i'i^« THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES -);^ THE niiLosopnY of art. ART IN THE NETIIEELANDS BY H. TAIJN^E TRANSLATED CY J. DURAND NEW YORK: LEYTOLDT & HOLT 1871. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by LEYPOLDT & HOLT, in the Ofiice of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. STEREOTYPED BY PRESS OK DENNIS BRO'S & THORNE, The New York Printing Company, AUBURN, N. Y. ^i, 83, and 85 Centre Street, New York. / — ^ oh I £ TO GUSTAVE FLAUBEKT. SYNOPSIS or COI^TEI^TS. Part I. — Permanent Causes. Two groups of people in European civilization — The Italians among the Latins. — The Flemisli and the Dutch among the Germans.— National characteristics of Flemish and Dutch art 11 § I. Race. — Contrast between the Latin and Germanic races. — The Bod}-. — Animal instincts and faculties. — Defects of the Germanic races. — Advantages of the Germanic races. — Aptitude for labor and free association. — Love of Truth. i:> § IL The Nation. — Influence ot climate and soil.— Physical character of the Netherlands. — Formation of the positive spirit and calmness of character.— Limitations of the phil- osophic and literary spirit. — Precocious perfection of the useful arts. — Practical inventions. — Outward life, taste and customs 8."» § III. Art. — Inferiority of painting among other Germanic pco])lcs. — Causes of its inconijilctcness in Germany and England. — Excellence of painting in the Netherlands. — Causes of- its superiority.— Its characteristics.— In what respect it is Germanic. — In what respect it is national. — Predominance of color. — Reason of this i)rcdominunce. — Resemblance of the climate of Venice to that of the Nether- lands. — Differences. — Corresponding rcscml)lanccs and differences between painters.— Rubens and Rembrandt (il 6 SYA^'OPSIS OF CONTENTS. Part II. — Historic Epochs. § I. The Primitive Epoch. — Flanders ia the fourteenth cen- tury. — Energy of character. — Prosperity of the cities. — Decline of the ascetic and monastic spirit. — Splendor and sensuality. — The Burgundian Court and the Festivities of Lille.— Love of the Picturesque. — Resemblances and dif- ferences between Flanders and Italy. — Maintenance of the religious and mystic sentiment in Flanders. — Harmony of character, of art and of society. — Exaltation of this life and of Christian belief. — Types, relief, landscape, costumes, subjects, expressions, and sentiment from Hubert Van Eyck to Quintin Matsys 83 § IT. The Second Epoch.— The sixteenth century.— Emanci- pation of the intellect and Polemics against the clergy.— Picturesque and sensual customs. — Entries and festivities of the belle-lettre academies. — Gradual transformation of painting.— Predominance of laic and human subjects. — Promise of the new art. — Italian models prevalent. — In- congruity of Italian art with the Flemish mind.— The ambiguous and unsatisfactory style of the new school. — Growing influence of the Italian masters from John de Mabuse to Otto Venius. — Pcrsistencyi of the indigenous style and spirit in genre, landscape and portrait art. — The Revolution of 1573. — Concentration of the nation and of art Ill § in. The Third Epoch.— Formation of Belgium.— How it became Catholic and was conquered. — Rule of the arch- dukes and restoration of the country. — Revival of the im- agination and sensuous conception of life. — The school of the seventeenth century.— Rubens.— Analogies and dif- ferences between that and Italian art.— Its works Catholic in name, but pagan at bottom. — In what respect national. — Idea of the living body — Grayer, Jordaens and Van Dyck.— Change in the political and moral state.— Decline of painting.— End of the picturesque age 13.5 SYXOPSIS OF CONTEXTS. 7 § rV. The Fourth Epoch.— Formation of Hollaud.— How it became republican and Protestant. — Development of Prim- itive Instincts. — Heroism, triumphs and prosperity of the nation. — The revival and freedom of original inven- tion. — Characteristics of Dutch art in opposition to Italian and classic art. — Portrait pictures. — Representation of actual life.^Rembrandt. — His conception of Light, Man and Divinity. — Commencement of decline towards 1667. — The war of 1672. — Prolongation of art down to the eigh- teenth century. — Weakness and degeneracy of Holland. — Diminution of active energies. — Decline of national art. — Temporary survival of the lesser styles. — General corres- pondence between art and milieu 161 PAET I. PERMANENT CAUSES. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN THE :netheelai^ds. DuEiXG the last three years I have explained to you the history of j^ainting in Italy ; this year I propose to set before you the history of painting in the Netherlands. Two groups of mankind have been, and still are, the principal factors of modern civilization ; on the one hand, the Latin or Latinized people — the Italians, French, Spanish and Portuguese, and on the other, the Germanic people — the Belgians, Dutch, Germans, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, English, Scotch and Americans. In the Latin group the Italians are unde- niably the best artists ; in the Germanic group they are indisputably the Flemings and the Dutch. In studying, accordingly, the history of art along with these two races, wc are studying the history of mod- ern art wiih its greatest and most opposite repre- sentatives. 12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF APT A product so vast and varied, an art enduring nearlj' four hundred years, an art enumerating so many masterpieces and imprinting on all its works an original and common character, is a national prod- net ; it is consequently intimately associated Avith the national life, and is rooted in the national charac- ter itself. It is a flowering long and deeply matured through a development of vitality conformably to the acquired structure and primitive organization of the plant. According to our method we shall first study the innate and preliminary history which explains the outward and final history. I shall first show you the seed, that is to say the race, with its fundamental and indelible qualities, those that persist through all circumstances and in all climates ; and next the plant, that is to say the people itself, with its original qual- ities exj^anded or contracted, in any case grafted on and transformed by its surroundings and its his- tory; and finally the flower, that is to say the art, and especially painting, in which this development culminates. m THE NETUEBLANDS. 13 I, The men who iuliabit the Netherlands belong, for the most part, to that race 'svhich invaded the Roman empire in the fifth centurj^, and which then, for the first time, claimed its place in broad snnshine along- side of Latin nations. In certain countries, in Gaul, Spain and Italy, it simply brought chiefs and a supplement to the primitive population. In other countries, as in England and the Netherlands, it drove out, destroyed and replaced the ancient inhabitants, its blood, pure, or almost pure, still flowing in the veius of the men now occupying the same soil. Throu2;hout the middle ages the ISTetherlands were called Low Germany. The Belgic and Dutch lan- guages are dialects of the German, and, except in the Walloon district, where a cornipt French is spoken, they form the popular idiom of the whole countrv. Let us consider the common characteristics of the Germanic race, and the differences by which it is opposed to the Latin race. Physically, we have 14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART a whiter and softer skin, generally speaking, blue eyes, often of a porcelain or pale hue, paler as you approach the north, and sometimes glassy in Hol- land ; hair of a flaxy blonde, and, Avith children, al- most white ; the ancient Romans early wondered at it, and stated that infants in Germany had the hair of old men. The complexion is of a charming rose, infinitely delicate among young girls, and lively and tinged with vermilion among young men, and sometimes even among the aged ; ordinarily, how- ever, among the laboring classes and in advanced life I have found it wan, turnip-hued, and in Hol- land cheese-colored, and mouldy cheese at that. The body is generally large, but thick-set or burl}-, heavy and inelegant. In a similar manner the features are apt to be irregular, esj^ecially in Hol- land, where they are flabby, with projecting cheek- bones and strongly-marked jaws. They lack, in short, sculptural nobleness and delicacy. You will rarely find the features regular like the numerous pretty faces of Toulouse and Bordeaux, or like tlie spirited and handsome heads which abound in the vicinity of Rome and Florence. You will much IX THE NETHEBLAKDS. 15 oftener find exaggerated features, incoherent combi- nations of form and tones, curious fleshy protuberan- ces, so many natural caricatures. Taking them for works of art, living forms testify to a clumsy and fantastic liand throuo;h their more incorrect and weaker drawing. Observe now this body in action, and you will find its animal faculties and necessities of a grosser kind than among the Latins ; matter and mass seem to predominate over motion and spirit ; it is voracious and even carnivorous. Compare tlie appetite of an Englishman, or even a Hollander, with that of a Frenchman or an Italian ; those among you who have visited the country can call to mind the public dinner tables and the quantities of food, especially meat, tranquilly swallowed several times a day by a citizen of London, Rotterdam or Antwerp. Li English novels people are always lunching — the most sentimental heroine, at the end of the third volume, having consumed an infinite number of buttered muf- fins, cups of tea, bits of cliicken, and sandwiches. Tlie climate contributes to this ; in the fogs of tlie north, people could not sustain themselves, like a 16 THE PIIILOSOPUT OF ART peasant of the Latin race, on a bowl of soup or a piece of bread flavored with garlic, or on a plate of macaroni. For the same reason the German is fond of potent beverages. Tacitus had already remarked it, and Ludovico Guiccardini, an eye-witness in the sixteenth century, whom I shall repeatedly quote, says, in speaking of the Belgians and Hollanders : "Almost all are addicted to drunkenness, which vice, with them, is a passion. They fill themselves witli liquor every evening, and even at day-break." At the present time, in America and in Euroj^e, in most of the German countries, intemperance is the national bane ; half of the suicides and mental maladies flow from it. Even among the reflective and those in good circumstances the fondness for liquor is very great : in Germany and in England it is not regarded as disreputable for a well-educated man to rise from the table partially intoxicated ; now and then he be- comes completely drunk. With us, on the contrarv, it is a reproach, in Italy a disgrace, and in Spain, during the last century, the name of drunkard was an insult which a duel could not wholly wipe out, i)rovok- ing, as it often did, the dagger. There is nothing of IX TEE XETIIERLAKDS. 17 this sort in German countries ; hence the great num- ber and frequency of breweries and the innumerable shops for the retailing of ardent spirits and different kinds of beer, all bearing witness to the public taste. Enter, in Amsterdam, one of these little shops, gar- nished with polished casks, where glass after glass is swallowed of white, yellow, green and brown brandy, strengthened with j^epper and pimento. Place your- self at nine o'clock in the eveninsf in a Brussels brewery, near a dark wooden table around which the hawkers of crabs, salted rolls and hard-boiled eggs circulate ; observe the people quietly seated there, each one intent on liimself, sometimes in couples, but generally silent, smoking, eating, and drinking bumpers of beer which they now and then warm up with a glass of spirits ; you can understand sympathetically the strong sensation of heat and animal plenitude which they feel in their speechless solitude, in proportion as superabundant solid and liquid nourishment renews in them the living sub- stance, and as the whole body partakes in the grati- fication of the satisfied stomach. One point more of their exterior remains to bo 18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART sliowii which especially strikes people of southern climes, and that is the sluggishness and torpidity of their impressions and movements. An umbrella- dealer of Amsterdam, a Toulousian, almost threw himself into my arms on hearing me speak French, and for a quarter of an hour I had to listen to the story of his griefs. To a temperament as lively as his, the people of this country were intolerable — • " stiff, frigid, with no sensibility or sentiment, dull and insipid, perfect turnips, sir, perfect turnips ! " And, truly, his cackling and expansiveness formed a contrast. It seems, on addressing them, as if they did not quite comprehend you, or that they required time to set their expressional machinery agoing ; the keeper of a gallery, a household servant, stands gaping at you a minute before answering. In coffee- houses and in public conveyances the phlegm and passivity of their features are remarkable ; they do not feel as we do the necessity of moving about and talking — they remain stationary for hours, absorbed with their own ideas or with their pipes. At evening parties in Amsterdam, ladies, bedecked like shrines, and motionless on their chairs, seem to IX THE NETnERLAXDS. 