,
and then many hours more.

The "Peace of Munster" has been called Terburg's masterpiece:
but the girl in his "Paternal Advice," No. 570 at the Ryks, seems
to me a finer achievement. The grace and beauty and truth of her
pose and the miraculous painting of her dress are unrivalled. Yet
judged as a picture it is, I think, dull. The colouring is dingy,
time has not dealt kindly with the background; but the figure of
the girl is perfect. I give a reproduction opposite page 190. It
was this picture, in one of its replicas, that Goethe describes in
his _Elective Affinities_: a description which procured for it the
probably inaccurate title "Parental Advice".

We have a fine Terburg in our National Gallery--"The Music Lesson"--and
here too is his "Peace of Munster," which certainly was a great feat
of painting, but which does not, I think, reproduce his peculiar
characteristics and charm. These may be found somewhere between "The
Music Lesson" and the portrait next the Vermeer in the smallest of
the three Dutch rooms. Even more ingratiating than "The Music Lesson"
is "The Toilet" at the Wallace Collection. Terburg might be called a
pocket Velasquez--a description of him which will be appreciated at
the Ryks Museum in the presence of his tiny and captivating "Helena
van der Schalcke," No. 573, one of the gems of the Cabinet pieces
(see opposite page 290), and his companion pictures of a man and his
wife, each standing by a piece of red furniture--I think Nos. 574
and 575. The execution of the woman's muslin collar is among the most
dexterous things in Dutch art.

From the Ryks Museum it is but a little way (past the model Dutch
garden) to the Stedelijk Museum, where modern painting may be
studied--Israels and Bosboom, Mesdag and James Maris, Breitner and
Jan van Beers, Blommers and Weissenbruch.

There is also one room dedicated to paintings of the Barbizon school,
and of this I would advise instant search. I rested my eyes here for
an hour. A vast scene of cattle by Troyon (who, such is the poverty
of the Dutch alphabet, comes out monstrously upon the frame as
Troijon); a mysterious valley of trees by Corot; a wave by Courbet;
a mere at evening by Daubigny--these are like cool firm hands upon
one's forehead.

The statement

Nothing graceful, wise, or sainted,--
That is how the Dutchman painted,

is so sweeping as to be untrue. Indeed it is wholly absurd. The truth
simply is that one goes to Dutch art f