Another school of painting naturally arose in Holland as the expression of the character of the people and of republican customs. A nation that without greatness had done so many great things, as Michelet says, required an heroic style of painting, if it may be so called, destined to illustrate its men and achievements. But simply because the nation was without greatness, or, to speak more accurately, without the outward form of greatness--because it was modest, and inclined to consider all alike equal in face of the fatherland, because all had done their duty, yet each abhorred that adulation and apotheosis which glorify in one person the virtues and triumphs the mass,--this style of painting was needed, not to extol a few eminent men or extraordinary events, but to represent all classes of citizens by occurrences of the most ordinary and peaceful moments of bourgeois life. Hence those large pictures representing groups of five, ten, or even thirty persons, gunners, syndics, officials, professors, magistrates, men of affairs, seated or standing round tables, feasting or arguing, all life-size and faithful portraits, with serious open countenances, from which shines the quiet expression of a tranquil conscience, from which one divines, rather than sees, the nobility of lives devoted to their country, the spirit of that laborious and dauntless epoch, the manly virtues of that rare generation. All this is relieved by the beautiful costumes of the Renaissance, which so admirably combined grace with dignity,--those ruffs, jerkins, black cloaks, silken scarfs, ribbons, arms, and banners. Van der Helst, Hals, Govert, Flink, and Bol were masters in this style of art. To leave the consideration of the different branches of painting, and to inquire into the particular methods which the Dutch artists adopted and the means they employed to accomplish their results, one chief feature at once presents itself as the distinctive trait of Dutch painting--the light.