Despatch is an interesting anecdote; so too Metsu’s Amateur Musicians.  There are the average number of Dutch Italianate painters, Jan Both and the rest, men who employed southern backgrounds and improvised bastard Italian figures.  Schalcken’s candlelight scenes are not missing, though Dou leads in this rather artificial genre.  And every tourist led by a guide hears that Wouvermans always introduced a white horse somewhere in his picture.  You leave Holland obsessed by that white animal.

Naturally the above notes hardly scratch the surface of the artistic attractions in this Hague gallery.  Not the least of them is to look out on the Vyver lake and watch the swans placidly swimming around the emerald islet in the middle.  The Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, and months could not stale its variety.  There are important omissions, and some of the names in the catalogue are not represented at top-notch.  But the Rembrandts are there, and there are the Potters, the Rubenses, the Van Dycks, the Jan Steens—­his Oyster Feast is here—­the landscape and marine painters, not to mention the portraiture, the Murillo, Palma Vecchio, and the Titian.  The single Roger van der Weyden, an attribution, is a Crucifixion, and hangs near the Memlig.  It is an interesting picture.  Of the sculpture there is not much to write.  Houdon, Hendrick de Keyser, Verhulst, Falconet, Blommendael, and Xavery make up a meagre list.

At Baron Steengracht’s house—­admission by personal card—­on the Vyverberg there is a wonderful Rembrandt, Bathsheba After Her Bath, a golden-toned canvas, not unlike the Susanna over at the Mauritshuis.  It was painted in 1643, about a year after he had finished The Night Watch, a jewel of a Rembrandt and the clou of this collection.  There are some weak modern pictures and examples by Terburg, Metsu, Flinck, Jordaens, Cuyp, Potter, Brouwer—­the smoker, a fine work; a Hobbema mill and others.  In the Municipal Museum, full of curiosities in furniture, armour, and costumes, there is a gallery of modern paintings—­Israel, David Bles, Mesdag, Neuhuys, Bisschop, J. Maris, Weissenbruch, Bosboom, Blommers, and Mauve.  There are also Mierevelts, Jan Ravensteyns, Honthorst, Van Goyen, Van Ceulen, and a lot of shooting-gallery (Doelen) and guild panoramas; there are miles of them in Holland, and unless painted by Hals, Van der Heist, Elias, and a few others are shining things of horror, full of staring eyes, and a jumble of hands, weapons, and dry colours.  But they are viewed with religious awe by the Dutch, whose master passion is patriotic sentiment.

There is the Huis ten Bosch (The House in the Wood), the royal villa, a little over a mile from The Hague, in which De Wit’s grisailles may be seen.  The Japanese and orange rooms are charming; the portraits by Everdingen, Honthorst, Jordaens, and others are of historic interest.

THE MESDAG MUSEUM