is more intimate than any other old Dutch landscape that I know. I
say old, because modern painters have a few scenes which soothe
one hardly less--two or three of Matthew Maris's, and Mauve's again
and again. But before Maris and Mauve came the Barbizon influence;
whereas Vermeer had no predecessors, he had to find his delicate
path for himself. To explain the charm of the "View of Delft" is
beyond my power; but there it is. Before Rembrandt one stands awed,
in the presence of an ancient giant; before Vermeer one rejoices,
as in the presence of a friend and contemporary.

The head of a young girl, from the same brush, which was left to the
nation as recently as 1903, is reproduced opposite page 2. To me it
is one of the most beautiful things in Holland. It is, however, in no
sense Dutch: the girl is not Dutch, the painting is Dutch only because
it is the work of a Dutchman. No other Dutch painter could compass
such liquid clarity, such cool surfaces. Indeed, none of the others
seem to have tried: a different ideal was theirs. Apart, however,
from the question of technique, upon which I am not entitled to speak,
the picture has to me human interest beyond description. There is a
winning charm in this simple Eastern face that no words of mine can
express. All that is hard in the Dutch nature dissolves beneath her
reluctant smile. She symbolises the fairest and sweetest things in
the Eleven Provinces. She makes Holland sacred ground.

Vermeer, although always a superb craftsman, was not always
inspired. In the next room to the "View of Delft" and the girl's
head is his "New Testament Allegory," a picture which I think I
dislike more than any other, so false seems to me its sentiment and
so unattractive its character. Yet the sheer painting of it is little
short of miraculous.