19 be statues. In Belgium, in Germany and in Eng- land, the faces of the peasantry seem to us inani- mate, devitalized or benumbed. A friend, return- ing from Berlin, remarked to me, " tliose people all have dead eyes." Even the young girls look simple and drowsy. Many a time have I paused before a shop-window to contemplate some rosy, placid and candid face, a medieeval madonna making up the fashions. It is the very reverse of this in our land and in Ital}% where tlie grisette's eyes seem to be gossiping with the chairs for lack of something better, and where a thought, the moment it is born, translates itself into s-esture. In Germanic lands the channels of sensation and expression seem to be obstructed ; delicacy, impulsiveness, and readiness of action appear impossible ; a southerner has to exclaim at their awkwardness and lack of adroit- ness, and this was the deliberate opinion of our French in tlie Avars of the Revolution and the Empire. In this respect the toilette and deportment afford us the best indications, especially if we take the middle and lower classes of society. Compare tlie grisettes of Rome, Bologna, Paris and Toulouse 20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART "witli the huge mechanical dolls to be seen at Hamp- ton Court on Sundays, starched and stiff in their hlue scarfs, staring silks and gilded belts, and other details of a pompous extravagance. I remember at tliis moment two fetes — one at Amsterdam to wliich the rich peasant women of Friesland flocked, tlieir lieads decked with a fluted cap and a hat like a cab- riolet rearinix itself convulsively, whilst on the tem- pies and brow were two gold plates, a gold pediment and o-old corkscrews surroundinor a wan and dis- torted countenance ; the other at Fribourg, in Bris- gau, where, planted on their solid feet, the village women stood vaguely staring at us and exhibiting themselves in their national costume — so many black, red, purple and green skirts, with stiff" folds like those of gothic statues, a swollen corsage front and rear, massive sleeves puffed out like legs of mutton, forms girded close under the armpits, dull, yellow liair twisted into a knot and drawn towards the top of the head, cliiixnons in a net of crold and silver embroidery, and above this a man's hat, like an orange-colored pipe, the heteroclite crown of a body seemingly hewn out with a cleaver, and vaguely m THE NETHERLANDS. 21 suggesting a painted sign-post. lu brief, the Iniman animal of tins race is more passive and more gross than the otlier. One is tempted to regard him as inferior on comparing him with the Italian or south- ern Frenchman, so temperate, so quick intellectually, Avho is naturally apt in expression, in chatting and in pantomine, possessing taste and attaining to elegance, and who, witliout eftort, like the Proven- 9als of the twelfth, and the Florentines of the four- teenth century, become cultivated, civilized and accomplished at the first effort. We must not confine ourselves to this first o-lance which presents only one phase of things ; there is another associated with it, as light accompanies dark. This finesse, and this precocity, natural to tlie Latin families, leads to many bad results. It is tlie source of their cravincr for aacreeable sensa- tions ; they are exacting in their comforts ; they demand many and varied })leasures, whether coarse or refined, an entertaining conversation, tlio ameni- ties of politeness, the satisfactions of vanity, tlie sensualities of love, tlie delights of novelty and of accident, the harmonious symmetries of form and 22 THE PniLOSOPHT OF ART of plirase ; they readily develope into rhetoricians, dilettanti, epicureans, voluptuaries, libertines, gal- lants and worldlino;s. It is indeed through these vices that their civilization becomes corrujDt or ends; you encounter them in the decline of ancient Greece and Itome, in Proven9e of the twelfth, in Italy of the sixteenth, in Spain of the seventeenth, and in France of the eiiihteenth centuries. Their more quickly cultivated temperament bears them more speedily on to subtleties. Coveting keen emotions, they cannot be happy with moderate ones : they are like people who, accustomed to eating oranges, throw away carrots and turnips ; and yet it is carrots and turnips, and other equally insipid vege- tables, which make up our ordinary diet. It is in Italy that a noble lady exclaims, on partaking of a delicious ice-cream, " What a pity there is no sin in it ! " In France a noble lord remarks, speaking of a diplomatic roue, " Wlio wouldn't admire him, he is so wicked ! " In other directions their vivacity of impression and promptness of action render them improvisators; they are so quickly and so deeply excited by a crisis as to forget duty and reason, Zflr THE NETHERLANDS. 23 resorting to daggers in Italy and Spain, and to pis- tols ill France ; showing by tkis that they are only moderately capable of biding their time, of self-sub- ordination, and of maintaining order. Success in life depends on knowing how to be patient, how to endure drudgery, how to unmake and remake, how to recommence and continue without allowinjx the tide of anger or the flight of the imagination to arrest or divert the daily cSbrt. In fine, if we com- pai'e their faculties Avith the world as it runs, it is too mechanical, too rude, and too monotonous for them, and they too lively, too delicate, and too brilliant for it. Always after the lapse of centuries tills discord shows itself in their civilization ; they demand too much of things, and, through their mis- conduct, fail even to reach that which thino-s mio-ht confer on them. Suppress, now, these fortunate endowments, and, on tlie dark side, these mischievous tendencies, — im- agine on the slow and substantial body of the Ger- man a well-organized brain, a sound mind, and trace the effects. With less lively impressions a man thus fashioned will be more collected and more tliouu;ht- 21 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART fill ; less solicitous of agreeable emotions, he can, with- out weariness, do disagreeable things. His senses being blunter, he prefers depth to form, and truth wiiliin to show without. As he is less impulsive he is less subject to impatience and to unreasonable out- bursts ; he has an idea of sequence, and can persist in enterprises the issue of which is of long achieve- ment. Finally, with him the understanding is the better master, because outward temptations are weaker and inward explosions rarer; reason governs better where there is less inward rebellion and less outward attack. Consider, in effect, the Germanic people of the present day and throughout history. They are, primarily, the great laborers of the world ; in matters of intellect none equal them ; in erudition, in philosophy, in the most crabbed linguistic studies, in voluminous editions, dictionaries and other compi- lations, in researches of the laboratory, in all science, in short, whatever stern and hard, but necessary and preparatory work there is to be done, that is their province; patiently, and with most commendable self-sacrifice they hew out every stone that enters into the edifice of modern times. In material matters the IN TEE NETHERLANDS. 25 English, Americans and Dutch perform tlic same ser- vice. I should like to show you an English spinner or cloth-dresser at work ; he is a perfect automaton, occupied day in and day out without a moment's relaxation, and the tenth hour as well as the first. If he is in a workshop with French "workmen, these form a striking contrast; they are unable to adapt themselves to the same mechanical regularity ; they are sooner tired and inattentive, and thus produce less at the end of the dav : instead of eio;hteen hun- dred spools, they only tuin out twelve hundred. The farther south you go the loss the capacity. A Provencal or Italian must gossip, sing and dance ; lie is a willincc lounsrer, and lives as he can, and in this way easily contents himself with a threadbare coat. Indolence there seems natural and honorable. A noble llfe^ the laziness of the man who, to save his honor, lives on expedients, and sometimes fasts, has been the curse of S[)ain and Italy for the last two hundred years. On the other hand, in the same epocl), the Fleming, the Hollander, the Englishman and the German have gloried in providing themselves with all useful things ; the instinctive repugnance 26 THE PniLOSOPHY OF ART which leads an ordinary man to shun trouble, the puerile vanity which leads the cultivated man to dis- tinguish himself from the aHizan, disappear alongside of their good sense and reason. This same reason and this same good sense estab- lish and maintain amongst them diverse descriptions of social engagements, and first, the conjugal bond. You are aware that among the Latin families this is not over respected; in Italy, Spain and France adultery is always the principal subject of the play and the romance ; at all events, literature in these lands always incarnates passion in tlie hero, and is prodigal of sympathy for him by granting him all privileges. In England, on the contrary, the novel is a picture of loyal affection and the laudation of wedlock; in Germany, gallantry is not honorable, even among students. In Latin countries it is excused or accepted, and even sometimes approved of The matrimonial yoke, and the monotony of the household, there seem galling. Sensational allure- ments penetrate too deeply ; the caprices of the imagination there are too brusque ; the mind creates for itself visions of transports and of ecstatic ly THE XEllIERLANDS. 27 delight, or at least a romance of exciting and varied sensuality, and at the first opportunity the suppressed flood bursts forth, carrying with it every barrier of duty and of law. Consider Spain, Italy and France in the sixteenth century ; road the tales of Bandello, the comedies of Lope de Vega, the nar- ratives of Brantome, and listen for a moment to the comment of Guiccardini, a contemporary, on the social habits of the Netherlands. "They hold adultery in horror . . . Their women are extremely circumspect, and are consequently allowed much freedom. They go out alone to make visits, and even journeys without evil report; they are able to take care of themselves. Moreover they are house- keepers, and love their households." Only very lately, again, a wealthy and noble Hollander named to me several young ladies belonging to his family who had no desire to see the Great Exposition, and who remained at home whilst their husbands and brothers visited Paris. A disposition so calm and so sedentary diffuses much hapjjiness throughout domestic life; in the repose of curiosity and of de- sire the ascendancy of pure ideas is much greater ; 28 THE puiLosornr of art the constant presence of the same person not being wearisome, the memory of plighted faith, the senti- ment of duty and of self-respect easily prevails against temj)tations which elsewhere triumph be- cause they are elsewhere more powerful. I can say as much of other descriptions of association, and es- pecially of the fi'ee assemblage. This, practically, is a very difficult thing. To make the machine work regularly, without obstruction, those who compose it must have calm nerves and be governed by the end in view. One is expected to be patient in a 'meeting' to allow himself to be contradicted and even vilified, await his turn for speaking, reply with moderation, and submit twenty times in suc- cession to the same argument enlivened with figures and documentary facts. It will not answer to fling aside the newspaper tlie moment its political interest flags, nor take up politics for the pleasure of discus- sion and speech-making, nor excite insurrections aijainst officials the moment thev become distasteful, which is the fashion in Spain and elsewhere. You yourselves have some knowledge of a country where the Gcovernment has been overthrown because in- ly THE NETUERLAXDS. 29 active and because the nation felt ennui. Amono- Germanic populations, people meet together not to talk but to act ; politics is a matter to be wisely managed, they bring to bear on it the spirit of busi- ness ; speech is simply a means, while the effect, however remote, is the end in view. They subor- dinate themselves to this end, and are full of defer- ence for tlie persons who represent it. IIow unique! Here the governed respect the governing; if the latter prove objectionable they are resisted, but legally and patiently ; if institutions prove defective, they are gradually reformed without being dis- rupted. Germanic countries are the patrimony of free parliamentary rule. You see it established to- dnv in Sweden, in Xorwav, in Enu'land, in Beltjium, in Holland, in Prussia, and even in Austria; the colonists engaged in clearing Australia and the West of America, plant it in their soil, and, how- ever rude the new-comers may be, it prospers at once, and is maintained without difficulty. We find it at the outset in Belgium and Holland ; the old cities of the Netherlands were republics, and so maintained themselves throughout the middle ages 30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART in spite of their feudal suzerains. Free communities arose, and maintained themselves without effort, at once, the small as well as the great, and in the great whole. In the sixteenth century we find in each city, and even in small towns, companies of arquebu- siers and rhetoricians, of which more than two hun- dred have been enumerated. In Belgium to-day there still flourish an infinity of similar corporations, societies of archers, of musicians, of pigeon fanciers, and for sing-inoj birds. In Holland volunteer asso- ciations of private individuals minister to every requirement of public charity. To act in a body, no one i^erson oppressing another, is a wholly Germanic talent, and one which gives them such an empire . over matter ; through patience and reflection they conform to the laws of physical and human nature, and instead of opposing them profit by them. If, now, from action we turn to speculation, that is to say to the mode of conceiving and figuring the world, we shall find the same imprint of this thoughtful and slightly sensualistic genius. The Latins show a decided taste for the external and decorative aspect of things, for a pompous display ly THE NETHERLANDS. 31 feeding tlie senses and vanity, for logical order, out- Avard symmetry and pleasing arrangement, in short, for form. The Germanic people, on the contrary, liave rather inclined to the inward order of things, to truth itself, in fact, to the fundamental. Their instinct leads them to avoid being seduced by appearances, to remove mystery, to seize the hidden, even when repugnant and sorrowful, and not to eliminate or withhold any detail, even when vulgar and unsightly. Among the many products of this instinct there are two which place it in full light throusch the stronodv marked contrast in each of form and substance, and these are literature and religion. The literatures of Latin populations are classic and nearly or remotely allied to Greek poesy, Roman eloquence, the Italian renaissance, and the age of Louis XIY, ; they refine and ennoble, they embellish and prune, they systematize and give ])ro- portion. Tlieir latest masterpiece is tlie drama of Racine, who is the painter of jjrincely ways, court proprieties, social paragons, and cultivated natures; the master of an oratorical style, skilful composi- tion and literary elegance. The Germanic literU' 32 THE rniLO SOPHY OF ART tures, on the contrar}^, are romantic ; their primitive source is the Edda and tlie ancient saQ:as of the north ; their greatest masterpiece is the drama of Shakespeare, that is to say the crude and complete representation of actual life, with all its atrocious, ignoble and common-place details, its sublime and brutal instincts, the entire outgrowth of human character displayed before us, now in a familiar style bordering on the trivial, and now poetic even to lyricism, always independent of rule, incoherent, excessive, but of an incomparable force, and filling our souls with the warm and palpitating passion of which it is the outcry. In a similar manner take religion, and view it at the critical moment when tho people of Europe had to choose their faith, that is to say in the sixteenth century; those who have studied original documents know what this at that time meant ; what secret j^references kept some in the ancient faith and led others to take the new one. All Latin populations, up to the last, remained Catholic; they were not Avilling to renounce their intellectual habits ; they remained faithful to tradi- tion ; tliey continued subject to authority; they ly THE NETnERLANDS. 