Class „ VA ^ CopiglitN^. COFOUGUr DEPOSIT. / 74 7 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Dutch Fisher Children. From a painting by Jozaf Israsls. / 9 (^5^i-u HOLLAND 73 AND THE HOLLANDERS BY DAVID S. MELDRUM AUTHOR OF **THE STORY OF MARGREDEL With Numerous Illustrations NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1898 38879 Copyright, 1898, By Dodd, Mead and Company. rWOCOPic:,s ^EC!ZIV£0. "b % ^v JUN5-1899 )) Cop- ^^^f of - -'" John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. -laV^V V A. A 'Oca 2 TO MANY FRIENDS IN HOLLAND Table of Contents Page Impressions of Holland of To-day ...... i How Holland is Governed ..,,,... 148 The Fight with the Waters , . » » , . . . 196 How Holland is Educated 244 4 'S Hertogenbosch and the Southern Provinces . 265 Utrecht, and the East 287 Groningen and the North 314 Amsterdam and the Holland Provinces . . . . 350 Middelburg and the Islands of Zeeland . . . . 392 Illustrations ^y Page Dutch Fisher Children Frontispiece Amsterdam 3 Leidschendam 7 A North-Holland Canal 13 A ZuiDER Zee Type 16 The Vital Strength of North-Holland , . 21 North Sea Fisher Folk « . 25 The Hayloft . 31 A Mill in North Brabant . 41 The Sheep Shed 45 A Zeeland Girl 48 A Farm on the Sand 4 51 A Fisher-Child of Scheveningen 56 The Last Load 61 Zuidlaren, in Drente 65 A Dutch Interior 69 A Woman of Dutch Flanders 72 The Heeren Gracht, Amsterdam ^-^ An Amsterdam Apple Woman Z^ Homewards 87 On a Lonely Farm 91 The Canal Horse 94 A Marken Boy 99 The Farm Labourer 105 Church-goers in North Brabant iii The Village 117 A Man of Long Views 127 A Peasant Boy „ 133 Hay-making 139 xii ILLUSTRATIONS Page In an Eastern Province 143 Dogs in Cart 147 The Stadhuis at The Hague 153 The Burgomaster of Marken t6o A Gossip 173 A Peep in the Hague 177 The Maurits huis, in the Binnenhof, The Hague i8r The Meeting-place of the Chambers, in the Binnenhof, The Hague 185 Portrait of H. M. Queen Wilhelmina, in Frisian Costume . 192 The Palace in the Noordeinde 195 The Little Mill 197 On the North Sea . . 203 Fresh Fish 207 The Bridge in the Meadow 213 The Storm • • • 219 The Mill 225 North Sea Fishermen 231 — In the Docks, Amsterdam 234 The Ditch 240 Map of Holland ' . 241 Cow-girl 247 Holiday Weather 253^ Soldier 256 The Farm 259 Ploughing . 267 In Maastricht 273 The Church of Breda 280 Home-coming Sheep 289 In the Wood 297 A Town Canal 304 The Dog in the Cart 310 -4-- Washing Day 318 A Kermis Fantasy 324 Tramps 331 -^Rye-bread 341 \y' Skating 343 The Milch-cow 347 Street Vendor . " 352 An Amsterdam Type 355 ILLUSTRATIONS xiii Page '-jAn Amsterdam Type 359 The West Tower 363 A Rotterdam Type 367 Marken Father and Son 371 The Maassluis 375 RijswijK 3S2, The Harbour 387 The Cathedral of Dort 390 A Lady of Tholen 394 Woman of the Isle of Walcheren 396 Going to Market in Walcheren 398 Brabant Costume 400 Dutch Costume 402 Holland and the Hollanders ^ IMPRESSIONS OF HOLLAND OF TO-DAY WHETHER he lands at Flushing or at The Hook, or crosses the frontier at Emmerich or Venlo or Roosendaal, the holiday-maker almost always turns his steps at once into the well-beaten tracks between the Zuider Zee and the Schelde. He is led, thus, to most that seems characteristic of Holland : the Zuider Zee itself, with its fleets of fishing-boats, its islands and sand-banks, the '' dead cities " on its shores, — Enkhuizen, Medemblik, Hoorn, Stavoren ; — Zaandam, of the windmills ; Amsterdam, with her narrow streets and busy quays, her pictures, her leaven of modern ideas working in stiff traditions, fighting, in defiance of exclusion from the sea, to maintain her commercial prestige against the upstart Rotterdam ; Delft, where the StadJwiiders sleep encircled by countless canals; the archipelago of Zeeland, insularly conservative : a land of windmill and canal, of deep green fields, often treeless, of dikes and inland seas and lakes, of curi- ously costumed fisher- and country-folk. Such, not I 2 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS unnaturally, is the tourist's picture of Holland, for it is the true picture of the Holland of his route. Yet he may easily miss the real significance of all that he sees. He may find himself upon a great Dutch dike with green fields lying round cosy farm towns far beneath him on the one hand, and on the other, a few feet only below where he stands, the waters of the North Sea lapping the granite dike-face ; yet he may not realise that four provinces are, like the fields and the farms, endangered