The _Windmill_ (1641) is Rembrandt’s first _dated_ etching. It is truly a portrait of a place, not only in its outer aspect, but in that inner spirit which, if it be present, moves us so profoundly, as in the case of Meryon’s etchings of Paris and Piranesi’s plates of ancient Roman edifices; or, if it be absent, leaves us disappointed and cold. In the _Windmill_, “we feel the stains of weather, the touch of time, on the structure; we feel the air about it and the quiet light that rests on the far horizon as the eye travels over dike and meadow; we are admitted to the subtlety and sensitiveness of a sight transcending our own; and even by some intangible means beyond analysis we partake of something of Rembrandt’s actual mind and feeling, his sense of what the old mill meant, not merely as a picturesque object to be drawn, but as a human element in the landscape, implying the daily work of human hands and the association of man and earth.”[12] [12] Rembrandt’s Landscape Etchings. By Laurence Binyon. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly. Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 414. [Illustration: REMBRANDT. THE WINDMILL Size of the original etching, 5¾ × 8¼ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] [Illustration: REMBRANDT. THREE TREES Size of the original etching, 8½ × 11 inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] To the same year belong the _Landscape with a Cottage and Haybarn_ and _Landscape with a Cottage and a Large Tree_, two delightfully spacious plates. There is one etching in 1642, the _Cottage with a White Paling_, in which dry-point is judiciously used to give richness to the shadows. To the following year, 1643, belongs the _Three Trees_, the most famous of Rembrandt’s landscape etchings. Note how Rembrandt has suggested the passing of a summer thunder-storm, the rain-charged clouds rolling away to the left, while from the right the returning sunshine bathes the composition in glory, making each freshly washed leaf and blade of grass sparkle in its beams. Even the hard, slanting lines of rain in the upper left portion of the plate have their purpose, affording a needed contrast to the swiftly changing clouds, which the freshening breeze drives before it over the peopled plain and the far-reaching sea in the distance. In 1645 there are five landscape etchings. If the _Three Trees_ is Rembrandt’s most elaborate plate, _Six’s Bridge_ is, in some ways, his most learned performance. According to tradition, it was etched “against time,” for a wager, at the country house of Rembrandt’s friend, Jan Six, while the servant was fetching the mustard, that had been forgotten, from a neighboring village. There is, however, nothing hasty or incomplete about it. It is, to use Whistler’s words, “finished from the beginning,” beautifully balanced, not a line wasted, of its kind a perfect work of art.