33 ■were affected throuQ-h sensuous externalities — the pomp of worsliip, the imposing system of the Catho- Vc hierarchy, the majestic conception of Catholic unity and Catholic perpetuity ; they attached abso- hite importance to the rites, outward works and visi- ble acts through which piety is manifested. Almost all the Germanic nations, on the contrary, became Protestants. If Belgium, which inclined to the Reformation, escaped, it Avas owing to force through the successes of Farnese, the destruction and flight of so many Protestant flxmilics, and to a special moral crisis which you will find in tlie history of Rubens, All other Germanic peoples subordinated, outward to inward worship. They made salvation to consist of a renewal of the heart and of religious sentiment ; they made the formal authority of the Church yield to personal convictions ; through this predominance of the fundamental form became acces- sory, worship, daily life and rites being modified in the same degree. "We shall soon see that in the arts the same opposition of instincts jDroduced an analogous contrast of taste and style. IMeanwhile let it suffice for us to seize the cardinal points which 2* 34 THE PHIL080PUY OF AUT distinguish the two races. If the latter, comijared with the former, presents a less sculpturesque form, grosser appetites and a more torpid temperament, it furnishes through tranquillity of nerve and cool- ness of blood a stronger hold on pure reason ; its mind, less diverted from the right road by delight in sensuous attractions, the impetuosities of impulse and the illusions of external beauty, is better able to accommodate itself now to comprehend things and now to direct them. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 35 11. This race, thus endowed, has received various im- prints, according to the various conditions of its abiding-place. Sow a number of seeds of the same vegetable species in different soils, under various temperatures, and let them germinate, grow, bear fruit and reproduce themselves indefinitely, each on its own soil, and each will adapt itself to its soil, producing several varieties of the same species so mucli the more distinct as the contrast is srreater between the diverse climates. Such is the experience of the Germanic race in the Netherlands. Ten cen- turies of habitation have done their work ; the end of the middle ages shows us that, in addition to its innate character, there is an acquired character. It becomes necessary, therefore, to study the soil and the sky; in default of travel take the next best thing, a map. Excepting the mountainous district to the south-east, the Xetlierlands consist of a watery plain, formed out of the deposits of three large rivers — the Rhine, the JNIeuse and tlie Scheldt, besides scv- 36 TUE PUIL080PIIY OF ABT eral smaller streams. Add to this numerous inlets ponds and marshes. The country is an outflow of mighty waters, which, as they reach it, become slug- gish and remain stagnant for want of a fall. Dig a hole anywhere and water comes. Examine the land- scapes of Van der Neer and you Avill obtain some idea of the vast sluggish streams which, on approaching the sea, become a league wide, and lie asleep, wal- lowing in their beds like some huge, flat, slimy fish, turbid and feebly glimmering with scaly reflections. The plain is oftentimes below their level, and is only protected by levees of earth. You feel as if some of them were going to give way ; a mist is constantly rising from their surfaces, and at ni^ht a dense fosr envelopes all things in a bluish humidity. Follow them down to the sea, and here a second and more violent inundation, arising from the daily tides, com- pletes the work of the first. The northern ocean is hostile to man. Look at the " Estacade" of Ruysdael, and imagine the frequent tempests casting up ruddy waves and monstrous foaming billows on the low, flat band of earth already half submerged by the enlarge- ment of the rivers. A belt of islands, some of them IX THE XETEERLjiSDS. 37 equal to the half of a department, indicates, along the coast, this chokuig up of inland currents and the assaults of the sea — Walcheren, North and South Beveland, Tholen, Schouwen, Yoorn, Beierlaud, Texel, Vlielaud and others. Sometimes the ocean runs up and forms inner seas like that of Harlem, or deep gulfs like the Ziiyder Zee. If Belgium is an alluvial expanse, formed by the rivers, Holland is simply a deposit of mud surrounded by water. Add to all this an unpropitious soil and a rigorous climate, and you are tempted to conclude that the coun- try was not made for man but for storks and beavers. When the first Germanic tribes came to encamp here it was still worse. In the time of Caesar and Strabo there was nothing but a swampy forest ; travellers narrate that one could pass from tree to tree over all Holland without touching the ground. The uprooted oaks falling into the streams formed rafts, as nowadays on the Mississippi, and barred the way to the Roman flotillas. The Waal, the Mouse and the Scheldt annually overflowed their "banks, the water covering the flat country around to 38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF APT a great distance. Autumnal tempests every year submerged the island of Batavia, while in Holland the line of the coast changed constantly. Rain fell incessantly, and the fog was as impenetrable as in Russian America ; daylight lasted only three or four hours. A solid coating of ice annually covered the Rhine. Civilization, meanwhile, as the soil became cleared, tempered the climate ; the rude Holland of that day possessed the climate of Norway. Flanders, four centmies after the invasion, was still called "the interminable and merciless forest." In 1197 the country about Waes, now a garden, remained untilled, the monks on it being besieged by wolves. In tlie four- teenth century droves of wild horses roamed througli the forests of Holland. The sea encroached on the land, Ghent was a seaport in the ninth century, Thorout, St. Omer and Bruges in the twelfth century. Damme in the thirteenth, and Ecloo in the foui-teentli. On looking at the Holland of old maps we no longer recognize it.* Still, at the present day its inhabitants are oblisred to cfuard the soil against the * IMichiels, "Ilis^toire de la Peintare Flamande," Vol. I., p. 230; and Schayes' '■ Les Pays-Bas-avantet pendant la domination Eomaine," IN TEE NETHERLANDS. 39 rivers and tlie sea. In Belsfium the marijin of the sea is below the level of the water at high tide, the « polders or low spots thus reclaimed displaying vast argillaceous flats, Avith a slimy soil tinged with purple reflections, between dykes, which, even in our days, sometimes break away. The danger in Holland is still greater, life there seeming to be very precarious. For thirteen centuries a great inundation has taken place, on an average, every seven years, besides smaller ones ; one hundred thousand persons were drowned in 1230, eighty thousand in 128V, twenty thousand in 1470, thirty thousand in 1570, and twelve thousand in 1717. Similar disasters occui-red in 1770, in 1808, and still later in 1825. Dollart Bay, about seven miles wide by twenty deep, and the Zuyder Zee, forty-four leagues square, are invasions of the sea in the thirteenth century. In order to protect Friesland it was necessary to drive three rows of piles a distance of twenty-two leagues, each pile cost- ing seven florins. To protect the coast of Harlem they had to build a dyke of Norway granite five miles long by forty feet in height, and which is buried two jnindred feet beneath the waves. Am- 40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART sterdam, which has two liundrcd and sixty thousand , inhabitants, is entirely built on piles, frequently thirty feet long. The foundations of every town and village in Friesland are artificial constructions. It is estimated that seven and a half billions of francs have been expended on protective works between the Scheldt and the Dollart. Life has to be purchased in Holland. And wdien from Harlem or Amsterdam you see the enormous yellow surf beating against that narrow strip of mud, and enclosing it as far as the eye can reach, it is evident that man, in castino- this sop to the monster, obtains safety at a low rate.* Imagine, now, on this quagmire, the ancient Ger- manic tribes, so many fishers and hunters roaming about in hide boats and clad in seal-skin tunics, and estimate if you can tlie effort those barbarians were forced to make in order to create a habitable soil and transform themselves into a civilized people. Men of another stamp would not have succeeded; tlie mllieit was too unfavorable. In analoirous con- ditions the inferior races of Canada and Russian * See Alphonse Esquiros' "La Neerlande et la Vie Neerlandaise. " 2 \o's. Ili THE NETUEBLANDS. 41 America have remained savage ; other well-endowed races, the Celts of Ireland and the Highland Scotch, attained only to a chivalric standard of society and poetic legends. Here there had to be good, sound heads, a capacity to subject sensation to thought, to patiently endure ennui and fatigue, to accept priva- tion and labor in view of a remote end, in short a Germanic race, meaning by this men organized to co-operate together, to toil, to struggle, to begin over and over again and ameliorate nnceasingly, to dike streams, to oppose tides, to drain the soil, to turn wind, water, flats, and argillaceous mud to account, to build canals, ships and mills, to make brick, raise cattle, and organize varioiis manufac- turing and commercial enterprises. The difficulty being very great the mind was absorbed in over- coming it, and, turned wliolly in this direction, was diverted from other things. To subsist, to obtain shelter, food and raiment, to protect them- selves against cold and damp, to accumulate stores and lay up wealth left the settlers no time to think of other matters; the mind got to be wholly positive and practical. It is impossible in such a country to 42 THE PUILOSOPnY OF ART indulge in revery, to philosophize German fashion, to stray off amidst chimeras of the fancy and through the world of metaphysical systems.* One is immediately brought back to the earth. The necessity of action is too universal, too urgent, too constant ; if people think at all, it is to act. Under this steady pressure the character forms ; that which was habit becomes instinct ; the form acquired by the parent is found hereditary in the child ; laborer, artisan, trader, factor, householder, man of common sense and nothing more, he is by birth and without effort what his ancestors got to be through necessity and constraint.! This positive spirit, moreover, is found to be tran- quillized. Compared with other nations of the same stock and with a genius no less practical, the denizen of the Netherlands appears better balanced and more capable of being content. "VVe do not see in him the violent passions, the militant disposition, the over- strained will, the bull-dog instincts, the sombre and ♦Alfred Michiels' "Histoirc de la Peintiire,"' Vol. I., p. 23S. Thia volume contains a number of general views all deservinp^ of attention, t Prosper Lucas' "De I'lleredite," and Darwin's " Origin of Species." m TEE KETUERLANDS. 43 grandiose pride which three permanent conquests and the secular establishment of polilical strife have im- planted in the English ; nor that restless and exag- gerated desire for action which a dry atmosphere, sudden changes fi-oni heat to cold, a sur[(lus elec- tricity, have implanted in the Americans of the United States. He lives in a moist and equable climate, one which relaxes the nerves and developes the lymphatic temperament, Avhich moderates the insurrections, explosions and impetuosity of the spirit, soothing the asperities of passion and diverting the chai'acter to the side of sensuality and good humor. You have already observed this effect of climate in our comparisons of the genius and tlie art of the Venetians with those of the Florentines. Here, moreover, events come to the aid of climate, history laboring in the same direction as physiolog}\ The natives of these countries have not undergone, like their neighbors over the channel, two or three inva- sions, the overrunning of an entire people, Saxons, Danes and. Normans installed on their ])remises; they have not garnered a heritage of hatred which oppression, resistance, rancor, prolonged struggle, 44: THE PniLOSOPEY OF ART wai'fare — at first open and violent, and afterwards subdued and lesjal — transmit from one o-eneration to another. From the earliest times down we find them engaged, as in the age of Pliny, in making salt, " combined together, according to ancient usage, in bringing under cultivation marshy grounds,"* free in their guilds, asserting their independence, claiming their rights and immemorial privileges, devoted to whaling, trade and manufacturing, calling their towns 2)orts, in brief, as Guiccardini describes them in the sixteenth century, " very desirous of gain and watch- ful of profit, but without anything feverish or irra- tional in their desire to provide for themselves. They are by nature cool and self-possessed. They delight in wealth and other worldly things prudently and as occasion offers, and are not easily disturbed, which is at once apparent both in their discourse and in their physiognomies. They are not prone to anger or to pride, but live together on good terms, and are especially of a gay and lively humor." According to him they entertain no vast and overweening arabi- * Moke'8 " Mcfiurs et Usages des Beiges," pp. Ill, 113. A capitulary of the ninth century. IN THE NETHEBLAXnS. 