by the ocean. As he drives across the flat lands of the polders from Alkmaar to Purmerend, or sails down the North Sea Canal through the Y-polders, little more than an inkling of all that that reclamation entailed may come to him. He may traverse North-Holland and Friesland, and cross the Biesbosch, without a guess at tragedies comparable only with those of the Khodinsky Plain and the seis- mic wave in Japan, — of scores of villages swallowed up in a day, and the continent on which they stood become a sea. Or, if he goes between Amsterdam and Leiden, to see the Haarlemmer Meer which was drained so recently as 1848 at a cost of seven hundred thou- sand pounds, it is certain that, with all the knowledge of these and other figures he can boast, he may not be persuaded that the accident was possible which is de- scribed thus in the official report of the undertaking : " A curious phenomenon occurred in connection with the outer dike of the canal on the east side of the lake, where it crossed an area o.f floating soil which bordered wide ponds near the village of Aalsmeer. An area of many acres, de- Di jo' w tc < rt 4 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS tached by the canal from the old works of defence against the lake, found itself one fine day driven by the tempest from the bank of the canal to the other side of the pond. The proprietor implored the aid of the Commission. His land had floated to the opposite shore, widely separated from his other fields, and resting on water that was not his own. By the continued effort of the proprietor and of the Commission, these fugitive fields were towed back to the borders of the canal and pinned in place by piles and poles which pre- vented them from undertaking another voyage." Holland of the tourist is like these acres, liable to float away were she not pinned in her place in Europe by piles and poles; but these are hidden underground, and so her danger is not obvious. It is no wonder if the traveller misses the true significance of what he looks upon, — the all-importance of half an inch of water. We must turn to the map (which ought always to be open at hand when we read of Holland) if we too are not to miss its significance. In the first place, this '' tourist area " is the lowest-lying portion of the country. All who have travelled on Dutch waterways must have noticed on their course black or blue boards, evidently for water measurements, with white indicating lines, and the letters A. P. *' A. P.," which stands for " Amsterdamsche Peil," was the symbol for the average flood-level of the Y at Amsterdam. That was in the days before the Y was drained and made a canal, and when It was an Inland lake stretching to Halfweg on the south and almost to Beverwijk on the west; and HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 5 its ordinary flood level then is still used as the zero point in all water measurements in Holland. Now if, starting at Den Helder in the north of North-Holland, we draw a line to inclose Friesland and the north of Groningen, and following the eastern shores of the Zuider Zee to about Naarden, from there south to Gor- kum, where the Waal and the Maas meet, and then in a southwesterly direction to take in the islands of Zee- land, the line so drawn, with the coast-line on the North Sea, defines the tourist area at its most extended reach. Saving the fringe of dunes on the sea, — the great natural dikes behind which the Netherlands were born, — all this area is at or below A. P. Whereas, with the exception of a fringe of Friesland (which can scarce be said to be in the tourist route) and of Overysel, on the east shores of the Zuider Zee, all the remainder of Holland is above A. P. ; and some parts of it, as in the south of Limburg and the centre of the Veluwe, are very considerably above it. With the map still before us, let us consider the geographical history of this portion of Holland which it is convenient to name the " tourist area." It is the delta of great rivers that burst their mountain barriers, and bit by bit deposited in the inland sea within the dunes a new country, — a quaking morass, but tree- grown, and a footing for man where once the waters lay. The rivers had conquered for a time. A belt of low fen half lay, half floated, beyond the diluvium. But the tide turned. Listead of a peninsula thrown boldly out into the ocean, now we find a broken coast, 6 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS compressed