It is interesting to compare these observations, so far as they refer to the realism which characterises Netherlandish painting, with those of Dr Waagen, who it will be seen explains it on the broader grounds of national temperament. "Early Netherlandish painting," he contends, "in its freedom from all foreign influence, exhibits the contrast between the natural feeling of the Greek and the German races respectively in the department of art--these two races being the chief representatives of the cultivation of the ancient and the modern world. In this circumstance consists the high significance of this school when considered in reference to the general history of art. While it is characteristic of the Greek feeling--from which was derived the Italian--to idealise,--and to idealise, be it observed, not only the conceptions of the ideal world but even such material objects as portraits,--by the simplification of forms and the prominence given to the more important parts of a work of art, the early Netherlanders, on the other hand, conferred a portrait-like character upon the most ideal personifications of the Virgin, the Apostles, Prophets, and Martyrs, and in actual portraiture aimed at rendering even the most accidental peculiarities of nature, like warts and wrinkles, with excruciating fidelity. "While the Greeks expressed the various features of outward nature--such as rivers, fountains, hills, trees, etc.--under abstract human forms, the Netherlanders endeavoured to express them as they had seen them in nature, and with a truth which extended to the smallest details. "In opposition to the ideal, and what may be called the personifying tendency of the Greeks, the Netherlanders developed a purely realistic and landscape school. "In this respect the other Teutonic nations are found to approach them most nearly, the Germans first, and then the English."