The direct approach is down the Gallery of Honour, where one has this wonderful canvas before one all the way, as near life as perhaps any picture ever painted.

It is possible at first to be disappointed: expectation perhaps had been running too high; the figure of the lieutenant (in the yellow jerkin) may strike one as a little mean.

But do not let this distress you.

Settle down on one of the seats and take Rembrandt easily, "as the leaf upon the tree"; settle down on another, and from the new point of view take him easily, "as the grass upon the weir".

Look at Van der Helst's fine company of arquebusiers on one of the side walls; look at Franz Hals' company of arquebusiers on the other; then look at Rembrandt again.