Vermeer would never have painted such a crowded group (however masterly) as that of Terburg's "Peace of Munster" in our National Gallery; he could not have brought himself so to pack humanity.

Among all the Dutch masters I find no such fastidious aristocrat.
He, Vermeer, has another picture at the Ryks--"De brief" (No.

2528)--which technically is wonderful; but the whole effect is artificial and sophisticated, very different from his best transparent mood.
Any mortification, by the way, which I might suffer from the knowledge that No.

2527 can never be mine is allayed by the knowledge, equally certain, that it can never be any one else's.

Money is powerless here.