by the ocean which grips the rivers at the throat. From the Eems to the Schelde, the sea is blatant of its triumphs. For long it had menaced the low fen at the Eems mouth, and in 1277 it swal- lowed up twenty thousand acres, with thirty-three vil- lages upon them. Thus the Dollard was formed. In the same way and about the same time the Lauwers Zee (the Groningen Diep) came into existence, and Dokkum found itself a sea-town. On the map of Hol- land of the twelfth century, Texel and Vlieland and the crescent of islands to the Baltic were joined with the mainland. The Ysel issued on the sea through the narrow channel between Texel and Den Helder, and the Vlie through another on the north of the present Vlieland. In the heart of the Northern Prov- inces lay the Lake of Flevo. By the great flood , of All Saints' Day, 11 70, the lowlands by these rivers began to fall away. In the succeeding two centuries, nearly a million acres had been engulphed, and by the beginning of the fifteenth, there was left the Zuider Zee of to-day, with only the islands of diluvium appearing upon it. Come down the coast of North-Holland, where the natural dunes seem to bar the sea's encroach- ments. Here is Schoorl, where the English landed in 1799. Those of them who were killed were buried within the dunes. In 1864, their bones were found on the seaward side. At Katwijk, where the decrepit Rhine is lifted into the ocean, the House of the Britons commanded the old mouth. It emerged from the dunes in 1520, and in 1694, when they were last seen, 8 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS the foundations were sixteen hundred paces out to sea. Katwijk and Egmond and Scheveningen have con- stantly to be removed inland. In 1570 half of the vil- lage of Scheveningen disappeared ; and the present church, now looking over the sea, was built in place of one two miles nearer the shore hi the centre of the village of that time. To this day, the High Street, the old dike, of Rotterdam preserves the green fields to Delft as by a miracle. Where now a string of fishing- boats can hardly issue to the sea at Brielle upon the Maas cabined and confined, William HI. sailed out in 1 69 1 wdth a mighty fleet. The peat-beds on the coast of South-Holland are the remains of great forests that stood far inland from the sea. The Biesbosch was the centre of a low fen country, resting on North-Brabant, upon which lived a busy population : in November, 142 I, the deluge came, twenty-five thousand acres fell in, and thirty-five villages disappeared from sight. There is scarce a foothold in the islands of Zeeland and South-Holland that has not been submerged within historic times. The all-conquering sea, taking the clay the rivers poured inter it, quickened it to richer prop- erties, and flung it back upon the islands and unpro- tected coasts and far up the river valleys. Thus Groningen and Friesland, and the West Friesland por- tion of North-Holland, tlie islands of South-Holland and of Zeeland, and Dutch Flanders across the Schelde, are all sea clay. The country, successfully assaulted by the ocean thus, was not without natural defence. All round it, HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 9 from the mouth of the Zwin to Texcl and from Texel to Rottum, there was a wall of sandhills broken only where the rivers issued upon the sea. This stretch of wreathed and twisted and undulating sand, the crown of the sand dihu^um that slopes gently into the ocean to the outer fringes of the dangerous sandbanks that are the terror of mariners on the Netherlands coast, was the defence of Holland. It is her defence still. Where, as we have seen, it broke down, there were rivers issuing through it to the sea; and opposite these sea-gates, the rivers had cut channels in the sand- banks that helped to their own and the land's defeat. When sailing from Den Helder to Texel, or among the islands of Zeeland and South-Holland, you can see these channelled banks at low water like white sails on the western horizon, and if you were near them would find them bubbling with a life which the inrushing tide will speedily drown. But portions of the old dunes still protect the existing islands, and a range of them, practically unbroken, stretches from The Hook to Den Helder. The sea beats upon them ; it compresses them, it gnaws them, it drives them eastwards; but it has not broken through them ; and when it withdraws for a fresh attack, the wind, sweeping over the shore, lifts the