company.... Don't let anybody see that you have much money about you.... Be careful never to say where you are going.... Be straight and courteous, and keep out of brawls.... Get up early and set to work.... Be on your guard against light-hearted beauties!"

Three years before the Hals left Antwerp for their dear old home, Karel Van Mander had been joined by two assistants in the work of the Academy—Cornelis Cornelissen (1562-1637), and Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617). The former was a painter of allegory, mythology, and portraits, a member of a celebrated artist family, and a native of Haarlem; and the latter, the celebrated Flemish engraver, a native of Meulebeke, famed too as a painter of landscape, history, and the nude.

At Haarlem were flourishing, at the time of the return of Mijnheer and Mevrouw Hals, several distinguished artists, and among them Cornelis Vroom (1566-1640), a marine painter, gifted in seafaring genre—a merry fellow, and an habitué of low taverns, although he lived in a fine house, with a frescoed front, in the Zijlstraat. He introduced the young Hals to his friends and models.

Very many of the well-to-do citizens affected artistic studies, and several became efficient painters. Of these Jan Van Heemsen (1570-1641), a wealthy burgher and a friend of the Hals family, patronised Van Mander and his pupils. He had considerable skill in painting life-size figures, remarkable for easy pose, and animated manner—very much in the style adopted by Franz Hals.

These Antwerp and Haarlem worthies were the "makers" of Franz Hals in the elementals of his art; but no sooner did he pass within the portals of Van Mander's Academy than the door was shut and fast-barred—for all we know of him, his life, his work, and his associates, for eleven years; and then, we behold him assisting at a homely and interesting function.

In the Baptismal Registers of the Groote Keerke is the entry of a new-born child—Herman, the son of Franz Hals and Anneke Hermanszoon, in March 1611. Apparently he had been in no hurry to unite the bonds of matrimony, and yet he had cause to repent at leisure, for his early married life does not appear to have been very happy.

Within five years, namely, in February 1616, the name of the unfortunate Anneke crops up again, and this time in the police records. Franz is charged with ill-treating his wife, and with intemperance; and the charges seem to have been proven, for he was reprimanded, and only released under solemn promise of amendment of conduct, and, further, he was admonished to forsake drunken company!

Poor Anneke died that self-same year, but we must not charge Franz as the direct cause of her premature death; if he had become something of a wastrel, as many affirm, she was probably a weakling, and they had little in common.

Twelve months passed, and then, with due regard to mourning conventions, Franz Hals married Lysbeth Reyniers, of Spaedam, and took her to live in the Peeuselaarsteeg. They were kindred souls, and lived happily together for fifty years.

To them were born many children—pledges of mutual love and home restraint—Sara, in 1617; Jan, in 1618; Franz, in 1620; Adriaenjen, in 1623; Jacobus, in 1624; Reynier, in 1627; Nicolaes, in 1628; Maria, in 1631; and Pieter, in 1633; Herman, Anneke's son, making up the ten olive branches.

What a happy, merry home must that have been in the Peeuselaarsteeg! How greatly must his domestic joys have heartened the worthy father, and given vein and tone to his work!

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Haarlem story is blank—Haarlem tradition is silent with respect to Franz Hals' young manhood. The only hint that we have of his existence is in 1604, when it is recorded that he was working still in Van Mander's Academy. There is not the least tint of local colour, nor the faintest trace of romance to be seen or heard until we are brought face to face with the "Portrait of Dr. Pieter Schrijver," now at Monsieur Warnecks' in Paris.

Upon the picture we see "F. H." and the date, 1613. This then is the first intimation that Franz Hals had blossomed out as a painter of portraits! The doctor was a well-known Haarlem poet, writer, chemical student, and art critic. He flourished between the years 1570 and 1640. The portrait shows us a middle-aged man of serious mien, but with no peculiar characterisation of expression or figure. It is a sombre production—black and grey, with merely a little brick-red here and there; but the shadows upon the skin strike one as clever.

Franz Hals was thirty-three years of age in 1613—an age when artists have either dismally failed and turned aside to more suitable employment, or when they have established some sort of reputation and their work is recognised, and examples of their style are broadcast. Not so Franz Hals; but then there are, to be sure, scores of portraits "attributed" to him of men and women and children to which no dates are attached, and many of these are comparable with the portraits of Schrijver in technique, colour, and finish. That he worked laboriously to maintain his family, if for no other reason—and artists had to work hard in those days of small payments—is evident both directly and indirectly.

A few—very few—studies are extant, in black crayon upon dull blue paper, which are noteworthy for simplicity and firmness. Two of these are in the Teyler Museum at Haarlem, but they are evidently sketches for his first great "Group of Shooters," in the Stadhuis. Three or four are in England—one at the British Museum, and the Albertina Collection at Vienna has a few, and that seems to be all.

Where, may we ask, are his studio canvases, his early panel portraits, and all the thousand-and-one sketches and freaks of a young artist? Perchance destroyed—possibly otherwise attributed—probably hidden away in the high-pitched lofts of old Haarlem houses and hofjes or asylums, and in many an oaken chest and press.

Indirectly we are assured that he had been, all the thirteen years of his residence in Haarlem, an indefatigable worker in the art of portraiture—from the simple fact of his intimacy with Mijnheer Aert Jan Druivesteen (1564-1617), who five times served the high office of Burgomaster of Haarlem. He was a man of independent means and refined tastes, a lover of artists, and himself also a very passable painter of landscape and animals, which he painted solely for amusement.

Druivesteen was a personal friend of Franz Hals' father, and a constant visitor at his house. From the first he