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 years is that they may have been directed badly by those in authority. In any case, it is well-nigh impossible to make rules for genius. The boy who sits unmoved at the bottom of his class, the butt of his companions, the horrible example to whom the master turns when he wishes to point a moral, may do work in the world that no one among those who attended the school since its foundation has been able to accomplish and, if Rembrandt did not satisfy his masters, he was at least paving the way for accomplishment that is recognised gratefully to-day wherever art has found a home.

His family soon knew that he had the makings of an artist and, in 1620, when he could hardly have been more than sixteen, and may have been considerably less, he left Leyden University for the studio of a second-rate painter called Jan van Swanenburch. We have no authentic record of his progress in the studio, but it must have been rapid. He must have made friends, painted pictures, and attracted attention. At the end of three years he went to Lastman's studio in Amsterdam, returning thence to Leyden, where he took Gerard Dou as a pupil. A few years later, it is not easy to settle these dates on a satisfactory basis, he went to Amsterdam, and established himself there, because the Dutch capital was very wealthy and held many patrons of the arts, in spite of the seemingly endless war that Holland was waging with Spain.

The picture of "St. Paul in Prison" would seem to have been produced about 1627, but the painter's appearance before the public of Amsterdam in the guise of an accomplished artist whose work had to be reckoned with, may be said to have dated from the completion of the famous "Anatomy Lesson," in 1631 or 1632. At this time he was living on the Bloemgracht. Rembrandt had painted many portraits when the picture of the medical men and the cadaver created a great sensation and, if we remember that he could not have been more than twenty-seven years old, and may have been no more than twenty-five, it is not difficult to understand that Amsterdam was stirred from its usual reserve, and greeted the rising star with enthusiasm. In a few weeks the entrance to the painter's studio was besieged by people wishing to sit for their portraits, by pupils who brought 100 florins, no small sum in those days for the privilege of working for a year in the master's studio. It may be mentioned here that even in the days when the painter's popularity with the general public of Holland had waned, there was never any lack of enthusiastic students from many countries, all clamouring for admission to the studio.

Many a man can endure adversity with courage; success is a greater trial. Bad times often avail to bring out what is best in creative genius; success tends to destroy it. Rembrandt did not remain unaffected by the quick response that Amsterdam made to his genius. His art remained true and sincere, he declined to make the smallest concession to what silly sitters called their taste, but he did not really know what to do with the money and commissions that flowed in upon him so freely. The best use he made of changing circumstances was to become engaged to Saskia van Uylenborch, the cousin of his great friend Hendrick van Uylenborch, the art dealer of Amsterdam. Saskia, who was destined to live for centuries, through the genius of her husband, seems to have been born in 1612, and to have become engaged to Rembrandt when she was twenty. The engagement followed very closely upon the patronage of Rembrandt by Prince Frederic Henry, the Stadtholder, who instructed the artist to paint three pictures. There seemed no longer any need to hesitate, and only domestic troubles seem to have delayed the marriage until 1634. Saskia is enshrined in many pictures. She is seen first as a young girl, then as a woman. As a bride, in the picture now at Dresden, she sits upon her husband's knee, while he raises a big glass with his outstretched arm. Her expression here is rather shy, as if she deprecated the situation and realised that it might be misconstrued. This picture gave offence to Rembrandt's critics, who declared that it revealed the painter's taste for strong drink and riotous living—they could see nothing more in canvas than a story. Several portraits of Saskia remained to be painted. She would seem to have aged rapidly, for after marriage her days were not long in the land. She was only thirty when she died, and looked considerably older.

PLATE III.--SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH MERCHANTS' GUILD

This fine work, of which so much has been written, is to be seen to-day in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam. It is one of the finest examples of the master's portrait groups, and was painted in 1661.

In the first years of his married life Rembrandt moved to the Nieuwe Doelstraat. For the time he had more commissions than he knew how to execute, few troubles save those that his fiery temperament provoked, and one great sorrow, arising out of the death of his first-born. There can be no doubt at all that he spent far too much money in these years; he would attend the sales of works of art and pay extravagant sums for any that took his fancy. If he ever paused to question himself, he would be content to explain that he paid big prices in order to show how great was his respect for art and artists. He came to acquire a picture by Rubens, a book of drawings by Lucas van Leyden, and the splendid pearls that may be seen in the later portraits of Saskia. Very soon his rash and reckless methods became known to the dealers, who would push the prices up with the certain knowledge that Rembrandt would rush in where wiser buyers feared to tread. The making of an art collection, the purchase of rich jewels for his wife, together with good and open-handed living, soon began to play havoc with Rembrandt's estate. The artist's temperament offended many of the sober Dutchmen who could not understand it at all, his independence and insistence upon the finality of his own judgment were more offensive still, and after 1636 there were fewer applications for portraits.

In 1638 we find Rembrandt taking an action against one Albert van Loo, who had dared to call Saskia extravagant. It was, of course, still more extravagant of Rembrandt to waste his money on lawyers on account of a case he could not hope to win, but this thought does not seem to have troubled him. He did not reflect that it would set the gossips talking more cruelly than ever. Still full of enthusiasm for life and art, he was equally full of affection for Saskia,