sun-dried sand and carries it to them to renew their defence, and sprinkles it on the land within. Something will be said later about the appearance of this range of dunes against which the tides have been powerless, of their flora and fauna; what has to be noted here is that the country lying behind them is not 10 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS clay, as It is where the sea has made its inroads, but is a stretch of low fen. From the dunes sometimes we come phimp upon this low land, but generally the descent is through sloping sandy fields. On these there is a rich growth of young wood that hides the view as we traverse them, but a steeple peeping up here and there tells of a village nestling on this inner slope of the dunes, and every now and then through a break in the under- growth we catch a glimpse of potato patches, and of the market-gardening, penuriously guarded, for which this tract is famous. And then at the lower edge of this sandy stretch, we cross the deep canals, lined with polled willows, that separate it from the low alluvial soil of Holland. From here to the eastern limits of what we have called the tourist area, the land lies at or below the A. P. water-level. For all the water upon it, there are no rivers ; rivers flow to the sea, but here there is no slope to the sea, unless it be the slope up- wards. For the land, in many places, is below the level of the ocean. So the river waters gathered, and lay stagnant. Mile after mile of low morass came into existence. But it was fen in greater or less solution. Where the sea-waters made these great excursions in the north and south of which we have spoken, it was the more soluble fen they washed out. So it was at the Dollard and the Zuider Zee. Sometimes, too, they overran the firmer tract, and scooping out the softer fen upon it left inland lakes, — deep, wide sheets of water that stormed and raged when the wind blew, till HOLLAND OF TO-DAY II they burst their bounds and carried destruction to the country around. Such was the famous Haarlcmmer Meer, and such are some of the Friesland lakes. The land was woodless, so the inhabitants dredged the peat- beds for fuel, and in this way the waters gathered into inland lakes. The whole country was a series of sheets of water, separated by tracts of mud and bog which themselves were constantly being submerged. Grad- ually the water gained upon the land. Before 1 53 1, there were on the area of the Haarlemmer Meer four small lakes, with villa,fyes uoon their banks, the names of which we know. By the end of the century, one of the villages was gone; by the middle of the next there were no villages but only names to remember, and the four lakes had become one. During the Eighty Years' War, naval battles were fought upon this inland sea. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, it had gained until it covered forty-five thou- sand acres. On November 9, 1836, a hurricane from the west drove its waters to the gates of Amsterdam, submerging ten thousand acres. Six weeks later, by a hurricane from another direction, the country to Leiden was under water, and the lower part of the city inundated. What was happening on this great scale in North-Holland, w^as happening on a lesser all over this tourist area. From the western dunes to the eastern diluvium, Holland was one great swamp. To-day, although the surface of this area is changed, the natural conditions remain the same. The ocean still flings itself against the dunes, striving to burst its 12 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS way in, or stealthily creeps up and down them, looking for an opening. It still is dispossessing the rivers, casting them back in confusion headlong upon the land. The country within the dunes has not changed its level. It still is at the mercy of the sea, should it pierce the dune-barriers ; it still is a reservoir for all the inland and rain waters. It wears a new, smiling face, but its constitution is the same as ever. In the old natural conditions, therefore, we find the expla- nation of the special and peculiar characteristics of the tourist area, — its dikes, its polders, its windmills ; and they are the measure of the patience and skill of Dutch engineering. Where the dunes are weak, they are artificially strengthened ; as can be seen on the shore of the Westland, the rich market-gardening tract south of the Hague, they are sometimes flanked by a dike. Where the dunes have been broken, dikes