of incarceration. Society suffers by the moral deterioration of its most insignificant member far more than it gains by the arbitrary enforcement of a moneylender's bond, or even of a tradesman's bill. These can protect themselves without the aid of the jailer, except in cases of deliberate fraud; and with regard to large commercial operations, it rarely happens that a bankrupt has any cause to fear imprisonment for simple debt. The most specious argument in favor of the perpetuation of this barbarous usage is, that it serves to check the improvidence of the industrial classes. But it does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, it enables them to obtain credit when otherwise they would be required to pay ready-money, and thereby en-nish an excellent model for jewelry. courages them to adopt habits of comparative recklessness and extravagance to which they would otherwise be strangers. For these and many other yet stronger reasons, it is devoutly to be wished that the present generation may live to see the utter repudiation of the old Roman maxim, that whoso cannot pay in money shall pay with his per appearance of this element in the works of the Dutch painters accords, it will be found, with those leading characteristics of their style on which we wish to dwell. Before passing to our criticism, let us, however, note that the Bearwood collection contains a few works of other origin. To the early German belongs a very careful and thoroughly painted portrait-group of two young ladies, by Lucas von Cranach. The girls are stiffly enough disposed, and the tightfitting dresses of black and crimson, much enriched with gold, in which they are encased, add to the singularity of the design; but they have a great look of truth, and the details are beautifully finished. Their rings alone would fur A SMALL Collection of Dutch masterpieces, which Mr. Walter of Bearwood has kindly sent, for the public benefit, to the South Kensington Museum, affords so good an opportunity for returning to the question how the nineteenth century should fairly judge the seventeenth, that we are glad to take advantage of it. This question is one which, within the last fifteen or twenty years, has been not a little debated in England, where the Flemish school has long held what we are now inclined to call a traditionalperhaps a factitious-place in the estimate of connoisseurs; and it has, besides, this peculiar interest for us, that in its two main subjects-landscape and common life-the school coincides with the direction of our own art. What we have mainly added to it, in regard to classes of subject, is our picture of Incident sentimental, satirical, or quasihistorical. And the almost total non A delicate and thoughtful figure of a man, with light hair and brown eyes, is asscribed to Albert Dürer. It has a strong likeness to those poetical portrait-heads well known to the admirers of his etchings, although the making out of the features and hands exhibits less firmness and precision than might have been anticipated. And two little so-called relig ious pictures represent the period when Sassoferrato and Albano were treated as great artists-a position which, with several others, they mainly owed to their place as ultimi Romanorum, latest in a series which includes Giotto and Leonardo. As these painters seem to us to have been overrated from the fact of their ending a mighty school, so we are inclined to think that the Dutch have gained in a like way from beginning one. When we reflect how much pleasure of high order and enduring quality the European world has received from landscape and from representations of ordinary human life, it is natural to feel a strong interest in those who, though unconsciously and imperfectly, introduced us to these pleasant regions. Yet if, forgetful that they were but novices taking uncertain steps, connoisseurs give them the praise due only to complete art, or presume to set these "old masters" above the far finer artists who, in France, Belgium, and England, have painted man and nature, a protest is due against such exaggeration. As an example of this, we may take the learned Dr. Waagen, who prefers Isaac Ostade to Turner, because the latter has not that "juicy impasto," that "marrowy | demonstration in the auction-room. Tur execution" (to quote the horrid jargon ner has painted, and Modern Painters of the thorough-bred connoisseur,) of has gone through several editions, yet which a fine specimen will be found Hobbima and Ruysdael have not, we are amongst the Bearwood collection. It is assured, fallen in that interesting marenough to stir the wrath of a man of | ket of which Messrs. Christie and Mantaste when, after reading the Doctor's son have long and honorably officiated dicta, he looks at such bough or cloud as the presiding Ediles. drawing, such dingy water and confused figure groups, as this picture shows, and compares Isaac Ostade with Turner. But it is not in this spirit that we can fairly judge these early masters. Useful as that famous comparison, "Has Claude done this?" may be to check the fanaticism of mere connoisseurship, to consider only how great our advance has been would afford but a partial criticism on the earliest landscape and common-life painters. It will be more fair to try to judge