to have paused for a few moments to allow the dust to settle before he uncovered the picture" (Merritt's _Art Criticism and Romance_, i. 170). The German painter Sandrart relates that he once visited Dou's studio and admired the great care bestowed by the artist on the painting of a broomstick. Dou remarked that he would still have to work at it for three days more. The history of his pictures is a remarkable instance of industry rewarded. In his lifetime an amateur of the name of Spiering used to pay him one thousand florins a year--in itself a good income--for the mere privilege of having the first offer of his pictures; and since his death their value has steadily increased. Of his life, beyond what has been stated above, little is known. He was the son of a glazier at Leyden, and was apprenticed successively to an engraver and a glass-painter. At the age of fifteen he entered the studio of Rembrandt, with whom he remained three years. He lived nearly all his life in his native town. Among his pupils were Schalcken (199), Mieris (840), and Metsu (838). This fine portrait is painted (says Sir Edward Poynter) in a style unusually large and free for the master. 193. LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS LEAVING SODOM. _Guido_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See 11._ This and the companion picture (196) are interesting as being two of the nation's conspicuously bad bargains. The purchase of them at very high prices, £1680 and £1260, was indeed one of the grievances that led to the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1853, and to the subsequent reconstitution of the Gallery. "Expert" witnesses declared before the Committee that these two pictures ought not to have been bought at any price or even accepted as a gift. Ruskin had some time previously written to the _Times_ about them as follows:-- "Sir, if the canvases of Guido, lately introduced into the Gallery, had been good works of even that bad master, which they are not,--if they had been genuine and untouched works, even though feeble, which they are not,--if, though false and retouched remnants of a feeble and fallen school, they had been endurably decent or elementarily instructive,--some conceivable excuse might perhaps have been by ingenuity forged, and by impudence uttered, for their introduction into a gallery where we previously possessed two good Guidos (11 and 177) ... but now, sir, what vestige of an apology remains for the cumbering our walls with pictures that have no single virtue, no colour, no drawing, no character, no history, no thought?" (_Arrows of the Chace_, i. 64, 65). 194. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS. _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._