e out, and with it
returned color, peace, and cheerfulness. This scene made me reflect
that Holland is not really as sombre a country as many believe; it is
rather very sombre one moment, and very cheerful the next, according
to the weather. In everything it is a country of contrasts. Beneath a
most capricious sky lives the least capricious people in the world,
and yet this orderly and methodical nation possesses the tipsiest,
most disordered architecture that eye can see.

Before entering the museum at Rotterdam, I think it will be opportune
to make some observations on Dutch painting, naturally not for those
"who know," understand, but for those who have forgotten.

Dutch art possesses one quality that renders it particularly attractive
to us Italians: it is that branch of the world's art which differs most
from the Italian school,--it is the antithesis, or, to use a phrase that
enraged Leopardi, "the opposite pole in art." The Italian and the Dutch
are the two most original schools of painting, or, as some say, the only
two schools that can honestly lay claim to originality. The others are
only daughters or younger sisters, which bear a certain resemblance to
their elders. So Holland even in its art offers us that which we most
desire in travel and description--novelty.

Dutch art was born with the independence and freedom of Holland. So
long as the northern and southern provinces of the Netherlands were
united under Spanish dominion and the Catholic faith, they had only
one school of painting. The Dutch artists painted like the Belgians;
they studied in Belgium, Germany, and Italy. Heemskerk imitated
Michelangelo; Bloemaert copied Correggio; De Moor followed Titian; to
mention a few instances. They were pedantic disciples who united with
all the affectations of the Italian style a certain German coarseness,
and the outcome was a bastard style inferior to the earlier
schools--childish, stiff, and crude in color, with no sense of light
and shade. But, at any rate, it was not a slavish imitation; it was a
faint prelude to real Dutch art.

With the war of independence came liberty, reform, and art. The
artistic and religious traditions fell together. The nude, the nymphs,
the madonnas, the saints, allegory, mythology, the ideal,--the whole
ancient edifice was in ruins. The new life which animated Holland was
revealed and developed in a new way. The little country, which had
suddenly become so glorious and formidable