45 tion ; many of them retire from business early, amus- ing themselves Avith buikliug, and taking life easily and pleasantly. All circumstances, moral and phys- ical, their geographical and political state, the past and the present, combine to one end, namely, the development of one faculty and one tendency at the expense of the rest, shrewd management and tem- perate emotions, a practical understanding and lim- ited desires ; they comprehend the amelioration of outward things, and, this accomplished, they ci'ave no more. Consider, in eiFect, their work ; its perfection and lacunoe indicate at once the limits and the power of their intellect. The profound philosophy which is so natural in Germany, and the elevated poetry which flourishes in England, they lack. They fail to over- look material things and positive interests in order to yield to pure speculation, to follow the temerities of logic, to attenuate the delicacy of analysis, and bury themselves in the depths of abstraction. They ignore that s])iritual turmoil, those eruptions of suppressed feeling which give to style a tragic accent, and that vagabond fancy, those exquisite 4G THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART and sublime reveries which outside of life's vulgari- ties reveal a new universe. They cau boast of no great j^hilosopher ; their Spinoza is a Jew, a pupil of Descartes and the rabbis, an isolated recluse of a difierent genius and a diiferent race. None of their books have become European like those of Burns and Camoens, who, nevertheless, were born out of nations equally small. One only of their authors has been read by every man of his epoch, Erasmus, a refined writer but who wrote in Latin, and who, in education, taste, style and ideas belongs to the erudites and humanists of Italy. The old Dutch poets, as for example, Jacob Cats, are grave, sensi- ble, somewhat tedious moralists, Avho land home en- joyments and the life of the family. The Flemish poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries tell their auditors that they do not recount chivalric fables — but veritable liistoiies, their poesy ending in practical maxims and contemporary events. In vain do their belle-lettre academies cultivate and make poetry prominent, there being no talent to [)roduce out of such resources any great or beautiful perfor- mance. Chroniclers arise like Chatelain, and pam- IX TEE NETUERLANDS. 47 pliletcei's like Marnix Je Saiiito-Aldegonde, but their nnctuous narratives are inflated ; their overcharged eloquence, coarse and crude, recalls, without equal- ling it, the rude color and visrorous Q-rossness of their national art. They have scarcely any literature at the present day. Their only novelist, Conscience, seems to us, although a tolerable observer, dull and unrefined. If Ave visit their country and read their journals, those at least not got up in Paris, we seem to have fallen upon the provinces, and even lower. Polemical discussions are gross, the flowers of rheto- ric stale, humor rudely indulged, and wit pointless ; a coarse joviality and a coarse anger supply the material ; their very caricatures seem to us stupid. If we attempt to ascertain their contributions to the great edifice of modern thought we find that patiently and methodically, like honest and faithful workmen, they have hewn out a few blocks. They can point to a learned school of philologists at Leyden, to jurisprudential authorities like Grotius, to naturalists and physicians like Leeuvenhoeck, Swamraerdam and Bocrhaave, to physicists like Iluyghens, and to cosmographers like Ortelius and 48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART Mercator, in short, to a contingent of specialist and useful men, but to no creative intellect dis- closing to the world grand original ideas or enshrin- ing original conceptions in beautiful forms capable of universal ascendancy. They have left to neigh- boring nations the part filled by the contemplative Mary at the feet of Jesus, choosing for themselves that of Martha ; in the seventeenth century they provided pulpits for the Protestant erudites exiled from France, a country for free thought persecuted throughout Europe, and editors for all books of science and polemics ; at a later period they fur- nished printers for the whole of our eighteenth century philosophy, and finally booksellers, brokers and counterfeiters for the entire literature of mod- ern times. All this is of service to them for they arc versed in languages, and read and are in- structed, instruction being an acquisition and some- thing wliich it is good to lay up like other things. But there they stop, and neither their ancient nor their modern works show any need of or faculty for contemplating the abstract beyond the apparent world and the imaginary world outside of reality. IJSr THE NETnERLANBS. 49 On the contrary they have always excelled and they still excel in the arts called useful. "First among transalpine people," says Guiccardini, " they invented woolen fabrics." Up to 1404 they alone were capable of weaving and manufacturing them. England supplied them with the raw material, the Encdish doinsr no more than raise and shear the sheep. At the end of the sixteenth century, an unique thing in Europe, " almost everybody, even the peasantry, could read and write ; a great many even acquired the principles of grammar." We find, accordingly, belle-lettre academies, that is to say associations for oratory and dramatic representa- tions, even in the small towns. This indicates the degree of perfection to which they brought their civilization. " They have," says Guiccardini, " a special and happy talent for the ready invention of all sorts of machines, ingenious and suitable for facilitating, shortening and dispatching everything they do, even in the matter of cooking." They, indeed, with the Italians, are the first in Europe to attain to prosperity, wealth, security, liberty, com fort, and all other benefits which seem to us the 50 THE PIULOSOPHY OF ART paraphernalia of modern times. In the thirteenth century Bruges was equal to Venice; in the six- teenth century Antwerp was the industrial and com- mercial capital of the Xorth. Guiccardini never wearies in praising it, and he only saw it when it was in full decline, reconquered by the Duke of Parma after the terrible siege of 1585. In the sev- enteenth century Holland, remaining free, occupies for a century the place which England now holds in the world of to-day. It is in vain for P^'landers to fall back into Spanish hands, to be ravaged by the wars of Louis XIV., to be surrendered to Austria, to serve as a battle-ground for the wars of the Revo- lution ; she never descends to the level of Spain or Italy ; the partial prosperity she maintains through- out tlie miseries of repeated mvasion and under .a bungling despotism shows the energy of her inspir- ing good sense and the fecundity of her assiduous labor. Of all the countries of Europe at the present day, Belgium is the one which with an equal area sup- ports the most inhabitants ; she feeds twice as many as France; the most populous of our departments, AV THE NETHERLANDS. 51 that of the Xorth, is a portion wliich Louis XIV detaclic'J from her. Towards Lille and Douai you already see spread out in an indefinable circle, ex- tending up to the horizon, this great kitchen garden, a deep and fertile soil diapered with pale grain sheaves, poppy-fields, and the large-leaved beet, and richly stimulated by a low, warm sky swimming with vapor. Between Brussels and Malines begins the broad prairie, here and there striped with rows of poplars, intersected with water-courses and fences, where cattle browse throughout the year, an inex- haustible storehouse of hay, milk, cheese and meat. In the environs of Ghent and Bruges, the land of Waes, " the classic soil of agriculture," is nourished by fertilizers gathered in all countries, and by barn- yard manure brought from Zealand. Holland, in like manner, is simjjly a pasturage, a natural tillage, which, instead of exhausting the soil, renews it, pro- viding its cultivators with the amplest crops, and affording to the consumer the most strengthening aliments. In Holland, at Buicksloot, there are mil- lionaire cow-herds, the Netherlands ever seeming to the stranger to be a land of feasting and good 52 THE FIIILOSOPRY OF ART cheer. If you turn from agricultural to industrial results, you will everywhere encounter the same art of utilizinsf and makino; the best of thinirs. Obsta- cles with them are transformed into aids. Tlie soil was flat and soaked with water ; they took advan- tage of it to cover it with canals and railroads, no place in Europe presenting so many channels of com- munication and of transport. They were in want of fuel ; they dug down into the bowels of tlie earth, the coal-pits of Belgium being as rich as those of England. The rivers annoyed them with their inun- dations and inland pools deprived them of a portion of their territory ; they drained the pools, diked the streams, and profited by the rich alluvions and the slow dej^osits of vegetable mould with which the surplus or stagnant waters overspread their land. Their canals freeze up ; they take skates and travel in winter five leagues an hour. The sea threatened them; after forcing it back, they avail themselves of it to traflic with all nations. The winds sweep unim- peded across their flat country and over the turbu- lent ocean ; they make them swell the sails of their vessels and move the wings of their windmills. In m TUB NETHERLANDS. 53 Holland you will observe at every turn of the road one of tlicse enormous structures, a hundred feet high, furnished with machinery and pumps, busy in emptying the overflow of water, sawing shijj-timber and manufacturing oil. From the steamer, in front of Amsterdam, you see, stretching off' as far as the eye can reach, an infinite spider's web, a light, indis- tinct and complex fringe of masts and arms of wind- mills encirclinof the horizon with their innumerable fibres. The impression yon carry away is that of a country transformed from end to end by the hand and the art of man, and sometimes entirely created until it becomes a comfortable and productive ter- ritory. Let us go furtlier ; let us take a near view of man, and appreciate the most important object belonging to him — his habitation. There is no stone in this country — nothing but an adhesive clay, suitable for men and horses to mire their feet in. It occurred to the people, however, to bake it, and in this way brick and tile, which are the best of defences against humidity, came into their hands. You see well con- trived buildings of an agreeable aspect, with red, 54 THE PniLOSOPHY OF ABT brown and rosy walls covered with a bright stiacco white fa9ades varnished and sometimes decorated with sculptured flowers, animals, medallions and small columns. In tlie older cities the house often stands with its gable to the street, festooned with arcades, branchings and leafage, which terminate in a bird, an apple or a bust ; it is not, as in our cities, a continuation of its neighbor — an abstract compartment of vast barracks, but an object apart, endowed with a special and private character, at once interesting and picturesque. Nothing could be better kept and cleaner. At Douai the poorest have their domicile whitewashed once a year, out- side and in, it being necessary to engage the Avhite- washer six months in advance. At Antwerp, in Ghent and in Bruges, and especially in the small towns, most of the fa9ades seem to be newly painted or freshened the day before. Washing and sweep- ing are going on on all sides. When you reach Holland there is extra care even to exaotrera- tion. You see domestics at five o'clock in the morning scrubbing the sidewalks. In the envi- rons of Amsterdam the villages seem to be scenery J.Y THE XETUERLANDS. 55 from the Opera- Comiquc, so tidy and so well- dusted are tliey. There are stables for cows, the flooring of which is cabinet work ; you can enter them only in slijipers or sabots placed at the entrance for that purpose ; a spot of dirt would be scandalous, and still more so any odor ; the cows' tails are held np by a small cord to prevent them from soiling themselves. Yehiclcs are prohibited from entei-ing the village ; the sidewalks of brick and blue porcelain are more irreproachable than a vestibule with us. In autumn children come and gather up the fallen leaves in the streets to deposit them in a pit. Everywhere, in the small rooms, seemingly the state-rooms of a ship, the order and arrangement are the same as on a ship. In Broeck, it is said, there is in each house a particular room wliicli is entered only once a week in order to clean and rub the furniture, and then carefully closed ; in a country so damp, dirt immediately becomes a deleterious mould ; man, compelled to scrupulous cleanliness, contracts the habit, experiences its neces- sity, and at last falls under its tyranny. You would be pleased, however, to see the humblest shop of 56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART the smallest street in Amsterdam, with its brown casks, its immaculate counter, its scoured benches, everything in its place, the economy of small quar- ters, the intelligent and handy arrangement of all utensils. Guiccardini already remarks " that tlieir houses and clothes are clean, handsome and well- arranged, that they have much furniture, utensils and domestic objects, kept in better order and with a finer lusti-e than in any other country." It is necessary to see the comfort of their apartments, especially the houses of the middle classes — carpets, waxed cloths for the floors, warm and heat-saving chimneys of iron and porcelain, triple curtains at the windows, clear, dark and highly polished window- panes, vases of flowers and green plants, innumera- ble knick-knacks indicative of sedentary habits and which render home life pleasant, mirrors placed so as to reflect the people passing in the street together with its changing aspects ; — every detail shows some inconvenience remedied, some want satisfied, some pleasant contrivance, some thoughtful provision, in short, the universal reign of a sagacious activity and the extreme of comfort. