the distance, and people, cattle and household goods at close range. No painters among the old masters equal the Dutchmen in cloud-scapes and sea-pieces, in fidelity to nature and delicate touch. Similarly, there are few, if any, portraits as strong as these wonderful canvases of the Dutch school. No other artists had the genius to see the possible triumphs awaiting the brush that could counterfeit the dewdrop on a rose, the glisten of the copper stew-pan or the satin gown, or the fluffy texture of a beggar’s coat. Now that two generations have learned these things by patient imitation of the old Dutchmen this art has become familiar, but no copyist of our time has approached the marvellous beauty and skill that mark the old Dutch masterpieces. The traveller will enjoy himself to the full in the famous galleries of Amsterdam, and the other towns that lie within easy reach. There are four hundred paintings in the Trippenhuis museum, of which the most famous is Rembrandt’s great picture, “The Night Watch.” Still more impressive to many is the magnificent work of Vander Helst, “The Banquet of the Civic Guard,” an immense canvas, showing a band of men in armor carousing around a table loaded with gold and silver plate, glasses, flagons, etc., affording an opportunity for the painter to show Dutch art at its highest. There are great treats in these galleries for the lover of pictures and for the student of manners. Some of the old painters either lacked poetical imagination or indulged their whimsical humor to the verge of the shocking, in certain subjects. They had at least the merit of being faithful to life as they saw it, which satisfies the average man better, on the whole, than impressionism run to seed.

Eight hundred years ago Amsterdam was a fishing village. In the fifteenth century it became the most important commercial city in the Netherlands. Peter the Great learned the art of ship-building in the little village of Zaandam near the capital. A modern building encloses the cottage in which he lived. The people are rightly proud of their city and its history. They have not of late had opportunities to test their old supremacy as sea-warriors, but they exhibit all their sturdy characteristics in fighting the sea itself, repelling its ceaseless attempts at invasion. The women may be expected to uphold the national reputation for energy in any emergency, to judge by the stolid contentment with which so many of them do men’s work. They act as railway signal men, boatmen, market porters, and do not object to being harnessed with dogs as wagon teams. Yet they seem happy if not exactly gay. In the cities less of this is noticeable. The capital is not behind in artistic and literary culture. Scholarship has always distinguished its people. Its old bookstores are a delightful temptation. The zoological garden is one of the finest anywhere. English is spoken in all the principal stores. The public charities are on an extensive scale. The foreigner is occasionally embarrassed at being politely saluted by members of the Exchange if he chances to pass as they are coming out, and in many such ways he is impressed by the courtesies shown him on all hands. One would not rush to Amsterdam for Parisian excitements, but for nervous systems needing the tone best secured by moderate activity in surroundings that are novel and uniquely interesting, a visit to Amsterdam will prove as great a pleasure as a benefit.

FLORENCE AND ITS ART TREASURES.

SARAH J. LIPPINCOTT.

[Mrs. Sarah J. Lippincott (“Grace Greenwood”), in her popular “Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe,” has given a well-written and appreciative account of Florence and its objects of art and interest, which we here reproduce. Our extract begins with a railway journey from Leghorn.]

The railway, which is a very good one, runs through a pleasant country cultivated like a garden, which grows more and more lovely till you reach Florence. The station is near Cascine, the fashionable drive and promenade lying just beyond the city walls, along the Arno; so that our first lookout was upon a gay and beautiful scene,—those noble grounds thronged with equestrians, and pedestrians, and elegant equipages. From that moment I have been charmed with Florence beyond all expectation and precedent. Every picturing of fancy, every dream of romance, has been met and surpassed. It is a city of enchantment, rich in incomparable treasures for the lover of poetry and art. In merely driving from the station to our hotel, on the Arno, near the Ponte Vecchio, I was struck by the noble style of architecture; uniform in solidity, and in a sort of antique solemnity, yet not monotonously gloomy or curiously quaint. But when we drove about in the brightness of a lovely morning, and saw the grand and ponderous old palaces, the noble churches, the beautiful towers, the graceful bridges,—when we caught, at almost every turn, natural pictures which art could never approach,—I could only express by broken sentences and exclamations, childishly repeated, the rare and glowing pleasure I enjoyed.

O pictures of beauty, O visions of brightness, how must ye fade under my leaden pencil! It is strange, but I never feel so poor in expression as when my very soul is staggering under the weight of new treasures of thought and feeling.

One of our first visits was to the Royal Gallery, in the Uffizi. Through several rooms and corridors, making little pause in any, we passed to the Tribune,—for its size, doubtless the richest room in the world in great works of art. In the centre stands the Venus de Medici, “the wondrous statue that enchants the world,” says the poet; but as for me, I bow not before it with any heartiness of adoration. Exquisite, tender, and delicate beyond my fairest fancy, I found the form; graceful to the last point of perfection seemed to me the attitude and action; but the smallness and the insignificant character of the head, and the simpering senselessness of the face, place it without my Olympus. I deny its divinity in toto, and bear my offerings to other shrines. Yet the Venus de Medici does not strike me as a voluptuous figure; it certainly is not powerfully and perilously so, wanting, as it does, all strength of passion and noble development of soul; for, paradoxical as it may seem, a soul of wild depths and passionate intensity must lie beneath the alluring warmth and brightness of a refined and perfect sensuality.

Of another, and a far more dangerous character, I should say, is the Venus of Titian, which hangs near it. Here is voluptuousness, gorgeous, undisguised, yet subtle, and in a certain sense poetic and refined. She is neither innocent nor unconscious, yet not bold, nor coarse, nor meretricious. She proudly and quietly revels in her own marvellous beauties, if not like a goddess who knows herself every inch divine, at least like a woman by character and position quite as free from the obligations of morality and purity. For all the wonderful beauty of this great picture, I cannot like it, cannot even tolerate it; but, with an inexpressible feeling of relief, turn from it to the Bella Donna and the Flora of the same artist. The latter is to me the most fascinating and delicious picture I have ever beheld; the richness, the fulness, the golden splendor of its beauty, flood my soul with a strange and passionate delight. There is no high peculiar sentiment about it, though it is grand in its pure simplicity; yet its soft, sunny, luxurious loveliness alone brings tears to my eyes,—tears which I dash away jealously, lest they hide for one instant the transcendent vision.

In the Tribune are several of the