rary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed.
We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one
gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Better
lighted than in its old quarters, The Night Watch now shows more
clearly the tooth of time. It is muddy and dark in the background, and
the cracks of the canvas are ill-concealed by the heavy coating of
varnish. If all the faults of this magnificent work are more plainly
revealed its excellences are magnified. How there could have been any
dispute as to the lighting is incredible. The new catalogue, the
appendices of which are brought down to 1908, frankly describes the
picture thus:

"The Night Watch, or the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and of
Lieutenant van Ruytenburg. The corps is represented in broad daylight,
leaving the Doele of the Arquebusiers. At their head, standing in the
foreground about the centre, are the Captain and his Lieutenant
conversing. The former wears a dark dress, the latter a yellow costume
with a white sash, causing a brilliant effect of light. Near the
Captain, also standing out in full light, is a little girl, a dead
white cock hanging from her waistband."

Then follow the names of the other personages in this strange scene.

A commonplace happening is transfigured by the magic of a seer into a
significant moment arrested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window looking
out upon eternity. It was quite like the logical minded Frenchman,
Eugene Fromentin, himself an admirable painter, to pick this canvas
full of flaws. The composition is, true enough, troubled and confused.
The draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired; hands are carelessly
painted, the grouping haphazard, without symmetry, the general rhythm
full of syncopations, cross accents, and perverse pauses--empty
spaces, transitions not accounted for. And yet this painting without
personal charm--it is almost impersonal--grips your soul. It is not
alone the emotional quality of the paint. There are greater colourists
than Rembrandt, who, strictly speaking, worked in monochrome,
modelling with light. No, not the paint alone, not the mystery of the
envelope, not the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all combined
makes an assault upon nerves and imagination. You feel that Captain
Cocq is a prosaic personage and is much too tall in proportion to the
spry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested with some strange
attribute by the g