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 57 Man, in effect, is that which liis work indicates. Thus endowed and thus situated, he enjoys and knows hoAV to enjoy. The bountiful soil furnishes him with abundant nutriment — meat, fish, vegetables, beer and brandy ; he eats and drinks copiously, while in Belgium the Germanic appetite, as it grows in fas- tidiousness without decreasing, becomes gastronomic sensuality. Cooking there is scientific and perfect, even to the hotel tables ; I believe that they are the best in Europe. There is a certain hotel in Mons to which visitors from the small neio;hborin2f towns come to dine every Saturday, especially to enjoy a delicate meal. They lack wine, but they import it from Germany and France, and boast the possession of the best vintages : we do not, in their opinion, treat our wines witli the respect they deserve ; it is necessary to be a Belgian to cai*e for and relisli them in a proper manner. Tliere is no important liotel which is not supplied with a varied and select stock ; its reputation and custom are made by the selection ; in the railroad cars tlie conversation tends sponta- neously to the merits of two rival cellars. A prudent merchant will have twelve thousand bottles in his 3* 58 THE PniLOSOPUY OF ART sanded cellars, duly classified ; it constitutes his library. The burgomaster of a petty Dutch town possesses a cask of genuine Johannisberger, made in tlie best year, and this cask adds to the consideration of its owner. A man there, who gives a dinner jDarty, knows how to make his wines succeed each other in such a way as not to im2:)air the taste and have as many as possible consumed. As to the pleasures of the ear and the eye, they understand them as well as those of the palate and the stomach. They in- stinctively love the music which we only appreciate through culture. In the sixteenth century they are first in this art ; Guiccardini states that their vocalists and instrumentalists are esteemed in all the courts of Christendom ; abroad, their professors found schools, and their compositions are standards of au- thority. Even nowadays the great mvxsical endow- ment of being able to sing in parts is encountered even amongst the populace ; the coal-miners organ- ize choral societies ; I have heard laborers in Brussels and Antwerp, and the ship caulkers and sailors of Amsterdam sing in chorus, and in true time, while at work and in the street on returning home at night. ly THE XETIIEELAXBS. 59 Tlicre is no larare Belsrian town in which a chime of O CI? bells, perched in the belfry, docs not every quarter of an hour amuse the artizan in his shop and the trader at his counter with the peculiar harmonies of their sonorous metal. In like manner their city halls, their house-fronts, even their old driuking-cups are, through their complex ornamentation, their intricate lines and their original and often fantastic design, agreeable to the eye. Add to this the free or well- composed tones of the bricks forming the walls, and the richness of the brown and red tints relievinsr on white displayed on the roofs and fa9ades — assuredly tlie towns of the Netherlands are as picturesque of their kind as any in Italy. In all times they have delighted in Jcerniesses and/c^es de Gay ant, in corpor- ation processions, and in the parade and glitter of costumes and materials. I shall show you the com- pletely Italian pomp of the civic entries and other ceremonies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They are epicureans as well as gourmands in the matter of comfortable living ; rogidarly, calmly, without heat or enthusiasm they glean up every pleasing harmony of savor, sound, color and form 60 THE PHILOSOPnT OF ART that arises out of their prosperity and abunflance, like tulips on a heap of compost. All this produces good sense somewhat limited, and happiness some- what gross. A Frenchman would soon yawn over it, but he would make a mistake, for this civiliza- tion, which seems to him unctuous and vulgar, pos- sesses one sterling merit — it is healthy; the men living here have a gift we lack the most — wisdom, and a comj^ensation we are equally undeserving of — contentment. m THE NETHERLANDS. 61 III. Sucli, in tliis country, is the human plant; we have now to examine its art, which is the flower. Among all the branches of the Germanic trunk, this plant alone has produced a complete flower; the art which developes so happily and so naturally in the Netherlands proves abortive with the othei Germanic nations for the reason that this glorious privilege emanates from the national character as we have just set it forth. To comprehend and love painting requires an eye sensitive to forms and to colors, and, without edu- cation or apprenticeship, one which takes pleasure in the juxtaposition of tones and is delicate in the matter of optical sensations ; the man who would be a painter must be capable of losing himself in view- ing the rich consonance of red and green, in watch- ins the diminution of li2 THE PIIILOSOniY OF ART man there in a state of nudity sliivers. The Immau form liere does not disphay the fine proportions nor tlie easy attitudes required by classic art ; it is often dumpy or too gross; the wljite, soft, yielding flesh, easily flushed, requires to be clothed. When the painter returns from Rome and strives to pursue Ital- ian art, his surroundings oppose his education ; his sentiment beinsf no lonoer renewed throurrh his con- tact with living nature, he is reduced to his souvenirs. Moreover, he is of Germanic race ; in other terms he is organically a morally good-natured man, and even modest ; he has difiiculty in appreciating the pagan idea of nudity, and still greater difficulty in compre- hending the fatal and magnificent idea* which o-ov- erns civilization and stimulates the arts beyond the Alps, namely, that of the complete and sovereign individual, emancipated from every law, subordina- ting the rest, men and things, to the development of his own nature and the growth of his own faculties. Our painter is related, although distantly, to Martin * Btirckhardt's " Die Ciiltur der Renaissance in Italien," an admirable work, the most complete and most philosophic yet written on the Italiac Jleuaissance. ly THE KETIIERLAXDS. 123 Scbocn and Albert Diirer; lie is a bourgeois, almost docile and staid, a lover of the comfortable and the decent, and ada^jted to family and domestic life. II is biographer, Karl Van Mander, at the beginning of Lis book, furnishes liim with moral precepts. Read this patriarchal treatise, and imagine the distance between a Rosso, a Giulio Romano, a Titian and a Giorgione, and their pupils of Le3^den or Antwerp. " All vices," says the good Fleming, " bring their own punishment. Distrust the maxim that the best painter is he who is the most dissipated. Unworthy of the name of artist is he who leads an evil life. Painters shoiild never dispute or enter into strife with each other. To squander one's property is not a mer- itorious art. Avoid paj-ing court to women in your youthful days. Shun the society of frivolous women, who corrupt so many joainters. Reflect before you depart for Rome, for the opportunities to spend money there are great, and none are there for earn- ing it. Ever be thankful to God for His bounties." Special recommendations follow concerning Italian inns, bed linen and fleas. It is evident that pupils of this class, even with great labor, will jiroduce but 124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART little more than academic figures ; man, according to tlieir conceptions, is a draped body ; when, fol- lowing the example of tlie Italian masters, they at- tempt the nude, they render it without freedom, without spirit, without vivacity of invention; their pictures, in fact, are simply cold and meagre imita- tion ; their motive is pedantic; they execute ser- vilely and badly that which, in Italy, is done nat- urally and well On the other hand, Italian art, like Greek art, and, in general, all classic art, simplifies in order to embellish ; it eliminates, eflTaces, and re- duces detail ; by this means it gives greater value to grander features. Michael Angelo and the admira- ble Florentine school subordinate or suppress acces- sories, landscape, fabrics and costume ; with them the essential consists of the noble and the grandiose type, the anatomical and muscular structure, the nude or lightly draped form taken by itself, ab- stractly, through the retrenchment of particulars con- stituting the individual and denoting his profession, education and condition ; you have man in general represented, and not a special man. Their person- ages are in a superior world, because they are of a IX TUB XETIIEULAXDS. 10^ work! which is not ; the peculiar feature of the scene they depict is the nullity of time and space. Noth- ing is more opposed to Germanic and Flemish genius, ■which sees tilings as they are in their entirety and complexity ; which, in man, takes in, besides man in general, the contemporary, the citizen, the peasant, the laborer, this citizen, tliat laborer, tliat peasant ; which attaches as much importance to the accesso- ries of a man as to the man himself; which loves not merely human nature but all nature, animate and inanimate— cattle, horses, plants, landscape, sky, and even the atmosphere — its broader sympathies fore- stalling any neglect of objects, and its more minute observation requiring the fullest expression. You can compreliend how, in subjecting itself to a discipline so contrary, it loses the qualities it had without ac- quiring those it had not ; how, in order that it may arrogate the ideal, it reduces color, loses the senti- ment of light and atmosphere, obliterates the true details of costume and of interiors, deprives figures of original diversities peculiar to portrait and person, ' anject is edifying ; and the engraver deliber- ately places at the bottom of his engravings pious maxims and moral problems. And yet, in fact, there is notliing Christian about it but its name ; all mystic or ascetic sentiment is banished ; its Madon- nas, martyrs and confessors, its Christs and apostles are superb florid bodies restricted to tlie life of tlie flesh; its paradise is an Olympus of well-fed Flemish deities revelling in muscular activity; they ai'e large, vigorous, plump and content, and make a jovial and magnilicent display as in a national festi' val or at a princely entry. The Church, it is true, bajjtizes this last flower of tlie old mytliology w ith 150 THE PIIILOSOPUT OF ART becoming forms, but it is only baptism, and this is frequently wanting. Apollos, Jupiters, Castors, Pollux and Venus, all the ancient divinities, revive under their veritable names in the palaces of the kings and the great which they decorate. This is owing to religion, here as in Italy, consisting of rites. Rubens goes to mass every morning, and pre- sents a picture in order to obtain indulgences ; after which he falls back upon his own poetic feeling for natural life and, in the same style, paints a lusty Magdalen and a plump Siren ; under the Catholic varnish the heart and the intellect, all social ways and observances are pagan. On the other side, this art is truly Flemish ; everything issues from and centres on a mother idea which is new and national ; it is harmonious, spontaneous and original ; in this respect it contrasts with the foregoing which is only a discordant imitation. From Greece to Florence, from Florence to Venice, from Venice to Antwerp, every step of the passage can be traced. The con- ception of man and of life goes on decreasing in nobleness and increasing in breadth. Kubens is to Titian what Titian was to Raphael, and Raphael to 71Y THE NETHERLAXDS. 151 Piiidias. Never did artistic sympathy clasp nature in sucli an open and universal embrace. Ancient boundaries, already often extended, seem removed jiurposely to expose an' infinite career. Tliere is no respect for historic proprieties ; he groups together allegoric with real figures, and cardinals with a naked Mercury. There is no deference to the moral order; he tills the ideal heaven of mythology and of the gospel with coarse or mischievous char- acters ; a Magdalen resembling a nurse, and a Ceres whispering some pleasant gossip in her neighbor's ear. There is no dread of exciting physical sensi- bility ; he pushes the horrible to extremes, athwart all the tortures for the punishment of the flesh and all the contortions of howling agonv. There is no fear of ollending moral delicacy; his Minerva is a shrew who c-x\\ fight, his Juditli a butcher's wife familiar with blood, and his Paris a jocose expert and a dainty amateur. To translate into words the ideas vociferously proclaimed by his Suzannas, his ]Magdalens, his St. Sebastians, his Graces and his Sirens, in all his kermesses, divine and human, ideal or real, Christian or pagan, would re(juii-e the terms \ 152 TEE PHILOSOPEY OF ART of Rabelais. Through him all the animal instincts of human nature appear on the stage ; those which had been excluded as gross he reproduces as true, and in him as in nature they encounter the others. Nothing is wanting but the pure and the noble ; the whole of human nature is in his grasp, save the loftiest heights. Hence it is that his creativeness is the vastest we have seen, comprehending as it does all types, Italian cardinals, Roman emperors, contemporary citizens, peasants and cowherds, along with the innumerable diversities stampecl on human- ity by the play of natural forces and which more than fifteen hundred pictures did not suffice to exliaust. For the same reason, in the representation of the bod}", he comprehended more profoundly than any one the essential characteristic of organic life ; he surpasses in this the Venetians, as they surpass the Florentines ; he feels still better than they that flesh is a changeable substance in a constant state of renewal ; and such, more than any other, is the Flemish body, lympathic, sanguine and voracious, more fluid, more rapidly tending to accretion and IX THE NETIIEELAXDS. 