fill the gaps, — at Westkapelle, on the Island of Wal- cheren, and on the coast of North-Holland near Pet- ten. At Den Helder, the visitor can see the enormous chain that protects the neck of North-Holland ; and he can most easily compass the cities of the Zuider Zee by driving along the dikes that skirt its low-lying shores. Again, where the ocean has choked the rivers, new mouths have been made for them ; or else new waterways have been dug to the sea, and the dunes boldly cut to give them exit. The history of the Amsterdam and Rotterdam waterways is a story of marvellous enterprise. But the Dutch engi- neering works are for reclamation as well as for de- J ;;; < ;:^ "A < ;^ u >^ K ^ a •— " 1-1 ^ o ^ X c/) X .n H •^ P^ O T^ <5 rt 14 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS fence. The sea is kept from further encroachments, and the rivers are confined at least within their winter beds ; and in addition both sea and rivers are being coriipelled to give up their eadier conquests. No sooner does the sea leave a sufficient deposit of clay on the outer side of the dike than it is impoldered, and in this way the coast of Holland is gaining more than the sea eats out of the dunes. The internal waters as well as the external are subdued. Thus the Haarlemmer Meer is a rich agricultural stretch. The old peat-dredged basins have been drained and com- pelled to yield luxurious crops. The lakes and rivers, if rivers some can be called, are diked and dammed, and by an elaborate system of draining, to be described later, whereby the windmills pump the waters of the polders from lower to higher reservoirs, to be carried ultimately to the main basins and to the sea, this swamp of Holland has become fertile meadow and garden and field. So fertile and smiling are the fields and meadows that, with the completest understanding of how they are what they are, we forget that what they have been they might be again were the vigilance of the polder government relaxed for a moment. The inhabitants themselves forget it apparently, living their busy lives without "disquieting fears. The traveller crossing the Wormer sees nothing to make him dream that in 1825, through the bursting of a dike that may burst again, the whole polder w^as inundated, and most of its inhabitants drowned. The people trust the polder HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 15 government, and we shall sec later that it is charged with the very fullest measure of power for carrying on a splendidly complete system of reclamation and de- fence. But it remains true that upon this old question of half an inch of water depends the safety of Holland to-day. What has been reclaimed must be kept. If the sea is to be held at bay, dunes must be guarded and dikes repaired; the mills must swing their arms if the polders are to be drained ; the levels of a thousand canals must be regulated to an inch if the lowlands are not to fall back into a swamp again. That is the real significance of the characteristics of Holland that strike the eye of the traveller to-day. II The soil of the Dutch lowlands, then, is of two kinds chiefly. Thei^ is the fertile sea-clay which we find in all Zeeland, in parts of North-Holland and South- Holland, and on the north coasts of Friesland and Groningen ; and there is the marshy fen land of North- and South-Holland and the southwest of Friesland. By this distinction of soils we are guided to a distinc- tion in agriculture. Broadly speaking, there is cattle- rearing where there is low fen. On it, tillage is impracticable, and wood does not grow. Instead, there are the juicy green flat meadows, with their black and white cattle, and the intersecting canals down which the milk-maids come sailing with their milking-pails i6 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS in the late afternoon. There, too, are the great hay crop, and the butter and cheese industry that fills the markets of Alkmaar, Hoorn, Sneek, and Harlingen. From Rotterdam to Den Helder and from Stavoren to A ZuiDER Zee Type. Leeuwarden, by rail, everywhere save in the newer polders, you look out upon these monotonous meadows stretching away on either side. The Dutchman will not admit their sadness unless it be under the depress- HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 17 incf mists of winter, when the cattle are indoors and the polders lie silent. Bright sun, blue sky, green meadows, thriving cattle: these are not sad, he says. It is your Scots