A Wanderer in Holland

ht and

eitner-A Dort carver-The Synod of Dort-"The exquisite rancour of theologians"-La Tulipe Noire-Bernard Mandeville-The exclusive Englishman-The Castle of Loevenstein-The e

es her as she was seen so often, and painted so often, by

wegen. We carried a very mixed cargo. In a cage at the bows was a Friesland mare, while the whole of the de

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in days, to give their German brethren, higher up the river, a chance; past meadows golden with marsh marigolds; past every kind of craft, Page 31most attractive of all being the tjalcks with their brown or black sails and green-lined hulls, not unli

esting movement of the shipping. I found the town distracting under the incessant clanging of the tram bell (yet grass grows among the paving-stones between the rai

nd the Merwede; and when in 1549 Philip of Spain vis

alis, me Linga

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n, disappeared; but the four rivers still

no notice, but went singing to her cows; and having milked, went as merrily away. Coming to her master's house, she told what she had seen. The master wondering at it, took the maid with him and presently came to Dort, told it to the Burgomaster, who sent a spy immediately, found it true, and prepared for their safety; sent to the States, who presently sent soldiers into the city, and gave order that the river should be let in at such a sluice, to lay the country under water. It was done, and many Spaniards were drowned and utterly disappoin

all the wine, corn, timber and whatever else might be imported by way of the Rhine. At Dort the cargoes were unloaded. For some centuries she enjoyed this privilege, and then in 1618 Rotterdam began to resent it so acutely as to take to arms, and the financ

of the streets, crossed by a series of little bridges. Seen from these bridges it is the nearest thing to Venice in all Holland-nearer than anything in Amsterdam. One may see it not only from the bridges, but also from little flights of steps off the ma

e perpendicular as to shed their water into the gutter, thus enabling the passers-by on the pavement to walk unharmed. I cannot give chapter or verse for this comfortable theory; which of course preceded the ingenious Jonas Hanway's invention of the umbrella. In a small and very

was more human, more simple, than Claude. The symbol for him is a scene of cows; but he had great versatility, and painted horses to perfection. I have also seen good portraits from his busy brush. Faithful to his native town, he painted many pictures of Dort. We have two in the National Gallery. I ha

art, for it saw the birth also of Vermeer of Delft and Peter de Hooch. Maes, who studied in Rembrandt's studio, was perhaps the greatest of all that mas

site page. We have at the National Gallery or the Wallace Collection no Maes equal to this. His "Card players," however, at the Nati

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added nothing. It is even conceivable Page 35that he might have injured it b

more Rembrandtesque manner on account of the objectio

is master. We are wiser to-day; yet Bol had a fine free way that is occasionally superb, often united, as in the portrait of Dirck van der Waeijen at Rotterdam, to a delicate charm for which Rembrandt cared little. His portrait of an astronomer in our National Gal

n the centre of the town; and Ary Scheffer's sentimental and saccharine inventions fill three rooms in the museum. It is amusing in the midst of this riot of meek romanticism to remember

tunity for studying the work of G. H. Breitner, the painter of Amsterdam canals. The master of a fine sombre impressionism, Breitner has made such scenes his own. But he can do also more tender and subtle things. In this coll

e of life can be captured by a painter is wonderful enough; but there seems to me something more extraordinary in the successful conquest of the difficulties which confront an artist of such ambition as this Dort carver. His tri

years after the carving was made, held the Congress which virtually decided the fate of Spain in the Netherlands. Brill had begun the revolution (as we shall see in our last chapte

at Chur

ge

ated by the sequence of towns in the itinerary rather than by the sequence of events in time. The death of William the Silent, for example, has to be set forth in the chapter on Delft, where the tragedy occurred, and where he lies buried, long before we reach the description of the siege of Haarlem and the capture of De Bossu off Hoorn, while for the insurrection of Brill, which was

nto eternal life those who through his grace believed in Jesus Christ, and continued stedfast in the faith; and, on the contrary, had resolved to leave the obstinate and unbelieving to eternal Page 38damnation; secondly, that Christ had died for the whole world, and obtained for all remission of sins and reconciliation with God, of which, nevertheless, the faithful only are made partakers; thirdly, that man cannot have a saving faith by his own free will, since while in a state of si

was that Holland's Calvinism was intensified; Barneveldt (who had been in prison all the time) was, as we shall see, beheaded; Grotius and Hoogenbeets were sentenced to imprisonment for life; and Episcopius, the Remonstrant leader at the Synod, was, together with many oth

pius was one, coined apparently in the Duchy of Brunswick, bearing Page 39on the one side the figure of Truth, with the motto, "Truth overcomes all things

in the craft and duplicity of the Stadtholder; but if ever a French philosopher and a French grisette masqueraded as a Dutch horticulturist and a Frisian waiting-maid they are Cornelius van Baerle and his Rosa; and if ever a tulip grew by magic rather than by the laws of nature it was the tulipe noire. No matter; there is but one Dumas. According to Flotow the composer, William III. of Holland told Dumas the story of the black tulip at his

