chitectural _forms_ as well as the _colours_. It is
natural that the town's colouristic aspect should harmonize with the
colour schemes which we admire in Holland, in its landscapes, on its
rivers and seacoast, in the pictorial masterpieces of its artists and in
its interiors, which means that in the city also we are fascinated by the
richness of tints, always subdued and variegated by a certain haziness.
It is a richness of a very subtle nature: no opposition of strong tints,
but an endless, mostly light-scaled variety of transitions, now and then
relieved by a more powerful note like the red of a roof or the paint of a
boat; these higher notes are generally of a freshness as if they had been
washed by a recent rain. Against a sky, of which the blue or the clouds
bear a bloom of a silvery hue, the houses show the tone of their bricks
going from red-brown to a pale purple in so many deviations that the
uniform indication of red would be unjust. The trembling of the lights
and shades of water all through the town and the green of so many trees
planted along the quays, were of course two conditions which strongly
helped in producing a particular colouristic charm and which meant an
advantage over so many foreign towns. Both these elements were and are
still not to be found to such an extent in any other city, Venice
naturally excepted on account of her waterways. Concentrating our
attention rather on colour than shape, we might retain for one moment the
comparison with Venice, as it may help us to understand still better the
value of what we were just admiring in Amsterdam. By reason of their
situation, their prosperity, their universality, their natural educational
advantages, both towns were, so to say, bound to produce a great school of
painters, and we need not here allude to the glory with which both towns
covered themselves on this field in the eyes of the art world. Stress
should, however, be laid here on the fact that the two towns in question
brought forth the two greatest schools of colourists, a fact which shows
how in these centres circumstances favour the development of colouristic
talents. Mindful of the fact that the great painters are our teachers in
the appreciation of nature's beauties and charms, we should, for our own
instruction, contrast the two schools and try to discern the difference in
their common merits. We shall then notice that "richness in colour" does
not mean the same in both cities.