153 waste than those whose dry fibre and radical temper- ance preserve permanent tissues. Hence it is tliat nobody has depicted its contrasts in stronger relief, nor as visibly shown the decay and bloom of life — at one time the dull flabby corpse, a genuine clinical mass, empty of blood and substance, livid, blue and mottled through suifering, a clot of blood on the moutli, the eye glassy and the feet and hands cla)^- ish, swollen and deformed because deatli seized them first ; at another the freshness of living carnations, the handsome, blooming and smiling athlete, the mellow suppleness of a yielding torso in the form of a well-fed adolescent, the soft rosy cheeks and placid candor of a girl whose blood was never quickened or eyes bcdimmcd by thought, flocks of dimpled cherubs and merry ciipids, the delicacy, the folds, the exquisite melting rosiness of infantile skin, seem- ingly the petal of a flower moistened with dew and impregnated with morning liglit. In like manner in the representation of soul and action he appreciated more keenly than any one the essential feature of animal and moral life, that is to say the instantaneous movement wliich it is the aim of the })lastic arts to 154 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART seize on the wing. In this again lie surpasses the Vene- tians as the}' surpassed the Florentines. Nobody- has endowed figures with such spirit, with a gesture so impulsive, with an impetuosity so abandoned and furious, such an universal commotion and tempest of swollen and writhing muscles in one single eifort. His personages speak ; their repose itself is suspen- ded on the verge of action ; we feel what thej-^ have just accomplished and what they are about to do. The present with them is impregnated with the past and big with the future; not only the whole face but the entire attitude conspires to manifest the flowing stream of their thought, feeling and complete being ; we hear the inward utterance of their emotion ; we might repeat the words to which they give expres- sion. The most fleeting and most subtle shades of sentiment belong to Rubens; in this respect he is a treasure for novelist and psychologist ; he took note of the passing refinements of moral expression as well as of the soft volume of sanguine flesh ; no one has gone beyond him in knowledge of the living organ- ism and of the animal man. Endowed with this sen- timent and skill he was capable, in conformity with Z.V THE NETHERLANDS. 155 the aspirations and needs of his restored nation, of amplifying the forces he fonnd aronnd and within himself, all that underlie, preserve and manifest the overflow and triumph of existence ; on the one hand gigantic joints, herculean shapes and shoulders, red and colossal muscles, bearded and truculent heads, over-nourished bodies teeming with succulence, the luxurious display of white and i-osy flesh ; on the other, the rude instincts which impel human nature to seek food, drink, strife and pleasure, the savage fury of the combatant, the enormity of the big-bel- lied Silenus, the sensual joviality of the Faun, the abandonment of that lovely creature without con- science and "fat with sin," the boldness, the energy, the broad joyousncss, the native goodness, the or- ganic serenity of the national type. He heightens these effects again through their composition and the accessories with which ho surrounds them — mag- nificence of lustrous silks, embroidered simarres and golden brocades, groups of naked figures, modern costumes and antique draperies, an inexhaustible accumulation of arms, standards, colonnades, Vene- tian stairways, temples, canopies, ships, animals, and 15G TEE PHILOSOPHY OF ART ever novel and imposing scenery, as if outside of ordinary nature he possessed the key of a thousand times richer nature, whereon his magician's hand could forever draw without the freedom of liis imag:- ination ending in confusion, but on the contrary with a jet so vigorous and a prodigality so national that his most complicated productions seem like the irresistible outflow of a surfeited brain. Like an Indian deity at leisure he relieves his fecundity by creating worlds, and from the matchless folds and hues of his tossed simarres to the snowy whites of his flesh, or the pale silkiness of his blonde tresses, there is no tone in any of his canvasses which does not aj)pear there purposely to aflbrd him delight. There is only one Rubens in Flanders, as there is only one Shakespeare in England. Great as the others are, they are deficient in some one element of liis genius. Grayer has not his audacity nor his excess ; he paints beauty calm,* sympathetic and content along with requisite effects of bright and mellow color. Jordaens has not his reo^al srrandeur *See at Ghent his "St. Rosalie," at Bruges his " Adoration of the Shepherds," and at Rennes his " Lazarus." IX THE NETHERLANDS. I57 and his heroic poetic feeling ; he paints with vinous color stunted colossi, crowded groups and turbulent plebeians. Van Dyck has not, like him, the love of power and of life for life itself; more refined, more chivalric, born with a sensitive and even melan- choly nature, elegiac in liis sacred subjects, aristo- cratic in his portraits, lie de})icts with less glowing and more sympathetic color noble, tender and charming figures whose generous and delicate souls are filled with sweet and sad emotions unknown to his master.* His Avorks are the first indication of the coming change. After 16G0 he is already prom- inent. The generation whose energy and aspira- tions had inspired the grand picturesque revery, faded away man by man ; Crayer and Jordaens alone, by merely living, kept art up for twenty years. The nation, reviving for a moment, falls backward ; its renaissance never perfects itself The archdiical sovereigns, through whom it had become an indepen- dent state, ended in 1633 ; it reverts back to a Span- ish province under a governor sent from Madrid. The treaty of 1648 closes the Scheldt to it, and completes ♦ See, especially, his sacred works at Malines and Antwerp. 158 THE PIIILOSOPUT OF ART the ruin of her commerce. Louis XIV. dismembers her, and on three occasions deprives her of portions of her territory. Four successive wars trample over her for thirty years; friends and enemies, Spaniards, French, English and Hollanders live upon her; the treaties of 1715 convert the Dutch into her purvey- ors and tax-2;atherers. At this moment, become Aus- trian, she refuses the subsidy; but the elders of the states are imprisoned, and the chief one, Anneessens, dies on the scaffold ; this is the last and a feeble echo of the mighty voice of Van Artevelde. Hence- forth the country subsides into a simple province in which people keep soul and body together and only care to live. At the same time, and through a reac- tion, the national imagination declines. The school of Rubens degenerates ; with Beyermans, Van Herp, John Erasmus Quellin, the second Van Oost, Deys- ter and Jolin Van Orley we see originality and energy disappearing ; coloring grows weak or be- comes affected ; attenuated types incline to pretti- ness ; expression is either sentimental or mawkish ; the personages occupying the great canvas, instead of filling it are dispersed, the intervals being supplied 73* THE NETUERLAXDS. 159 with architecture ; the vein is oxliaiisted ; iiainting is more routine or a mannered imitation of the Italian scliooU Many betake themselves to foreign countries. Philippe de Champagne is director of the Academy of the Fine Arts at Paris and becomes French in mind and country ; still more, a spiritualist and Jansenist, a conscientious and skilful painter of grave and thoughtful spirit. Gerard de Lairesse becomes a disciple of the Italians — a classic, aca- demic and erudite painter of costume and historic and mvtholoo;ic resemblances. The logical reason assumes empire in the arts, having already obtained it in social matters. Two pictures in the Musee of Ghent equally display the change in painting and the change in society. Both represent princely entrees, one in 166G and the other in 1717. The first, of a beautiful ruddy tone, shows the last of the men of the grand epoch, their cavalier air, their powerful frame, their capacity for physical endeavor, their rich decorative costumes, their horses with Avith flowing matu'S — here nobles related to Xwn Dyck's seigniors, and there pikemen in but!" and cuirass kindred to the soldiers of Wallestein — in IGO THE PIIILOSOPIIT OF ART short, the last remains of tlie heroic and picturesque age. The second, cold and pale in tone, shows highly refined, softened, Frenchified beings — gentle- men clever at salutation, women of fashion con- scious of their appearance, in brief, the imported drawing-room system and foreign modes of de- meanor. During the fifty years separating the former from the latter both the national art and the national spirit vanished. I2i THE NETHEliLAynS. 161 lY. Whilst the Southern proA'inces, henceforth subject and Catliolic, followed the Italian road in art, and represented on their canvasses the mythological epos of the grand and heroic nude figure, tlie provinces of the North, becoming free and Protestant, devel- oped their life and art in another direction. The climate is more rainv and colder, and for this reason the presence of the nude is a rarer and less sym- pathetic thing. The Germanic race is clvister, and through this quality the mind is less inclined to appreciate classic art, as it was conceived of by the Italian renaissance. Life is more difficult, more laborious, and more economic; man, therefore, ac- customed to effort, to forethougrht and to a method- ical self-government, has more trouble in compre- liendino: the fascinatinsc dream of a sensuous and full-blown existence. We can imagine the Dutch citizen in his home after the day's toil at his business. His dwelling consists of small apartments, some- 162 THE PHILOSOniY OF ART Avhat resembling tlie state-rooms of a sliip ; it wouUl Ite a troublesome matter to suspend on the walls the large pictures decorating the saloons of an Italian 2)alace ; its owner's chief requirements are cleanliness and comfort ; with these he is content and does not insist on decoration. According to the Venetian ambassadors, " they are so moderate that, even with the richest, one sees no unusual pomp or luxury They make no use of retainers or silken habits, very little silver-ware, and no tapestry in their houses ; the household numbers a very few and is very limited. Outside and inside, in dress and in other matters, all maintain the true moderation of small fortunes, nothing superfluous being perceptible." * "Wlien the Earl of Leicester came to take command in Plolland in the name of Elizabeth, and Spinola arrived to negotiate peace for the King of Spain, their regal magnificence formed a striking contrast and even provoked scandal. The head of the re- public, William the Taciturn, tlie hero of the age, wore an old mantle wliich a student would have pro- * Motley's "United Netherlaiid*," Vol. IV. p. 551. Rei)ort of Con- tarini, 1609. IX THE NETHERLANDS. 1G3 nounced threadbare, with a pourpoiiit like it, unbut- toned, and a woollen waistcoat resembling that of a bargeman. In the next century the adversary of Louis XIV., the grand pensioner Jolm de Witt kept only one domestic ; everybody could approach him ; he imitated his illustrious predecessor, who lived cheek-by-jowl with "brewers and bourgeois." We find yet at the present day, in their social ways, many an indication of ancient sobriety. It is clear that with such characters there is but little room for the decorative and voluptuous instincts which else- where in Europe fashioned aristocratic show, and rendered comprehensible the pagan poesy of beauti- ful bodies. The opposite instincts, in eifect, predominate. Relieved of the di-awback of the Southern provinces, Holland, at the end of the sixteenth century, sud- deidy and witli extraordinary energy turns in the direction of its natural pi'oclivities. Primitive incli- nations and faculties appear with the most strik- ing results; they are not a new birth, but simply a revelation. Good observers had detected tliem a huiidi-ed and fii'tv vears bef)i-e. " Friesland is 164r THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART free," said Fope ^iieas S^-lvius,* " lives in her own fasliion, will not endure foreign empire, and has no desire to dominate over others. The Frieslander does not hesitate to face death in behalf of liberty. This spirited people, used to arms, of large and robust frames, calm and intrepid in disposition, glories in her freedom notwithstanding that Philip, Duke of Burgundy, proclaims himself lord of the country. They detest military and feudal arro- gance, and tolerate no man who seeks to raise his head above his fellows. Tlieir magistrates are elected annually by themselves, and are obliged to administer public matters with equity. . . . They severely punish licentiousness among women . , . They scarcely admit an unmarried priest lest he should corrupt the wife of another, recrardino- con- tinence as a difficult thing and beyond the natural powers." Every Germanic conception of state, mar- riage and religion are here visible in germ, and forecast the final flowering of the republic and of Protestantism. Subjected to trial by Philip IT, they offer to sacrifice beforehand " their lives and * Oo8inographia, p. 4:21 TX THE XETIIEELAXDS. 1G5 their property." A small population of traders, lost on a mud-heap at the extremity of an empire more vast and more feared than that of Napoleon, resisted, subsisted and increased under the weicfht of the colossus -who tried to crush her. Their siefjes are all admirable ; citizens and women, supported by a few hundreds of soldiers, arrest an entire army before ruined ramparts, the best troops in Europe, the o-rcatest o;enerals and the most skilful eiio-in- eers ; and this remnant of emaciated people, after feeding on rats, boiled leaves and leather for months, determine, rather than surrender, to place the infirm in the centre of a square and go forth to die in the iiitrenchments of the enemy. The details of this war must be read in order to realize the extent to which man's patience, coolness and energy may be carried.* On the sea a Dutch vessel is blown up rather tlian strike its flag, while their voy- ages of discovery, colonization and conquest, in Nova Zembla, India and Brazil, by the way of the Straits of Magellan, are as magnificent as their * Among others the capture of Bois-le-Duc by Ileraugiere and sixty nine volunteers. 