Dort, on his bed of sickness, and carried thence to the Hague, to be imprisoned in the G

onal hypocrisies-so advanced, indeed, that several of the more revolutionary of the thinkers of the present day, whose ideas are thought peculiarly modern, have not really got beyond it. Af

it seemed well to join the excursion to Gorinchem; and thence we steamed on a fine cloudy Sunday, the river whipped grey by a strong cross wind, and the little ships that beat up and passed us, all aslant. At Gorinchem (pronounced Gorcum) we changed at once into another steamer, a sorry tub, as wide as it was short, and steamed to Woudrichem (called Worcum) hoping to explore the fortress of Loevenst

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but after a while the form was omitted. Grotius's wife, a woman of no common order (when asked why she did not sue for her husband's pardon, she had replied, "I will not do it: if he have deserved it let them strike off his head"), was quick to notice the negligence of the guard, and giving out that her husband was bedridden, she concealed him in the chest, and he was dumped on a tjalck and earned over to Gorcum. While on his journey he had the shuddering experience of hearing som

towers as of old. Worcum is hardly altered; but Gorcum's railway and factories have enlarged her borders. She has now twelve thousand inhabitants,

a hat at Gorcum unless it would court disaster. The town is gay and spruce, bright as a new pin; the people are outrageous. I suppose that the hat turned down at the precise point at which, according to Gorcum's canons of taste, it should have turned up. Whatever it did was unpardonable, and we had to be informed of the solecism. We were informed in various ways; the men whistled,

us. We waited for the ecstatic moment when their faces should light with the joke. Sometimes a mother standing at the door would see us and call to her family to come-and come quickly, if they would not be disappointed! Women, lurking behind Holland's blue Page 43gauze blinds, would be seen to

us and took no notice. To bulk so hugely in the public eye became a new pleasure. I had not known b

d over the Boers had nothing to do with Gorcum's feelings. The town's ?sthetic id

explore the town. But there is a limit even to the passion for notoriety, and we had rea

l with rich colour, who used to get Andreas van der Velde to put in the figures. He has a view of Cologne in the National

ooth meadows and vast woods as far as one can see: plovers all the way. The light transfiguring this

ir four poles high and naked above them, like scaffolding. But now, in August, they were all resting on the top pegs, a solid s

as not asked to pay. I have an uneasy feeling that it was an oversight, and that if by any chance this statement meets an authoritative eye some one may be removed to one of the penal establishments and steps be taken to collect my debt. But so it was. And yet it is possible that the free right o

e all interest in churches as beautiful and sacred buildings having died out of Holland, never to return, no effort was

re

nces. The Hollanders are accused of mere apishness in employing the Gothic style, and of downright dulness in apprehending its import and beauty. Yet a man who has found that bit of Rotterdam which beats Venice; who has seen, from under Delft's lindens on a summer evening, the image of the Oude Kerk's leaning tower in the still canal, and has gone to bed, perchance to awake in the moonlight while the Nieuwe Kerk's many

the laborious articulation of these millions of clay blocks one first finds Egypt; then quickly remembers how indigenous it all is, and how characteristic of the untiring Hollander, who rules the waves even more proudly than the Briton, and Page 46has cheated them of the very ground beneath his feet. And if sermons may be found in bricks as well as stones, one has a thought whi

on the opposite page, the principal figure in the lower one-in the middle, in white-being Jan van Scorel himself. The faces are all such as one can believe in; just so, we feel, did the pilgrims look, and what a thousand pities there was no Jan van Scorel to accompany Chaucer! These are

s to Je

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in the Kunstliefd

cht in 1638. His portraits are very rich: either he had interesting sitters or he imparted interest to them. Opposite page 40 I have reproduced his portrait of a lady in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam, which amongst so many fine picture

any treasures, all ecclesiastical, and seventy different kinds of lace; but to me it is memorable for the panel portrait of a w

nd-called the Maliebaan; but more beautiful are the semi-circular Oude and Nieuwe Grachts, with

he world. Its date is 1680, and it represents accurately the home of a wealthy aristocratic doll of that day. Nothing was forgotten by the designer of this miniature palace; special paintings, very nude, were made for its salon, and the humblest kitchen utensils are not missing. I thought the most interesting rooms