30 
MEMOIR OP 
education Tvitli a perfect gallaxy of talent on every 
side, botlr in her domestic circle and by so many of 
her gifted countrymen in Planders and Holland. The 
great and deserved celebrity of Rubens, Vandyke, 
Rembrandt, and others of the Flemish school of 
painting, was a means of inducing many others to 
tread in the same path, emulous of the honours 
and wealth which had been heaped upon these 
bright ornaments of a country at that time distin- 
guished alike by the transcendant abilities of these 
men, and by the wealth which poured into it firom 
its colonial possessions, and extensive and almost 
monopolising commercial enterprise. These circum- 
stances mainly contributed, in our opinion, to foster 
the genius of that nation for the Fine Arts; 
and tliis taste continued to prevail in the Low 
Countries many years after the time which we have 
adverted to, and only declined when the enter- 
prize of other more fortunate and active competitors 
stepped forward to divide with them the empire of 
the seas and the sway of their foreign possessions. 
Flower painting as well as the cultivation of parti- 
ticubw flowers, have ever been favourite luxuries 
with the Dutch, and we find the works of Van 
Iluisum, Van Os, and many others, were produced 
about the period of which we are writing, and no 
doubt were treasured by Madam Merian as models 
for her study and imitation, along with the other 
fine pictures which she must have been in daily 
habit of examining. 
Several of the members of Madam Meiian’s 