hills that are sad. The brightness is not. to be denied ; and yet it is true that upon many spectators the reduplication of these horizontal lines has a saddening and a depressing effect. No one travelling from Alkmaar to Den Helder in the sum- mer evening could help being affected with a most poignant melancholy by these meadow lands stretch- ing away into the gloaming. And, indeed, it is diffi- cult for a stranger to live a week in the low countries without suffering from a depression of spirit. The best picture of the farmer of these meadows, as of every Dutch type, has been draw^n by " Hildebrand." Behind this pseudonym is the venerable personality of Dr. Nicolaas Beets, a minister of the Church, a professor at Utrecht University, and a poet, who now lives in retirement in the enjoyment of an almost European celebrity derived from a prose work of a singularly national quality. The " Camera Obscura " ranges v/idely over the field of Dutch life and character. It is recognised as a work of pure style ; though colloquial, it is always distinguished. True, it sets no model for the younger Dutch writers whose steps have gone far — very far — along decadent paths. The " Camera Obscura" is not decadent. It is, indeed, m.ost human and wholesome, with a method as legiti- mate as its observation is keen and wide. In conse- quence, the book has been absorbed by the nation, 2 1 8 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS and the young Dutchman, though he may profess admiration for the Nieitwe Gidsy knows the " Camera," His father read it; he himself quotes it, unconsciously. The following description from it of the North-Hol- land Boer, therefore, is something characteristically Dutch ; and I have the farther excuse for quoting it that English is almost the only European lan- guage into which the *' Camera " has not been wholly translated. The North Holland Boer. It is Alkmaar, on a Friday forenoon in the cheese- season. All the villages — seventy or eighty of them — round the capital of North Holland are here. Beemster, Purmer, and Schermer polders have emptied themselves into the neat little town. All the streets that lead to a gate, and even more so the so-called '' Dijk" (a large square in the centre of the town), are filled with their carts, green and yellow and gay with flower-pots, flourishing letters, and lines of poetry painted on the tailboards. Every stable reeks with the steam of their horses, every inn and tavern with the fumes of their pipes; and there is not a barber's chair that does not beam with their lathered faces. Go wheresoever you like — to the tobacconist, to the gro- cer, to the china merchant, to the shoemaker whose window displays twice the usual stock, to the notary, to the advocate, to the doctor, to the thousand and one dijk graven (superintendents) and tre^^surers of HOLLAND OF TO-DAY . 19 polders: everywhere you meet a boer. One is search- ing for the burgomaster of his own village, who, it seems, can best look after the interests of his children when he is in Alkmaar; another applies to the black- smith for medicine for a sick horse, though it is certain the smith never has seen the horse except in good condition. Alkmaar, which on other days of the week is so still and dull that it seems fit for funerals only (and, indeed, there is a beautiful burial ground), is now as busy as a beehive. And truly it is a hive, where are gathered the bees that sucked the honey out of the Kenmer and West Friesland buttercups. The " Langstraat," ■ — so called, it seems, from the family " De Lange," whose name, qualified by all the letters of the alphabet, shines on three door-posts out of four — is filled with peasants, the women in long rows loitering on the pavements in front of the goldsmith's, or walking in and out of the various cake-shops, talk- ing loudly, laughing with big mouths, and slapping their knees at each fresh outbreak of peasant-woman's wit. The busiest part of the town is the Waagplcin (weighing square). Thousands of pounds' weight of little yellow cheeses are spread on large waxcloths, marked with the initials of their owners ; and the whole must be sold before two o'clock. After that hour no bargaining takes place; and no peasant can, or likes to, take his cheese home again. He has to sell them even as the wholesale merchants have to buy 20 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS them. To make most of his cheese is an art, under- standed of many a blate-looking peasant, stupid