His commission was the Flood, and his picture when finished consisted of a sheet of water with a Dutch cheese in the midst bearing the arms of Leyden.

The cheese and the arms, he pointed out, proved that people had been on the earth; as for Noah and the ark, they were out of the picture.
Jan Steen's picture of "A Quaker's Funeral" I have not seen, but according to Pilkington it is impossible to behold it and refrain from laughter.

The subject does not strike one as being in itself mirthful.
A century earlier Leyden had produced another Jan, separated from Jan Steen by a difference wide asunder as the poles.

Yet a very wonderful man in his brief season, standing high among the world's great madmen.

I mean Jan Bockelson, the Anabaptist, known as Jan of Leyden, who, beginning as pure enthusiast, succumbed, as so many a leader of women has done, to the intoxication of authority, and became the slave of grandiose ambition and excesses.