20 THE LAND OF PLUCK

day well may be proud of them. There was Rembrandt
Van Ryn (of the Rhine), perhaps the greatest portrait-
painter this world has ever known; and Franz Hals and
Van der Helst and Van Ostade, and the careful Gerard
Dou, and Mieris and the two Cuyps, father and son, and
Teniers and Adriaen Hanneman, and other great paint-
ers by the score. You must read about them, and some
day see their pictures, if indeed you have not already come
upon them either in your books or on your travels.

But if you visit no other, you surely must plan some
day to go to the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam, and see its
collection of priceless Rembrandts and other treasures of
Dutch art.

If you go to Holland in summer and look at the people,
you will wonder when all the work was done, and who did
it. The country folk move so slowly and serenely, looking
as if to smoke their pipes were quite as much as they
care to do,—they have so little to say, and seem to see
you only because their eyes happen to be open. You feel
sure if by any accident the lids dropped they would not
be lifted again in a hurry. Yet there are the dikes, the’
water-roads, the great ship-canals, the fine old towns, the
magnificent cities, the colleges, the galleries, the charit-
able institutions, the churches. There are the public
parks, the beautiful country-seats, the immense factories,
the herring-packeries, the docks, the shipping-yards, the
railways, and the telegraphs. Surely these Hollanders
must work in their sleep !

But though the men outside of Amsterdam and the
large cities may screen themselves with a mask of dull-