Meanwhile Philip’s long reign of forty-three years was drawing to a close. In May, 1598, he handed over the Netherlands to his daughter and son-in-law, the Archduke Albert, and a few weeks later died. It is sufficient for our present purpose to recall that the prolongation of the war on behalf of the archduke by various generals, including Spinola, was stopped by the bankruptcy of the attacking parties. A truce of twelve years was agreed to in 1609. Such was the background of events that preceded the birth of a new art in Holland. A new nation had been formed, and the circumstances which attended its formation had a direct influence in shaping the character of the new art. That it involved a departure from the decorative grandeur and the religious motive of Italian art was an incident of the Dutch having repudiated alike the Roman Catholic form of worship and the ceremonies of a regal court. Almost equally incidental was the fact that the artists were limited to subjects drawn from the personages and conditions of life within their own borders; were influenced, in fact, to become realists. This, I repeat, was incidental and not unexampled, for realism was at the same time revived in Italy and continued in Spain. The fundamental thing was to be the character of Holland’s realism; and this was a direct product of the national events we have been describing. For it was a symptom of the general character that the people had been forming in itself during more than half a century of nation-building. It was essentially a moral character. I need hardly say that I do not use the word “moral” in its narrower sense, but to the full extent of its suggestion of a stout fiber of conviction and purpose that habitually promotes integrity of conscience and determines the conduct of a nation or an individual. It is nearer to our borrowed word, “morale.” It is the product, I take it, primarily of a great and worthy pride in self, and then of loyalty to the best in one’s self that such pride engenders and makes necessary. It is what an artist, least of all men, can afford to be without; for his work is necessarily an expression of himself, and, if he has not morality in the sense we have been describing, his work will inevitably betray the fact and prove the weaker for it. No artist in any medium can maintain a bluff. Even if it hoodwinks his contemporaries, posterity will “call it.”