[Illustration: PLATE XXX.--PIETER DE HOOCH INTERIOR OF A DUTCH HOUSE _National Gallery, London_] the closing scene. The maid has betrayed the affair to the father, and he is delivering a lecture to the young lady, in whom by turning her back on the spectator, the painter has happily expressed the feeling of shame; good repetitions are in the Berlin Museum, and in the Bridgewater Gallery. But Terburg's perfection as regards the clearness and harmony of his silvery tone is shown in a picture at Cassel, representing a young lady in white satin sitting playing the lute at a table. JAN VERMEER OF DELFT (1632-1675) was certainly a pupil of Fabritius, and thus "grandson" of Rembrandt. To class him with painters of _genre_ seems almost a profanation of the exquisite sense of beauty with which, almost alone among the Dutch painters, he seems to have been endowed. It is like classing Walter Pater with art critics. But as Vermeer had to express himself in some form, it is perhaps fortunate that the school had developed this kind of poetic portraiture, under Terburg, Metsu and others, to a point where a genius like Vermeer could use it as the vehicle of his fascinating self-revelations. In landscape we have the _View of Delft_, at the Hague, which has shown the nineteenth century painters more than they could ever see in their more famous predecessors; but it is in the simple compositions like _The Letter Reader_ at Amsterdam, _The Proposal_, at Dresden, or the _Lady at the Virginals_, in the National Gallery, that he displays his greatest power and charm. IV PAINTERS OF ANIMALS As a link between the painters of _genre_ and the landscapists, we may here mention some of the numerous artists who either made landscape the background for groups of figures and animals, or peopled their landscapes with groups--it matters not which way we put it. Among these we shall find several of the most famous, or at any rate the most popular artists of the Dutch School. PHILIPS WOUVERMAN (1619-1668), whose reputation during the last century was greater than that of almost any of the Dutch painters except Rembrandt and Dou, is said to have studied under Hals, but it is more certain that the master from whom he learnt most, if not all, was Jan Wynants at Haarlem, whose whole manner in landscape he quickly succeeded in acquiring, and surpassed him in his facility with horsemen and other figures.