There is a winning charm in this simple Eastern face that no words of mine can express.

All that is hard in the Dutch nature dissolves beneath her reluctant smile.

She symbolises the fairest and sweetest things in the Eleven Provinces.

She makes Holland sacred ground.
Vermeer, although always a superb craftsman, was not always inspired.

In the next room to the "View of Delft" and the girl's head is his "New Testament Allegory," a picture which I think I dislike more than any other, so false seems to me its sentiment and so unattractive its character.