2;but always intensely human. Reading human character with rare sympathy, he was profoundly touched by the poetry and the pathos of these miserable lives. Through all these studies runs a quaint vein of humor, relieving the pathos of the situations. The picturesque costume of the old Rat Killer tickles the sense of humor, and conveys somehow a delightful suggestion of his humbuggery which offsets the touching squalor of the grotesque little apprentice. And none but a humorist could have created the swaggering hostler's boy holding the Good Samaritan's horse.

As a revealer of character, Rembrandt reaches the climax of his power in his portraits. From this class of his pictures alone one can repeople Holland with the spirits of the seventeenth century. All classes and conditions and all ages came within the range of his magic brush and burin. The fresh girlhood of Saskia, the sturdy manhood of the Syndics, and the storied old age of his favorite old woman model show the scope of his power, and in Israel Blessing the Sons of Joseph he shows the whole range in a single composition. He is manifestly at his best when his sitter has pronounced features and wrinkled skin, a face full of character, which he under[xi]stood so well how to depict. Obstacles stimulated him to his highest endeavor. Given the prosaic and hackneyed motif of the Syndics' composition, he rose to the highest point of artistic expression in a portrait group, in which a grand simplicity of technical style is united with a profound and intimate knowledge of human nature.

II. ON BOOKS OF REFERENCE

The history of modern Rembrandt bibliography properly begins with the famous work by C. Vosmaer, "Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn, sa Vie et ses Œuvres." Vosmaer profited by the researches of Kolloff and Burger to bring out a book which opened a new era in the a