them by the light of their own age; although our pleasure in their works, as distinct from our critical judgment, must ultimately depend in great measure on whether we think of them as inventors or as novices-whether we reflect only upon the "Dutch school" in antithesis to the religious and classical style which preceded it, or ask how far later genius has developed the style then initiated. People in the last century, and those in this who were formed under their influence, took the former point of view. It was, indeed, natural to judge so when real landscape and common life had been generally abandoned by art. This was the golden time of the Dutch school, of which we may in England select his Majesty George IV. as the most characteristic patron. That over-admiration should be followed by a counter-current of feeling was natural, and every one knows the brilliancy and power of the protest which it called forth from Mr. Ruskin. Yet that his appeal to the younger masters from the old-supported though it was, not only by a vast array of unanswerable facts, but by the general conviction of modern artists themselves, and of the present generation of spectators has not yet altogether prevailed over the elder faith, we may find proof in such a book as Dr. Waagen's laborious Art Treasures of England. And those who think the Doctor much more distinguished for abundance of learning than of taste may discover a more convincing Sensible as we are of the weight of Mr. Ruskin's criticism, and convinced that the rapid production of excellent modern landscape and figure pictures in France and England will of itself inevitably redress over-admiration of the old, there is still much, if we calmly consider it, to explain, and, in its degree, to justify the value once assigned to it. First in this scale we place the technical excellence of the Dutch artists, from whom we here, of course, exclude Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vandyke. There is simply no such palpable sunshine as Cuyp's. There is no such permeating daylight as De Hooghe's. Teniers, that sovereign of superficiality, has a lightness of touch, a power of putting in things at once, which, like that occasional breadth of handling in Jan Steen which Reynolds pronounced worthy of Raffaelle, places him high amongst painters as such. Neither Jan Steen nor Teniers is seen to the best advantage in the Bearwood collection, and Cuyp is only represented there (we think) by his inferior imitators-Both, with his burntsienna foliage, and Van Stry, whose emptily-modelled surface and harshness of outline detract seriously from the merit of the fine golden tones of his atmosphere. Nor can we deny that two or three of the De Hooghes at the Hague and Amsterdam, with that masterpiece which Lord Ashburton possesses, bear out our remark more completely than Mr. Walter's "Garden Scene." Yet here the truth of relative tone in the château which occupies the centre of the canvas fairly deserves the epithet of marvellous; and there is a kind of restless transparency in the sky, a finish and brilliancy of tint about the figures (a grave cavalier playing at bowls, and other persons watching the game), which English art has rarely rivalled. A little interior, where a servant brings in a tray of fish to her aged mistress, who turns from her work to examine the question of dinner, is an other beautiful example of delicate color | something, to us, questionable in assumand careful finish. This bears the unfamiliar name of Brekelenkamp. We have not, of course, exhausted the purely technical merits of the Dutch school. There is here a Paul Potter for instance, which, though wanting in depth, is an excellent specimen of how the hides of cattle may be, so to speak, modelled in paint-" rendered with a fat brush: obtained for the price of 1210 guineas," says the enthusiastic Waagen. Turning, however, to the spirit or direction of their art, two qualities come forward prominently amongst those which have made the reputation of the Flemings. The highest of these is sincerity. So far as this quality is present, they deserve their fame. Among them were men who painted homely, who painted even coarse subjects, and that (as Jan Steen) without the attempt to point any moral by their tale-nay, without being apparently conscious that any moral existed. Men get drunk and vomit (even at a Marriage in Cana"), or women take bribes from elderly gallants, just as dogs bark or blackbirds whistle. The Bearwood gallery is not rich in these ultra sincere pictures. The "Cana" of Jan Steen hardly falls within the definition; and although Ostade, one of the most straightforward of the school, has thrown his strange rude earnestness (with some of his very finest painting) into the "Adoration of the Shepherds," yet with all this there is too great a contrast between the sacred story and the peasants of Friesland to leave us quite satisfied. These are boors enacting a gospel-scene; skilfully as they are handled, Ostade would have wrought them with more truth had he drawn them in their daily ways. Two girls by Maes—one especially (painted almost entirely in reds and browns), so intent on peeling onions that we feel they are all the world to her for the moment are more perfect specimens of this precious, though