shade is blackish, the light whitish. Everything is
brilliant or dull, radiant or obscure, by an alternative effacement of
the colouring principle. Here we have different values rather than
contrasted tones. And this is so true that a fine engraving, a good
drawing, a Mouilleron lithograph, or a photograph will give an exact
idea of the picture in its important effects, and a copy simply in
gradations from light to dark would destroy none of its arabesque.

What is his execution in the picture before us? Does he treat a stuff
well? No. Does he express it ingeniously, or with liveliness, with its
seams, folds, breaks, and tissue. Assuredly not. When he places a
feather at the brim of a hat, does he give it the lightness and floating
grace that we see in Van Dyck, or Hals, or Velasquez? Does he indicate
by a little gloss on a dead ground, in their form, or feeling of the
body, the human physiognomy of a well adjusted coat, rubbed by a
movement or worn with use? Can he, with a few masterly touches and
taking no more trouble than things are worth, indicate lace-work, or
suggest jewellery, or rich embroidery?

In the _Night Watch_ we have swords, muskets, partisans, polished
casques, damascened cuirasses, high boots, tied shoes, a halberd with
its fluttering blue silk, a drum, and lances. Imagine with what ease,
with what carelessness, and with what a nimble way of making us believe
in things without insisting upon them, Rubens, Veronese, Van Dyck,
Titian himself, and lastly Frans Hals, that matchless workman, would
have summarily indicated and superbly carried off all these accessories.
Do you maintain in good faith that Rembrandt in the _Night Watch_ excels
in treating them thus? I pray you, look at the halberd that the little
lieutenant Ruijtenberg holds at the end of his stiff arm; look at the
foreshortened steel, look especially at the floating silk, and tell me
if an artist of that value has ever allowed himself more pitifully to
express an object that ought to spring forth beneath his brush wi