166 THE PHILOSOPHY OF APT combats. The more Ave demand of human nature the more slie gives; lier faculties are exalted iu their exercise, while the limits to her power of doing and suffering are no longer perceptible. Finally, in 1G09, after thirty years warfare, the cause is won, Spain recognizes their independence, and during the whole of tlie seventeenth century they are to play a most prominent part in the aftairs of Europe. Xo power can make them yield, neither Spain during a second war of tw^enty-seven years, nor Cromwell, nor Cliarles II., nor England com- bined with France, nor the fresh and formidable power of Louis XIY. ; after three wars their am- bassadors are all to be seen in humble and fruit- less entreaty at Gertruydenberg, and the grand- pensioner Ileinsius, is to become one of the three potentates to control the destinies of Europe. Internally their government is as good as their external position is exalted. For the first time in the world conscience is free and the lio-hts of the cit- izens are respected. Tlieir state consists of a com- munity of provinces voluntarily united, which, each within its own borders, maintains with a degree of ly THE XETIIERLAXDS. IG u perfection unknown till then the security of the pub- lic and the liberty of the individual. "They all love liberty," says Parival in IGGO; "no one among them is allowed to beat or abuse another, while the women servants have so many privileges their masters, even, dare not strike tliem." Full of his admiration^ he repeatedly insists on this wonderful respect for human personality. " There is not to-day a prov- ince in the world which enjoys so much liberty as Holland, with so just a harmony that the little can- not be imposed upon by the great, nor the poor by the rich and opulent . . . The moment a seignior brings into this country any serfs or slaves they are free; yes, and the money he laid out in their pur- chase is lost . . . The inljabitants of a villaoje havintj paid what they owe are as free as the inhabitants of a citv . . . And above all each is kino; in his own house, it being a very serious crime to have done violence to a bourgeois in his own domicile." Every- body can leave the country when he pleases, and take all the money he pleases with him. The roads are safe day and night even for a man traveling alone. The master is not allowed to retain a domestic 16S THE PHILOSOPIIY OF ART against his will. Nobody is troubled on account of his rehgion. One is free to say what he chooses, " even of the magistrates," and to denounce them. Equality is fundamental. "Those who hold office obtain consideration rather through fair dealing than advance themselves over others by a proud bearing." A nation like this cannot fail to be prosperous; when man is both just and energetic the rest comes to him as surplus. At the beginning of the War of Inde- pendence the population of Amsterdam was 70,000 ; in 1618 it was 300,000. The Venetian ambassadors reported that people swarmed in the streets every hour of the day as at a foir. Tlie city increased two- thirds ; a surface equal to the size of a man's foot was worth a gold ducat. The country is as good as the city. Nowhere is the peasant so rich and so able to derive advantaoje from the soil: one villao;e possesses four thousand cows ; an ox weighs two thousand pounds. A farmer oflers his daughter to Prince Maurice with a dowry of one hundred thou- sand florins. Nowhere are industrial pursuits and manufactures so perfect; cloths, mirrors, sugar-refin- eries, porcelain, pottery, rich stufts of silk, satin and IX THE NETHERLANDS. 1G9 brocade, iron-ware and ship-rigging. Tliey supi)l_y Europe with half of its luxuries and nearly all its transportation. A thousand vessels traverse the Baltic in quest of raw material. Eight liundred boats are engaged in the herring fishery. Vast com- panies monoijolize trade with India, China and Japan ; Balavia is the centre of a Dutch empire ; at this moment, 1G09, Holland on the sea and in the woi'ld is Avhat England was in the time of Napoleon. She has a marine of one hundred thousand sailors ; in war time she can man two thousand vessels; fifty years after she maintains herself against the com- bined fleets of France and England ; year after year the great stream of her success and prosperity is seen to increase. But its source is yet more bounti- ful than the stream itself; that which sustains her is an excess of courage, reason, abnogaticMi, will and genius; "this people," say the Venetian ambassa- dors, " are inclined to labor and industry to such a degree that no enterprise is too difficult for them to succeed in . . . Tliey are born for work and for priva- tion, and all are doing something, some one way and pome another." ^lu'-li pi-oduction and light con- 8 170 THE PIIILOSOPIIY OF aut sumption is the mode of growth of public prosperity. The poorest, "iu their small and humble habita- tions," have all necessary things. The richest in their fine houses avoid the superfluous and ostenta- tion ; nobody is in want, and nobody abuses ; every one is employed with his hands or his mind. " All things ai*e made profitable," says Parival ; " there are none, even to those who gather ordure out of the canals who do not earn half-a-crown a day. Chil- dren even who are learninor their trades almost earn their bread at the start. Thev are so inimical to bad government and to indolence that they have places in which tlie magistrates imprison idlers and vaga- bonds, also those Avho do not properly attend to their business — the complaints of wives or family relations being a sufficient warrant, and iu these places they are obliged to work and earn their sub- sistence whether they will or not." The convents jire transformed into hospitals, asylums and homes for orphans, the former revenues of lazy monks sup- porting invalids, the aged, and widows and children of soldiers and sailors lost in war. The army is so efficient that any of its soldiers mio-ht serve as ly THE NETHERLANDS. 171 captain in an Italian army, while no Italian captain wouUI be admitted in it as a common soldier. In culture and instruction, as well as in the arts of or- ganization and of government, the Dutch are two centuries ahead of the rest of Europe. Scarcely a man, woman or child can be found who does not know how to read and write (1G09). Every village has a public school. In a bourgeois family all the boys read Latin and all the girls French. Many people write and converse in several foreign lan- guages. It is not owing to simple precaution, to habits of laying up and calculations of utility, but they appreciate the dignity of science. Leyden, to which the States-General propose a recompense, after its heroic defense, demands a University ; no pains are s[)arcd to attract to it the greatest savans of Europe. The States themselves unite, and through Henry IV, cause letters to be sent to Scaliger, who is poor and a professor, begging him to honor the city with his presence; no lessons will be required of hira ; they merely wish him to come and converse with the eru- dites, direct their efforts, and allow the nation to [>articipate in the fame of his writings. Under this 172 TEE PHILOSOPHY OF ABT regime Leyden becomes the most renowned scLool in Europe ; she has two thousand students ; philoso- phy hunted out of France finds refuge there ; dui-ing the seventeenth century HoHand is the first of thoughtful countries. The positive sciences here find their native soil, or the land of their adoption. Scaliger, Justus Lepsius, Saumaisius, Meursius, the two Heinsius, the two Dousa, Marnix de Ste-Alde- gonde, Hugo Grotius and Snellius preside over learning, laws, physics and mathematics. The Elze- virs carry on printing. Lindshoten and Mercator furnish instruction to travellers and develop geo- graphical science. Ilooft, Bor and Meteren write the history of the nation. Jacob Cats provides its poetry. Theology, which is the philosophy of the day, takes up, with Arminius and Gomar, the question of grace, and, even in the smallest villages, agitates the minds of peasants and bourgeois. The Synod of Dordrecht at length in 1609 constitutes the oecumenical council of the Reformation. To this primacy of speculative intellect add that of practical genius : from Barnevelt to De Witt, from William the Taciturn to William III., from Heems- /_y TUE NETHERLANDS. 173 kerck the admiral to Von Tromp and De Ruyter, a seqneDce of superior men are at the head of art and business matters. It is under these eircum- stances that the national art appears. xVU the great original painters are born iu tlie first tliirty years of the seventeenth century, after grave danger had passed away, when the final victory was assured, Avhen man, sensible of great tilings accomplished, points out to his children the onward path which has been cleared by his vigorous arm and stout heart. Here, as elsewhere, the artist is the offspring of the hero. The faculties employed in the creation of a real world, now t])at the work is accomplished, reach beyond and are employed in the creation of an imaginary world. Man has done too much to go back to school ; the field spread out before him and around him lias been peopled by his activity ; it is so fjlorious and so fecund he can lontTf dwell upon and admire it ; he need no longer subdue his own thouglit to a foreign thought; he seeks and dis- covers his own peculiar sentiment ; he dares to con- fide himself to it, to pursue it to the end, to imitate nobody, to derive all from himself, to invent with no 174 THE PUILOSOPIIY OF ART other guide but the voiceless preferences of his own senses and his own affections. His inner forces, his fundamental aptitudes, his primitive and hereditary- instincts drawn out and fortified by experience con- tinue to operate after his experience, and, when they have formed a nation they form an art. Let us consider this art. It manifests throuirh col- ors and forms all tlie instincts tliat have just ap- peared in actions and in works. So long as. the seven provinces of tlie North and the ten provinces of tlie South formed but one nation they had but one school of art. Engelbrecht, Lucas of Leyden, John Schoreel, the elder Heemskerck, Corneille of Harlem, Bloeraaert and Goltzius paint in the same style as their contemporaries of Bruges and Antwerp. There is not as yet a distinct Dutch school, because there is not as y-et a distinct Belgian school. At the time when the War of Lidependence begins the painters of the North are laboring to convert themselves into Italians like the painters of the South. After tlie year 1600, however, there is a complete change in painting as in other things. The rising sap of tlie nation gives predominance to tlie national instincts. AY TUE yETIIERLAXDS. 175 Nudities are no longer visible ; the ideal figure, the beautiful human animal living in full sunshine, the noble svmmetrv of limbs and attitude, the 2;rand al- legoric or mythological picture is no longer adapted to Germanic taste. Galvanism, moreover, which now rules, excludes it from its temples, and amidst this population of earnest and economic laborers there is no seigneurial display, no widespi-ead and grandiose epicureanism which, elsewhere, in the palaces and iu proximity to luxurious silver, liveries and furniture, demands the sensual and pagan canvas. When Amelia of Solm desires to raise a monument in this style to her husband, the stadtholder Frederic Henry, she is oblicced to send to Oranciesaal for the Flemish artists Van Thulden and Jordaens. To these real- istic imaginations and amidst these republican cus- toms, in this land where a shoemaking privateer can become vice-admiral, the most interesting figure is one of its OAvn citizens, a man of flesh and blood, not draped or undraped like a Greek, but in his own cos- tume and ordinary attitude, some good magistrate or valiant ofticer. The heroic style is suited to but one thing, the great portraits which decorate the 1 70 TUB PHILOSOPUY OF ART town-lialls and public institutions in commemoration of services rendered. We see, in fact, a new kind of picture make its appearance here, the vast canvas on which are displaj'ed five, ten, twenty and thirty full- length portraits as large as life, hospital directors, arquebusiers on target excursions, syndics assembled around a table, officers ofiering toasts at a banquet, professors giving clinical lectures, all grouped ac- cording to their pursuits, and all presented to view with the costume, arms, banners, accessories and surroundings belonging to their actual life; it is a veritable historical picture, the most instructive and most impressive of all, where Franz Hals, Rembrandt, Govaert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, Theodore de Keyser and John Ravenstein depict the heroic age of their nation, where sensible, energetic and loyal heads possess the nobleness of power and of conscience, where the fine costume of the renaissance, the scarfs, the buff vests, the frills, the lace collars, the pour- jioints and the black mantles thi-ow their gravity and brilliancy around the solid portliness of the stout forms and frank expressions of the faces, where the artist, now through the virile simplicity of his 7.V THE NETHEELANDS. 177 means, now throiigh the strength of his convictions, becomes the equal of bis heroes. Such is painting for the public; there now remains painting for private life, that whicli decorates the houses of individuals, and which, in its dimensions as well as subjects, conforms to the condition and character of its purchasers, " There is no bourgeois so poor," says Parival, " who does not liberally in- dulge his taste this way," A baker pays six hun- dred florins for a single figure by Van der Meer of Delft, Tills, along with a neat and agreeable inte- rior, constitutes their luxury; " thej^ do not grudge money in this direction, which they rather save on their stomachs," The national instinct re-appears here the same as revealed in the first epoch with John Van Eyck, Quintin Matsys, and Lucas of Ley- den ; and it is emphatically the national instinct, for it is so deep and so active that, even in Belgium, in close proximity to mythological and decorative art, it runs throucch the Breuorhels and Teniers like a small brook alongside of a broad river. It exacts and provokes the representation of man as he is and life as it is, both as the eye encounters them, citizens, 8 * 1 73 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART peasants, cattle, shops, taverns, rooms, streets and landscapes. There is no need to transform tliem in order to ennoble them ; they are satisfied if they are wortliy of interest. Nature, in herself, whatever she may be, whether human, animal, vegetable or inani- mate, with all her irregularities, minutiae and omis- sions, is inherently right, and, when comprehended, people love and delight to contemplate her. The object of art is not to change her, but to interpret her ; through sympathy it renders her beautiful. Thus understood, painting may represent the house- keeper spinning in her rural cot, the carpenter plan- ing on his work-bench, the surgeon dressing a rustic's arm, tlie cook spitting a chicken, the rich dame washino: herself; all sorts of interiors, from the hovel to the drawing-room ; all sorts of types, from the rubicund visage of the deep drinker to the placid smile of the well-bred damsel ; every scene of refined or rustic life — a card-party in a gilded saloon, a peas- ant's carouse in a bare tavern, skaters on a frozen canal, cows drinking from a trough, vessels at sea, the entire and infinite diversities of sky, earth, water, darkness and daylight. Terburg, Metzu, Gerard IX THE NETUERLAXDS. 