p, he
naturally invested one guinea in the monumental tome of M. Emile Michel,
Member of the Institute of France--that mine of learning about Rembrandt in
which all modern writers on the master delve. Astonishment would be his
companion while reading its packed pages, also while turning the leaves of
_L'Oeuvre de Rembrandt_, decrit et commente, par M. Charles Blanc, de
l'Academie Francaise. This sumptuous folio he picked up second hand and
conveyed home in a cab, because it was too heavy to carry. Now he is fairly
started on his journey through the Rembrandt country, and as he pursues his
way, what is the emotion that dominates him? Amazement, I think.

Let me illustrate the extent and character of his amazement by describing a
little incident that happened to him during a day's golfing at a seaside
course on the following Saturday.

The approach to the sixteenth green is undeniably sporting. Across the
course hangs the shoulder of a hill, and from the fastnesses of the hill a
brook gushes down to the sea through the boulders that bestrew its banks.
Obliged to wait until the preceding couple had holed out, our citizen and
golfer amused himself by upturning one of the great lichen-stained
boulders. He gazed into the dank pit thus disclosed to his eyes, and half
drew back dismayed at the extraordinary activity of insect life that was
revealed. It was so sudden, so unexpected. Beneath that grey and solemn
boulder that Time and man accepted as a freehold tenant of the world, that
our citizen had seen and passed a hundred times, a population of experts
were working, their deeds unseen by the wayfarer. Now what is the meaning
of this little story? How did the discovery of that horde of capable
experts strike the imagination of our golfer? The boulder was Rembrandt.
The busy insects were the learned and patient students working quietly on
his behalf--his discoverers and recoverers. He had passed that boulder a
hundred times, his eyes had rested cursorily upon it as often as the name
of Rembrandt in book or newspaper had met his indifferent gaze. Now he had
raised the boulder, as he had lifted the Rembrandt curtain, and lo! behind
the curtain, as beneath the boulder, he had discovered life miraculously
active.

Reverence for the students of art, for the specialists, for the scientific
historians, was born within him as he pursued his studies in Rembrandt
lore. Also he was conscious of sorrow, anger, and pride: sorrow for the