on of some great naval battles, passed over all of the grand
exploits of the war of independence, among which the sieges of Leyden
and Haarlem would have been sufficient to inspire a legion of artists.
Of this war, almost a century in duration, filled with strange and
terrible events, there is not a single memorable painting. This
school, so varied and so conscientious in reproducing its country and
its life, has not represented one scene of that great tragedy, as
William the Silent prophetically called it, which aroused in the
Hollanders such diverse emotions of fear and grief, rage, joy, and
national pride.

[Illustration: The Steiger, Rotterdam.]

The splendor of Holland's art faded with its political greatness.
Nearly all the great painters were born during the first thirty years
of the seventeenth or during the last years of the sixteenth century;
none of them were living after the first ten years of the eighteenth
century, and no others appeared to take their places. Holland had
exhausted its productiveness. Already toward the end of the
seventeenth century the sentiment of patriotism had commenced to
weaken, taste had become depraved, the painters lost their inspiration
with the decline of the moral energies of the country. In the
eighteenth century the artists, as though surfeited with nature,
returned to mythology, classicism, and conventionality; their
imagination was weakened, their style was impoverished, and every
spark of their former genius was extinguished. Dutch Art showed the
world the marvellous flowers of Van Huysum, the last great lover of
nature, then folded her weary hands and the flowers fell on his tomb.

The present gallery at Rotterdam contains but a small number of
paintings, among which there are very few works of the best artists
and none of the _chefs d'oeuvre_ of the Dutch School. Three hundred
paintings and thirteen hundred drawings were destroyed by fire in
1864, and most of the works that are now there were bequeathed to the
city of Rotterdam by Jacob Otto Boymans. Hence the gallery is a place
to see examples of some particular artist, rather than to study Dutch
painting.

In one of the first rooms are some sketches of naval battles, signed
by William van de Velde, who is considered the greatest marine painter
of his time. He was the son of William the elder, who was also a
marine painter. Both father and son were fortunate enough to live at
the time of the great naval wars betwee