is a little boy--Earl Thomas's
grandson, Philip Howard, afterwards Cardinal Howard, in crimson velvet,
trimmed with gold lace, and a dwarf on the other side of the dog, with
one hand on its back.

Among other masterpieces of Rubens, including the 'Straw Hat,' which
are in the National Gallery, there are the 'Rape of the Sabines,' and
the landscape 'Autumn,' which has a view of his country chateau, de
Stein, near Mechlin. In Dulwich Gallery there is an interesting portrait
by Rubens of an elderly lady in a great Spanish ruff, which is believed
to be the portrait of his mother.

Rembrandt Van Rhyn is said to have been born near Leyden about 1606 or
1608, for there is a doubt as to the exact date. His father was a miller
or maltster, and there is a theory that Rembrandt acquired some of his
effects of light and shade from the impressions made upon him during his
life in the mill. He was a pupil at the Latin school of Leyden, and a
scholar in studios both at Leyden and Amsterdam.

In 1630, when Rembrandt was a mere lad, he seems to have settled in
Amsterdam, and married there in 1634, when he was six or eight and
twenty years of age, a young Dutchwoman possessed of a considerable
fortune, which, in case of her death and of Rembrandt's re-marriage, was
to pass to her children, a provision that in the end wrought Rembrandt's
ruin. The troubles of his country in the painter's time rendered his
prices comparatively small and precarious, and Rembrandt, like Rubens,
without Rubens' wealth, was eager in making an art collection and
surrounding himself with those very forms of beauty in the great Italian
masters' works, in the appreciation of which the Dutch master--judged by
his own works--might have been reckoned deficient.

Rembrandt's wife died after eight years of marriage, and left him with
one surviving son, Titus, and Rembrandt, having re-married, was called
upon to give up the lad's inheritance. This call, together with the
expenditure of the sums which Rembrandt had lavished on his collection,
was too heavy upon funds never very ample, and the painter, after
struggling with his difficulties, became a bankrupt in 1656. His son
took possession of Rembrandt's house, and from the sale of the
painter's art collection and other resources eventually recovered his
mother's fortune, but Rembrandt himself never rose above the misery,
degradation, and poverty of this period. He lived thirteen years longer,
but it was in obscurit