The Dutch miniature painters have here some dainty pieces. Of Van der Helst's we see his renowned "Introduction of the Bride," a scene from Dutch patrician life, with somewhat strongly exaggerated respectability and affluence. The bridegroom's parents, themselves still young, are seated on a garden terrace clad in their holiday attire, and with gloves in their hands; the youngest son, stylishly dressed, with a parrot in his hand, is looking with strained attention towards the bridal couple, who are ceremoniously ascending the terrace; two greyhounds by the side of the parents, a lap-dog by the bride's side, take part in the performance; and loudest of all is the parrot, whom the master is obliged to call to order by an indignant "Keep still!" Notwithstanding its size (it has a width of more than three metres), the picture is painted with a minuteness of detail, from the frills of the mother to the rustling silk of the bride's dress and the thin foliage of the poplars in the background of the garden, that would do honor to any miniature painter. To be sure, our impressionist creed of the present day does not allow the recognition of such painstaking elegance and neatness in the execution of details. However, doctrines pass away, but, thank Heaven, the pictures remain. The numerous domestic genre pictures, Terborch's famous "Glass of Lemonade," Jan Steen's "Drunken Woman," held up to derision by her husband, and the "Visits of the Physician," who is feeling the pulse of a young woman, evidently embarrassed, while the doctor, with a significant smile, is exchanging remarks with an old woman, by Metzu, as well as certain physicians' examinations, by Gerhard Dou, that cannot further be described, are all notable, not only for the execution of the velvet and silk fabrics, of the glasses and the interiors, but even more for the unfailing firmness of characterization in movement and physiognomy. Certainly these are great painters, and their works are true cabinet-pieces. Composition must always swing between painstaking accuracy and bold impressionism. Yet nothing could be more foolish than the contempt for miniaturists in a period of impressionism and the contempt for impressionists in a period of painful detail. "In my Father's house are many mansions." What shall we say of the works of Ostade, Teniers, Wouwerman, Pottes, and Ruysdael? The Hermitage not only contains an inexhaustible abundance of their productions, but includes their very best works. Potter has a wolf-hound and dairy farm, an animal group of the highest plasticity, and a quite modern transparency of atmosphere. Tenier has pieces that show him to have been not only a grotesque humorist but also a great landscape-painter; and of Ruysdael there are true pearls like the "Sand Road" and the "Bay Lake."