not an individual of his family, friends, or acquaintances, not the
slightest scrap of paper bearing the mark of his hand, but has been peered
into, scrutinised, tracked to its source, and written about voluminously.
The bibliography of Rembrandt would fill a library. Several lengthy and
learned catalogues of his works have been published in volumes so large
that a child could not lift one of them. His 450 pictures, his
multitudinous drawings, his 270 etchings, their authenticity, their
history, their dates, the identification of his models, have been the
subjects of innumerable books and essays. Why, it would have taken our
golfer three months just to read what has been written about one of
Rembrandt's pictures--that known as _The Night Watch_. He might have begun
with Bredius and Meyer of Holland, and M. Durand-Greville of France, and
would then have been only at the beginning of his task. People make the
long journey to St. Petersburg for the sake of the 35 pictures by Rembrandt
that the Hermitage contains. He is hailed to-day as the greatest etcher the
world has ever known, and there are some who place him at the head of that
noble triumvirate who stand on the summit of the painters' Parnassus,
Velasquez, Titian, and Rembrandt. Having browsed and battened on Rembrandt,
and noted the countless cosmopolitan workers that for fifty years have been
excavating the country marked on the art map Rembrandt, you can perhaps
understand why our golfer likened the work of his commentators to the
incessant activity that his upturning of that grey, lichen-covered boulder
revealed.

[Illustration: THE HOLY FAMILY WITH THE ANGELS

1645. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]

But had our golfer, brimming with the modern passion for efficiency,
learned foreign tongues, and browsed in the musty archives, he would have