enough in all things else. It is amusing to watch the assumed heat wherewith they chaffer, and close a bargain, as if they would assure one another by grumpy faces that they '11 beat their hands to blood. And now come the cheese-porters, in white clothes, and yellow, green, or red hats, jog-trotting as usual, to carry the bought quantity on their litters and barrows to the ships, or to the warehouses, or to whithersoever it has to go. Now, you have seen the vital strength of North- Holland. Nothing save this cheese defends it against the sea, makes and preserves it a green country, and keeps all North-Holland chimneys smoking. Would you know whether the boer is doing well? Ask the price of cheese. You imagine, perhaps, that it is the church-collectors on Sunday who notice that Friday has been a good day; that the lord of the manor is the best judge of whether the cheese has been praizig (high priced) during the year. On the contrary, the goldsmiths and the cake-bakers can tell best of all; and the Alkmaar kermis (fair) flourishes accordingly. Then, the women have a sweet tooth, and an eye for finery, and the men-folk know how to spend money when they are out for a holiday. In 1841, the wet year, when the hay-crop was a failure, the kermis bells swung above as many chaises and carts entering the towngates as ever. The boeren and boerinnen drank the white wine, and sipped the red gin and sugar, and ate the ponte koek with no less noisy signs of admira- Q < ►J O K H Pi O ;? fa o H O w Oi H > X 22 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS tion than last year for the noble art of neck-breaking and the unsurpassable jokes of the clown, who flopped like a stick. Complaints are kept for Christmas, when the lord of the manor makes up his book. The genuine, old North-Holland boer is disap- pearing and altering as all types alter. On this Alk- maar cheese-market, you find him in all his variety. This old fellow with smiling lips, and bright, laughing eyes that look from under the broad-brimmed, round- crowned hat, which he keeps on his head with a tobacco-pipe-shank, is the oldest type. A narrow, red cotton scarf is folded about his neck by tiny gold buttons. A long brown waistcoat, with a row of big buttons that are not in active service — hooks-and- eyes do the work — reaches over his hips. His short trousT-.s look upon the region of shins and calves as far beneath them, and leave it to the gray stock- ings that end in thick shoes with golden buckles. There are a few only of these old fellows left; you can see them walking across the market with long, peeled sticks reaching to their chins. I have not room for all the other types ! Do you wish to see the youngest? Here it is. A short, blue, close jacket, with velvet collar, reaches a little below the shoulder blades; all else is trousers — trousers made of velveteen, — save a woollen necktie, mottled red, green, and yellow, and on his head, now a big, broad, extensive tall hat, or again a hairy fur cap, with the flap down over his eyes or in his neck, according to sunshine or rain. Ten to one, the old fellow is HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 23 gay and chatty, and the young dour and stiff, sus- picious and a stick. The chief end of the North-Holland boer is to go to market. He is the salesman and administrator of his gear; that's all. His qualities are more negative than positive. Do you ask if he is zealous? I answer: " He looks well after his spiil (farm and everything)." Does he live a regular life? "He drinks on market days and fairs only." Is he honest? " He never milks his neighbour's cows." Is he kind-hearted ? ** He is good to his cattle." Does he love his wife? ^* There is no better kcezcr (maker of cheese)." Is he a fighter and a rowdy? "Not if he is sober." Is he fond of his children? " They get plenty of bread and butter, and the schoolmaster at any rate may net give them a thrashing! " Is he religious? " He gocb regu- larly to church ! " To live in a farm of his own somewhere in the polders, surrounded by a flat country, with nothing to break his horizon and no servants save his own children: that is his ideal. His idols, a fine black and white cow, with full udders, and a young horse yoked in the bright shining peasant chaise with gilt wheels. Seated in this, the lightest and most elegant of vehicles old-fashioned or new, going to the fair with his busket wife beside him, and passing his fellows on the way by dint of much