_The Avenue_, on the contrary, is an extraordinary instance of a moment’s heightened vision of the facts, boldly grasped and carried through unerringly to a grand conclusion. Again, in the other pictures named, especially in Mr. Morgan’s _The Water Mill_, there is evidence of something more than talent. A consummate knowledge of forms, skill of compositional construction, and ability to create an ensemble of tonality are here reinforced by a comprehension of the feeling of the scene, that has lifted it out of mere representation and enhanced its significance. But unfortunately the talent, transfigured in these examples, is, in the general run of this artist’s pictures, squandered; used without conscience and permitted to drift into heartless mannerism. The fact is that, judged by the final test of the quality of the painter’s mental and artistic attitude toward his subject, the majority of Hobbema’s pictures rank considerably below par. It is such work as the generality of his, which makes the student of Dutch art sometimes pause in his wanderings through the galleries and ask himself whether there is not a great deal of perfunctoriness and tedious iteration among these old masters of Holland. There is, and the fact may as well be grasped first as last. It is a school of great craftsmen, who sometimes worked indifferently, punctuated with a considerable number who rise conspicuously above their fellows, but among these exceptions, save on rare occasions, Hobbema is not to be reckoned. [Illustration: VIEW OF HAARLEM JACOB VAN RUISDAEL FROM HILL OF OVERVEEN RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM] CHAPTER XII JACOB VAN RUISDAEL