We gave several thousand pounds for it—­how many thousand?  About its merit is a question of taste which we will not here argue.  If you choose to place Murillo in the first class of painters, founding his claim upon these Virgin altar-pieces, I am your humble servant.  Tom Moore painted altar-pieces as well as Milton, and warbled Sacred Songs and Loves of the Angels after his fashion.  I wonder did Watteau ever try historical subjects?  And as for Greuze, you know that his heads will fetch 1,000L., 1,500L., 2,000L.—­as much as a Sevres “cabaret” of Rose du Barri.  If cost price is to be your criterion of worth, what shall we say to that little receipt for 10L. for the copyright of “Paradise Lost,” which used to hang in old Mr. Rogers’s room?  When living painters, as frequently happens in our days, see their pictures sold at auctions for four or five times the sums which they originally received, are they enraged or elated?  A hundred years ago the state of the picture-market was different:  that dreary old Italian stock was much higher than at present; Rembrandt himself, a close man, was known to be in difficulties.  If ghosts are fond of money still, what a wrath his must be at the present value of his works!

The Hague Rembrandt is the greatest and grandest of all his pieces to my mind.  Some of the heads are as sweetly and lightly painted as Gainsborough; the faces not ugly, but delicate and high-bred; the exquisite gray tones are charming to mark and study; the heads not plastered, but painted with a free, liquid brush:  the result, one of the great victories won by this consummate chief, and left for the wonder and delight of succeeding ages.

The humblest volunteer in the ranks of art, who has served a campaign or two ever so ingloriously, has at least this good fortune of understanding, or fancying he is able to understand, how the battle has been fought, and how the engaged general won it.  This is the Rhinelander’s most brilliant achievement—­victory along the whole line.  The “Night-watch” at Amsterdam is magnificent in parts, but on the side to the spectator’s right, smoky and dim.  The “Five Masters of the Drapers” is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, massive power.  What words are these to express a picture! to describe a description!  I once saw a moon riding in the sky serenely, attended by her sparkling maids of honor, and a little lady said, with an air of great satisfaction, “I must sketch it.”  Ah, my dear lady, if with an H.B., a Bristol board, and a bit of india-rubber, you can sketch the starry firmament on high, and the moon in her glory, I make you my compliment!  I can’t sketch “The Five Drapers” with any ink or pen at present at command—­but can look with all my eyes, and be thankful to have seen such a masterpiece.