ire. They have assailed his memory with
invective that does not stop short at false statement. They have found
in the greatest of all Dutch artists a ne'er-do-well who could not take
advantage of his opportunities, who had the extravagance of a company
promoter, an explosive temper and all the instincts that make for loose
living.

[Illustration: PLATE II.--A PORTRAIT OF SASKIA

Rembrandt's portraits of his wife Saskia are distributed fairly equally
throughout the world's great galleries, but this one from the Brera in
Milan is not so well known as most, and on this account it is reproduced
here. It is called "Portrait of a Woman" in the catalogue, but the
features justify the belief that the lady was the painter's wife.]

Alas for these poor biographers, who, had they but taken the trouble to
trust to the pictures rather than to the lies that were current, would
have seen that the artist's life could not have been nearly as bad as
they imagined. Happily, to-day, we have more than the testimony of the
painted canvas, though that would suffice the most of intelligent men.
Further investigation has done a great deal to remove the blemishes from
Rembrandt's name; MM. Vosmaer and Michel have restored it as though it
were a discoloured picture, and those who hail Rembrandt master may do
so without mental reservation. His faults were very human ones and his
merits leave them in the shade.

Rembrandt was born in the pleasant city of Leyden, but it is not easy to
name the precise year. Somewhere between 1604 and 1607 he started his
troubled journey through life, and of his childhood the records are
scanty. Doubtless, his youthful imagination was stirred by the sights of
the city, the barges moving slowly along the canals, the windmills that
were never at rest, the changing chiaroscuro of the flooded, dyke-seamed
land. Perhaps he saw these things with the large eye of the artist, for
he could not have turned to any point of the compass without finding a
picture lying ready for treatment. Even when he was a little boy the
fascination of his surroundings may have been responsible in part for
the fact that he was not an industrious scholar, that he looked upon
reading and writing as rather troublesome accomplishments, worth less
than the labour involved in their acquisition. And yet his father was a
wealthy man, he would seem to have had no occasion to neglect his
studies, and the best one can find to say about these early year