icture galleries of Holland there is to be found
nothing that elevates the mind, or moves it to high and gentle thoughts.
You admire, you enjoy, you laugh, you stand pensive for a moment before
some canvas; but coming out, you feel that something is lacking to your
pleasure, you experience a desire to look upon a handsome countenance,
to read inspired verses, and sometimes you catch yourself murmuring,
half unconsciously, "O Raphael!"

Finally, there are still two important excellences to be recorded of
this school of painting: its variety, and its importance as the
expression--the mirror, so to speak--of the country. If we except
Rembrandt with his group of followers and imitators, almost all the
other artists differ very much from one another; no other school
presents so great a number of original masters. The realism of the Dutch
painters is born of their common love of nature: but each one has shown
in his work a kind of love peculiarly his own; each one has rendered a
different impression which he has received from nature; and all,
starting from the same point, which was the worship of material truth,
have arrived at separate and distinct goals. Their realism, then,
inciting them to disdain nothing as food for the pencil, has so acted
that Dutch art succeeds in representing Holland more completely than has
ever been accomplished by any other school in any other country. It has
been truly said that should every other visible witness of the existence
of Holland in the seventeenth century--her period of greatness--vanish
from the earth, and the pictures remain, in them would be found
preserved entire the city, the country, the ports, the ships, the
markets, the shops, the costumes, the arms, the linen, the stuffs, the
merchandise, the kitchen utensils, the food, the pleasures, the habits,
the religious belief and superstitions, the qualities and effects of the
people; and all this, which is great praise for literature, is no less
praise for her sister art.

HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL

(1821-1881)

BY RICHARD BURTON

The French have long been writers of what they call 'Pensees,'--those
detached thoughts or meditations which, for depth, illumination, and
beauty, have a power of life, and come under the term "literature."
Their language lends itself to the expression of subjective ideas with
lucidity, brilliance, charm. The French quality of mind allows that
expression to be at once dignified and happily urbane. So