179 Dow, Van der Meer of Delft, Adrian Broawer, Sclialcken, Franz Mieris, Jan Steen, Wouvernian, the two Ostades, Wynants, Cuj'p, Van dor Neer, lluysdael, Ilobbema, Paul Potter, Backhuysen, the two Vanderveldes, Philip of Koenig, Van der Heyden, and how many more ! There is no school in which artists of original talent are so numerous. "When the domain of art consists, not of a small summit, but of the wide expanse of life, it otfers to each mind a distinct field ; the ideal is narrow, and inhabited only by two or three geniuses ; tlie real is immense, and provides places for fifty men of talent. A tran- quil and pleasing harmony emanates from all these performances. We are conscious of repose in look- ing at them. The spirit of the artist, like that of his figures, is in equilibrium ; we should be quite content and comfortable in his picture. We realize that his imagination does not go beyoml. It seems as if he, like his personages, were satisfied witli mere li\ ing. Nature appears to him excellent ; all he cares for is to add some arrangement, some tone side by side with another, some effect of light, some clioice of attitude. In her presence he is like a haiipy-wedded 180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF APT Hollander in the presence of his spouse ; he would not wish her otherwise ; he loves her through afiec- tionate routine and innate concordance ; at the ut- most his chief requirement of her will be to wear at some festival her red frock instead of the blue one. He bears no resemblance to our painters, ex- pert observers taught by esthetic and philosophic books and journals, who depict the peasant and the laborer the same as the Turk and the Arab, that is to say, as curious animals and interesting specimens ; who charge their landscapes w^ith the subtleties, re- finements and emotions of poets and civilians in order to rid themselves of the mute and dreamy revery of life. He is of a more niiive order ; he is not dis- located or over-excited by excessive cerebral activ- ity ; as compared to us he is an artizan ; when he takes up painting he has none other than picturesque intentions; he is less affected by unforeseen and striking detail than by simple and leading general traits. His work, on this account, healthier and less poignant, appeals to less cultivated natures, and pleases the greater number. Among all these paint- ers, two only — Ruysdael, in spiritual finesse and m THE NETnERLAXDS. ISl marked superiority of education, and Rembrandt especially, iu a peculiar structure of the eye and a "\v0nderfull3' wild genius — developed, beyond their age and nation, up to the common instincts whicli bind the Germanic nations together and pave the Avay for modern sentiments. Tlie latter, constantly collecting his materials, livinsf in solitude and borne along by the growth of an extraordinary faculty, lived, like our Balzac, a magician and a visionary in a world fashioned by his own hand and of which he alone possessed the key. Superior to all painters in the native delicacy and keenness of his optical per- ceptions, lie compi-ehended this truth and adhered to it in all its consequences that, to the eye, the essence of a visible object consists of the spot (tache), that the sunplest color is infinitely complex, that every visual sensation is the product of its elements coupled willi its surroundings, that each object on the field of sight is but a single spot modified by others, and tliat, iu this wise, the principal feature of a picture is tlie ever-present, tremulous, colored atmosphere into which figures are plunged like fishes in the sea. He rendered tliis atmosphere palpable, 1S3 THE PniLOSOPUY OF ART aiul revealed to us its mysterious and thronging pop- ulation ; he impregnated it with the light of his own country — a feeble, yellow illumination like that of a lamp in a cellar ; he felt the mournful struggle between it and shadow, the weakness of vanishing rays dying away in gloom, the tremulousuess of re- flections vainly^ clinging to gleaming walls, the sura of that vague multitude of half-darks which, invisible to ordinary gaze, seem in his paintings and etchings to form a submarine world dimly visible through an abyss of waters. On emerging from tliis obscurity the full light, to his eyes, proved a dazzling shower ; he felt as if it were flashes of lightning, or some magical effulgence, or as myriads of beaming darts. He found accordingly, in the inanimate world the completest and most expressive drama, all contrasts and all conflicts, whatever is overwhelming and pain- fully lugubrious in night, whatever is most fleeting and saddest in ambiguous shadow, whatever is most violent and most irresistible in the irruption of day- liglit. Tliis done, all tliat remained was to impose the human drama on the natural drama; a stage thus fashioned indicates of itself its own characters. IN THE NETHERLANDS. 183 The Greeks and Italians had known of man and of life onlv tlie straiHitest and tallest stems, the healthy flower bloomhig in sunshine ; he saw the root, evervthinsx which crawls and moulders in shadow, the stunted and deformed sprouts, the obscure crowd of the poor, the Jewry of Amster- dam, the slimy, suffering populace of a large city and unfavorable climate, the bandy-legged beggar, the bloated idiot, the bald skull of an exhausted craftsman, the pallid features of the sick, the whole of that grovelling array of evil passions and hideous miseries which infest our various civilizations like Avorms in a rotten jihuik. Once on this road he could comprehend the rc4igion of grief, the genuine Christianity ; he could interpret the Bible as if he were a Lollard : he could recognize the eternal Christ as present now as formerly, as living in a cellar or tavern of Holland as beneath a Jerusalem sun ; the healer and consoler of the miserable, alone capable of saving them because as poor and as miserable as themselves. He too, through a reaction, was con- scious of jiity ; by the side of others who seenx painters of the aristocracy he is of the people ; he 184 TUE PHILOSOPHY OF ART is, at least, the most humane; his broader sympa- thies embrace more of nature fundamentally ; no ugliness repels him, no craving for joyousness or nobleness hides from him the lowest depths of truth. Hence it is that, free of all trammels and guided by the keen sensibility of his organs, he has succeeded in portraying in man not merely the general struc- ture and the abstract type which answers for classic art, but again that which is peculiar and profound in the individual, the infinite and indefinable com- plications of the moral being, the whole of that changeable imprint which concentrates instantane- ously on a face the entire history of a soul and which Shakespeare alone saw with an equally prodi- gious lucidity. In this respect he is the most origi- nal of modern artists, and forges one end of the chain of which the Greeks forged the other; the rest of the masters, Florentine, Venetian and Flem- ish, stand between them; and when, nowadays, our over-excited sensibility, our extravagant curiosity in the pursuit of subtleties, our unsparing search of the true, our divination of the remote and the obscure in human nature, seeks for predecessors and IX THE XETEERLAXDS. 185 masters, it is in him and in Shakespeare that Balzac and Dehxcroix are o,ble to find them. A blooming period like this is transient for the reason that the sap which produces it is exhausted by its production. Towards 1GG7, after the naval defeats of England, slight indications show the o-rowins: chano;e in the manners, customs and senti- ments which had stimulated the national art. The prosperity is too great. Already, in 1660, Parival, speaking of this, grows ecstatic in every chapter ; the companies of the East and West Indies declare dividends to their stockholders of forty and fifty per cent. Heroes become citizens ; Parival notices the thirst for o-ain anioncj those of the hio-jiest class. And more, " they detest duels, contentions and quar- rels, and commonly assert that well-ofi" people never figlit." They want to enjoy themselves, and the houses of the great, which the Venetian ambassadors early in tlie century find so bare and so simj)le, be- come luxurious; among the leading citizens there are foimd tapestries, high-priced pictures and " gold and silver-plate." The rich interiors of Terburg and Jletzn show us the new-found elegance — the light 186 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART silk dresses, velvet bodices, the gems, the pearls, the hangings honey-combed with gold, and tlie lofty chimneys witli marble columns. Ancient energy relaxes. When Louis XIY. invades the country in 16'72 he finds no resistance. Tlie army has been neglected; their troops are disbanded ; their towns surrender at the first l)low, four French cavaliers take Muyden which is tlie key to the floodgates ; the States-General implore peace on any terms. The national sentiment degenerates, at the same time, in the arts. Taste becomes transformed. Rembrandt in 1669 dies poor, almost without anybody's knowl- edge ; the new-found luxury is satisfied w^ith foreign models obtained from France and Italy. Already, during the most flourishing epocli, a number of p.aint- ers had gone to Rome to paint small figures and landscapes ; Jan Both, Berghem, Karl Dujardin, and many others — Wouvermans himself— form a half-Ital- ian school alongside of the national school. But this school was spontaneous and natural ; amid tlie mountains, ruins, structures and rags of the South the vapory whiteness of the atmosphere, the genial- ity of the figures, the mellow carnations, the gfvyety /xY TUE XETUERLAXDS. 187 and good humor of the })ainter denote the persist- ency and freedom of the Dutch instinct. On the other hand, we see at this moment this instinct be- comins: enfeebled under the invasion of fashion. On the Kaisergracht and the Ileeregracht rise grand liotels in the style of Louis XIV., while the Flemisli painter who founded the academic school, Gerard de Lairesse, comes to decorate them with his learned allegories and hybrid mythologies. The national art, it is true, does not at once surrender; it is pro- longed by a succession of masterpieces up to the first years of the eighteenth century ; at the same time the national sentiment, aroused by humiliation and danger, excites a popular revolution, heroic sacrifices, the inundation of the country, and all the successes which afterwards ensue. But these very successes complete the ruin of the energy and enthu- siasm which this temporary revival had stimulated. During the whole of the war of the Spanish succes- sion, Holland, whose stadtholder became King of England, is sacrificed to its ally ; after the treaty of 1713 she loses her maritime supremacy, falls to the second rank of powers, and, finally, still lower; 188 THE PIIILO SOPHY OF ART Frederic the Great is soon able to say that she is dragged in tlie wake of England like a sloop behind a man-of-war. France tramples on her during the Avar of the Austrian succession ; later, England im- poses on her the right of search and deprives her of the coast of Coromandel. Finally, Prussia steps in, overwhelms the republican j^arty and establishes the stadtholdcrship. Like all the weak slie is hustled by the strong, and, after 1789, conquered and recon- quered. What is worse she gives up and is content to remain a good commercial banking-house. Al- ready in 1723 her liistorian, John Leclerc, a refugee, openly ridicules the valiant seamen who, during the War of Independence, blew themselves up rather than strike their flag.* In 1732, another historian de- clares that " the Dutch think of nothinor but the ac- cumulation of riches." After 1748 both the army and the fleet are allowed to decline. In 1787 the Duke of Brunswick brings the country under subjec- tion almost without striking a blow. What a dis- tance between sentiments of this cast and those of * " This good cnptain belonged to those who die for fear of dying. If God forgives such people it is because they are out of their mind." ly THE NETHERLANDS. ISO the companions of William the Taciturn, De rvuytev and Von Tromp ! Hence it is that, through an ad- mirable concordance, -we see picturesque invention terminating with practical energy. In ten years after the commencement of the eighteenth century all the great painters are dead. Already for a gen- eration a decline is manifest in the impoverished stvle in the more limited imagination and in more minute finish of Franz Mieris, Schalcken, and the rest. One of these, Adrian Van dcr "Werf, in his cold and polished painting, his mythologies and nudities, his ivory carnations, his impotent return to the Italian style, bears witness to the Dutch oblivion of native tastes and its own peculiar genius. His successors resemble men who attempt to speak witli nothing to say ; brought up by masters or famous parents, Peter Van der Werf, Henry Van Limborch, Philip Van Dyck, :\Iioris the y.ounger, and another the grandson, Nicholas Verkolie, and Constantine Xets- cher repeat sentences tliey have heard, but like au- tomatons. Talent survives only among painters of accessories and flowers — Jacques de Witt, Rachel Ruysch and Van Huysum — in a small way, which 190 ^RT IN THE NETHERLANDS. requires less invention and -which still lasts a few years, similar to a tenacious clump of bushes on a dr)^ soil whereon all the great trees have died. This dies in its turn, and the ground remains vacant. It is the last evidence of the dependence which attaches individual originality to social life, and proportions the inventive faculties of the artist to the active energies of the nation. THE END, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. j^ II SHiL "^.m\\\^^ RECJILD-URI 1 JAN ^FEB21199e 2I13£ aO;/t-7,'68(Jl!:iy5sl)--C-ll.'0 3 1158 00750 7733 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FAG^^^^^^^ AA 000 457 588 2