limited, sincerity. This was a narrow art, one perceives, after all. The "short and simple annals of the poor" are soon exhausted when neither the pathos of sorrow nor the charm of childhood, neither the beauty of youth nor the venerableness of age, seem to come within the painter's precincts. It is natural to ask why this should be so? There is ing, as is perhaps occasionally done in Modern Painters, that the Dutchmen were wilfully mean and manufacturing · whilst what may be called the pot-andpan style of condemnation is really urworthy of notice. Nor are we disposed to explain this strange want or incapacity by the expedient of calling the artists or their public "insensible or "animal." Probably it could not be accounted for without a complete analysis of life in all ranks during the seventeenth century. But it may help us to comprehend the problem if we remember that literature presented an exact parallel. The novel, whether of manners or of passion, did not yet exist. The ballad of common life was almost unrecognized as poetry. It was a hundred years before Rousseau and Goldsmith-two generations before even Gay, Fielding, or Richardson. The villa and the cottage were not yet invented. From this narrowness of range in the art of common life, it follows that those of the Dutch school who want the gift of simple sincerity are apt to fall into a kind of limbo, unprofitable to all men except so far as the artists can exhibit patient or rapid dexterity. "The mouth of the connoisseur may water," indeed, over such pieces of mechanical finish as the ugly "Druggist's Shop," by Mieris, where every item stares at you like a stereoscope; but connoisseurship itself will find it difficult to praise the "Flight into Egypt," which here bears the celebrated name of Wouvermans. This is an excellent example of what Mr. Ruskin justly calls the "hybrid" manner, curiously divided between the "naturalistic" and the "idealistic" modes of treatment. To the former belong the two ordinary-looking peasant women in the centre, who are performing St. Anne and St. Mary; with St. Joseph, who, even during the flight, has found time to set up trestles and timbers, and is hard at work with his saw in the background. Two little boys with wings, who appear sadly in the way of the saw, remind us here that it is a religious picture; two more are playing hide-and-seek in a nondescript tree which bears three or four kinds of leaf at once; whilst the remaining couple are taking care of the donkey, and evidently much distressed by his ob little glitter, appears to have been their ideal of landscape; and, with a slight change, the definition will cover the seapieces of the school. Compared with the endless complexity of tints and of effects which nature offers every day even when not doing anything to surprise, these painters set themselves a facile task. One great element in their popularity has been that, like the commonplace husband in Locksley Hall, they Answer to the purpose-easy things to un stinate determination to get at the wa- derstand-" appealing to a few obvious impressions of nature, and not calling on the connoisseur for the odious labor of thinking whether things really are so. Yet to censure the Flemings on this ground would be unfair to those who were taking the first and necessarily imperfect steps towards a new art. From this his torical point of view there is interest in such a woodland view as Mr. Walter's large Hobbima, where the masses of light and shade are agreeable in form, and the general tone sufficiently pleasing. Let us keep to scale in our praises, and reserve powerful" or consummate" for Rubens or Rembrandt. Most of these cabinet pieces, even at their best, are but what our ancestors called "Flemish drolleries." There is no vivid charm in such work; the ecstatics of the old style of criticism. "matchless Hobbima" or "priceless Vandevelde "— sound hollow in modern ears; yet they have an importance, it may be, not less profound and genuine to the student of a larger subject than any single art-the progress of the human mind. Every step in this, however small or stum 66 We have described this picture at length because it is characteristic of that school which, from its want of redeeming sincerity, does appear to us hurtful to taste if accepted at the Waagen estimate. It has carried us into landscape, and it is in landscape that the "hybrid" style is most prevalent. Hobbima, Vandevelde, and Paul Potter, indeed, paint sincerely. They give a narrow section of nature, but so far as their power goes it is a rendering of what they actually see. To make out where men like Berghem or Karel du Jardin wish us to imagine the scene, is impossible. The sky belongs to one climate, the ruins to another; the peasants, who are usually seen wandering about in a boggy foreground, or crossing an impracticably tall bridge, are neither Flemish nor Italian. An impossible range of hills forms the horizon. Yet, though it is all "composed," there is no invention. The same features reäppear, in slightly different combinations, on a hundred canvases. The result may be sometimes pleasing in color; yet the question will arise, What appreciable rank in art can be assigned to a style which is utterly unreal with-bling, deserves attention. Thus we may out being in the least