painting. There he sits, perfectly happy; his son is the Bean-King, and stands on a stool wearing a gilt crown; his old mother, with the happiest wrinkled face, holds the youngest scion in her arms; the musicians play their maddest, merriest dancing melodies, while the ever economical thinking, economically grumbling good wife is set forth to all futurity as if she were tipsy!
How often in my lodgings in Leyden have I thought over the domestic life which this glorious Jan Steen must have experienced and endured. Many a time it seemed that I saw him in the body, sitting at his easel, now and then grasping the great pitcher, "reflecting and drinking, and drinking yet again without reflection." It is not a dreary Catholic spectre, but a modern bright and merry spirit of joyousness, which, now that he is gone, haunts his studio, to paint jolly pictures and drink. Such will be the ghosts whom our descendants will see at times by bright daylight, while the sun shines through the clear white panes; while it is not a black and doleful bell, but scarlet-swelling tones of trumpets, which, pealing from the tower, will announce the pleasant dinner-hour!
The memory of Jan Steen is, however, the best, or rather the only pleasant souvenir of my dwelling in Leyden. Had it not been for that, I should never have held out for eight days in
