The Hermitage, St.Petersburg.] Of all Rembrandt's pictures, this was the one that made the profoundest impression upon the child when he had become a man.

Other works, such as _The Shipbuilder and his Wife_ at Buckingham Palace, _The Syndics of the Drapers_ at Amsterdam, that ripe expression of Rembrandt's ripest powers, convinced him of the master's genius.

He was deeply impressed by the range of portraits and subject-pictures at the Hermitage Gallery, many of which, by the art of Mr.Mortimer Menpes, have been brought to the fireside of the untravelled; but the _Christ at Emmaus_ revealed to him the heart of Rembrandt, and showed him, once and for all, to what heights a painter may attain when intense feeling is allied with superb craftsmanship.
He found this intensity of emotion again in the _Portrait of his Mother_ at Vienna.

The light falls upon her battered, wrinkled face, the lips are parted as in extreme age, the hands, so magnificently painted, are folded upon her stick.

When we look at Rembrandt's portrait of _An Old Woman_ at the Hermitage Gallery, with that touch of red so artfully and fittingly peeping out from between the folds of her white scarf, we feel that he can say nothing more about old age, sad, quiescent, but not unhappy; when we look at the portrait of _An Old Lady_ in the National Gallery (No.