degree imaginative, which is neither sound as prose nor elevating as poetry. Sincerity-in which these artists, with many others of the school, are deficient -we have stated as the highest quality of Dutch art. This is, however, too lofty a word for the landscapists who still remain for notice. Though applicable to Cuyp and De Hooghe, we would rather say of Hobbima or Ruysdael that their merit lies in choosing subjects which do not exceed their technical power. To treat nature as something gray, with dark green masses upon it, relieved by a note that, occupied with the first and nearest features of scenery, the majority of Dutch artists gave little observance to sky and atmosphere, although, in truth, these constitute the principal source of effect in a flat country. The attempt which Potter has made, in the little piece already referred to, to paint a cumulus cloud, is hence worthy of remark. One sees that he was aware of the beauty of its form, and of its value to his composition; but, if we compare it as a piece of drawing and color with similar passages in contemporary art, it is like the geology of Dr Burnet by the London Society Magazine. side of Sir C. Lyell. It is primitive. I believe that neither excess is inevitable, "The Castle of Bentheim," again, ex- and that a larger sympathy may lead the hibits further advance. The clouds are way to a sounder, if a less exciting, crithardly more than indicated; the rocks icism? in the immediate foreground are mere spongy masses; and an air of commonplace, which might easily have been avoided, has been given to the whole by the fallen trunk and crudely-painted tree on the right. In these points (and we might easily add to the list) what we read is inexperience. To Ruysdael belongs the honor of perceiving, whilst so few of his contemporaries could make a landscape interesting without artificial details, that he might rely for legitimate success upon a simple page from what he saw, largely yet carefully painted firmly, yet not without delicacy. Ruysdael executed very few pictures indeed in this style. May we not argue hence that he was, so far, in advance of his age, and please ourselves with believing that, had he lived in later and better days, he would have spared us that infinity of dusky mill-dams, that uniformity of sad-colored larches, which make his name one of the terrors of a private gallery? Such are some of the lessons which the Bearwood or any other good collection of the Dutch painters may afford. They might easily be multiplied; they might, perhaps, easily be contravened. In either case they may, we hope, be held as a kind of proof of the interest which any school of art possesses when looked at as a chapter in the great history of man. Let us add, that such an examination, imperfectly even as we have performed it, may serve also to point out to those who are apathetic to art that the subject is not one which a man can rationally be proud of regarding with indifference. "Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto." When we hear the painters whose names have here come before us criticised in the slang of what we have called connoisseurship, it is indeed enough to raise the scorn of those beyond the circle. Those within it, again, may not unreasonably be indignant when they, in their turn, hear the traditionary gems of their galleries condemned to "be thrown into one pit together." Is it too presumptuous to GOING to Baden and going to the Bad are by very many persons considered synonymous. Certainly society is mixed and experiences manifold, and the entire place is, to a considerable extent, pleas ant but wrong. The world has only two capitals, it has been remarked, its winter capital which is Paris, and the summer capital which is Baden. Yes, I think she has some pretensions to that often disputed title, "The Queen of the Watering Places ;" and even when the gambling element is eliminated she will be no discrowned queen. I speak of her as she is at present, without discussing eventualities. I like in Baden, that centre of activity and that circle of repose, the life of the watering-place and the solitude of the Black Forest. I like the sharp contrast of the highest cultivation and artificiality of the age, with the indigenous habits, manners, and garb of the primitive people, who retain the ways and modes of two hundred years ago. I like those ancient stories of the Vehmgericht and the Virgin's kiss, and the modern narratives of daily gossip and adventure. Many of my readers, I am sure, are numbered among the fifty thousand tourists who visit Baden every year, and if sufficiently endowed with health and wealth must have enjoyed it hugely. Among the fifty thousand are sovereigns who lay aside their crowns and cares, and wily statesmen who arrange diplomatic meetings; the artist who intends to sketch, and the man of letters who meditates his novel. But the waiter will bring you round every day at dinner the Bade Blat Amtliche Fremden Liste, where you will find your own honored name in print, probably with disguised spelling, and those of your contemporaries. After your arrival, if you happen to possess a well-regulated mind, or rath-, er any mind at all, you will endeavor to arrange your impressions in an orderly manner. You will like to know some |