study of ugliness. He had an eye for the ugly.
He revelled in it. He selected his types with
a view to it. and, having done so, represented
them as even uglier than they were in nature.
The only kind of beauty which he seemed able
to feel, and the only kind of sentiment, were
the beauty and sentiment of chiaroscuro, or,
in plain English, of light and shade. Beauty
and refinement of form were a dead letter to
him.

Accepting this low standard, and expecting
nothing in the way of elevation or of nobleness,
we shall find many things in this picture
which indicate undoubted power and originality
in the painter. It possesses one great negative
merit, at all events, which is exceedingly rare
in representations of this subject: it is not
mawkish. It is common in pictures in which this
particular scene has been chosen for pictorial
presentation, to find an unnatural and forced
assumption of exalted feeling expressed in the
faces and bearing of the children who are
brought to be blessed by Christ. This is
hardly true to nature. The children are spoken
of in the New Testament narrative as being
"brought," not as coming. Their approach to
the Saviour was the doing of their parents, or
those who had charge of them, and any signs
of devotional feeling on the part of the children
indicated by the artist, would be out of
place. The painter of this picture has gone, in
his pursuit of matter-of-fact reality, to the very
opposite extreme. The little girl on whose head
the Saviour lays his hand, and who occupies
the central place in the composition, is as far
as can be imagined, from manifesting any
feeling of a devout or reverential sort. Her
head is turned away, and she is looking eagerly
out of the picture as if after some playfellow
or companion. Her left hand, which Christ
has taken in his, holds an apple with a piece
bitten out of it; and the forefinger of her right
hand is thrust into her mouth, conveying the
idea that she is poking with it at some fragment
of the apple which has stuck between her
teeth. Nothing can be more ungainly, more
common, more ugly, than this child's action;
but the conception, as indicating insensibility
on the part of the child, is daring and original,
though somewhat shocking, and proves, at least,
that the artist who elaborated it must have
been possessed of an unconventional, if of a
coarse and untender, habit of mind.

The woman carrying a baby, which is
soon to be a candidate for the Saviour's
attention, is the next most prominent figure
in the composition; and she, too, presents an
entirely careless and unreverential appearance.
The action of her hand, with which she seems
to be pushing away the child with the apple,
and a slight frown upon her brow, appear to
indicate that she considers that this particular
infant has had quite as much attention
bestowed upon her as she can lay claim to, and
that it is time for her own baby to be noticed.
The other figures in the composition are
merely those of peasants standing around: one
of them in the background lifting up a child,
which stretches out its hands as if eager for a
share of attention with the others.

Originality of treatment and a certain power
of rendering rugged and ungainly truth, as
shown in the sturdily drawn figures of the
Dutch peasants, these are the strong points of
the so-called Rembrandt. Whether these are
sufficient to compensate us for an expenditure
of seven thousand pounds of the public money,
must remain an open question.

It is pleasant to turn from these two works
of art to the new De Hooge, which has been
recently hung in the rooms in Trafalgar-
square, and which is so good a specimen of this
charming artist's work, as to merit any amount
of eulogy.

There seems abundant reason to believe that
some artists of the great Flemish school were
of opinion that a whole lifetime was barely long
enough for the acquisition of the power of doing
some one thing, in connexion with their art,
perfectly well. To be able to paint the
interior of a spotlessly clean kitchen, or of a
family living-room, with a woman sitting reading
by the window, or making herself more
practically useful by peeling a carrot or a
turnip, was all that some of these unambitious
Dutchmen desired. But, then, how well these
men got to do it at last; with what exquisite
truthfulness and fidelity to nature; and more
than that, with what an extraordinary
capability of investing what one would think must
be entirely common-place and uninteresting
with a certain charm of sentiment!

Among the artists of the Flemish school who
most rigidly confined themselves to this exclusive
kind of study, Peter de Hooge was one of
the most remarkable. There was a certain
scene which appeared to be his notion of a
terrestrial paradise, in truth, just the back-yard
of a comfortable Flemish residence (probably
his own), which he seems to have determined
in early life that he would acquire the
power of reproducing as no other scene was
ever reproduced by mortal man. This back-
yard was his delight. Sometimes he would for
a brief season abandon it, and, going inside the
comfortable Dutch residence of which it formed
a part, would make a study of an interior
by way of a change. Sometimes, even, as in
the magnificent specimen of this artist's work
lately sold at Paris for upwards of seventeen
thousand pounds, he would put forth all his
power, and show that he could deal with a
composition containing a great number of
figures; still, when he wanted to enjoy
himself, he always went back to his favourite
inclosure, to its cleanliness, its shade, its pearly
coolness, and always with fresh appreciation and
relish; and here he would place those figures of
Dutch men and women which were as unvaryingly
the same as were the backgrounds by
which they were hemmed in and surrounded.

The picture lately added to our public collection
is one of these favourites of the painter.
Here is the courtyard with its pavement of
little bricks set crosswise, and traversed
diagonally by a thin earthenware drain or pipe;