pulling at the reins (he never uses a whip): — then he enjoys himself in a manner unknown to the "Abtswouder boer" (of the poem) when he got excited over '* eating apples, 24 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS plucking pears, mowing, haying; filling barn and rick with fruits and greens; shearing sheep and pressing udders." It may seem strange to seek for the likeness of the Dutch lowland dairy farmer in a portrait drawn sixty years ago ; but in sixty years he has altered little. The changes and modifications in the type evident to the keen eye of " Hildebrand " are hidden from the foreigner. In politics and in matters connected with the Church he is Progressive, as we should call it. I believe that of the four members of the Second Cham- ber elected North of the Y, one is a Liberal, two are advanced Liberals, and the fourth is a Radical Calvin- ist, — a type not unfamiliar at home. But in all else the Dutch boer is conservative. He cuts his corn and mows his hay and makes his butter and cheese in the manner in which his grandfather did these things, and for that very reason; or if he is advancing, it is unwill- ingly only, and of recent years, prodded by the com- petition of other countries to which his conservative and unenterprising and even lazy methods have given an opening. The Dutch dairy-farmer is advancing under that pressure, as we shall see later when we visit his land. Perhaps it ought to be said rather that he is being ad- vanced. A conservative, rooted adherence to the ways of his fathers is still the keynote of his character. Therein he differs little from the farmer on the clay: dwellers on the clay are always tenacious. No coun- ■^*»*!«^ X Ph zi >. tu ^ bC < c w "S fl rt :- E ^ H rt ci O g 2 p 26 HOLLANp AND THE HOLLANDERS try in the world is more gracious to the husbandman than the sea-polders of Zeeland and the new polders on the fen, and there, possibly, the land is as well farmed as lan^ can be. Enterprise has not been want- ing, and enterprise has not always been profitable. There were model-farms on these polders that it used to be tlie fashion for travellers from all countries to visit. Their farmers were wealthy and enthusiastic, and hospitably entertained the delighted stranger. If you ask about these farms now, you will be told that they served as models how the polders ought not to be farmed. It is of no use to put a steam plough into land which a steam plough tears the heart out of. But there are less heroic and wiser enterprises possible for the average farmer on the rich grain lands, which he has carefully fought shy of, and as a consequence his con- dition is not flourishing. All over Holland, indeed, agriculture is at a pass. There are many in the country who declare that the laziness of the boers is the root of the evil. The boers are not so much lazy as wanting in push, and already, now that the pressure of bad times has roused them, their condition is im- proving. So much one is assured. There seem, how- ever, other causes for the depression. Rents have risen high, and with them the price of land. From 1850 to about 1880, when this upward movement was con- tinued, the farmers were making money from high prices in grain, and a heavy export of cattle. Men sunk their capital in the soil. When an owner died, it frequently happened that one of the children who HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 27 determined to hold the place bought out his brothers and sisters at a fancy price raised much above the real value by the sentiment of attachment to the old home. A fall in prices came, and of course it bore hardest on those who had purchased their lands at the high price. Farms have become mortgaged. Capitalists who bought in the fat years have been bitten. I know of fine land in the Betuwe which was bought in 1879 while yielding four-and-a-half per cent and now yields little more than two. In the new polders, especially, land has been bought and held too dearly. It is true that within comparatively recent years some farmers paying high rents in these have done well. A Dutch gentleman assured me that he never had a more profitable transaction than ten years' farming of some land in the Haarlemmer Meer at a rent o^ £'j lOs. per acre. But he grew wheat and potatoes alternately, — his landlord not interfering, — ploughed every year deeper, and during the ten years did no manuring. Of course he exhausted the land. The polders will stand much. It is believed that the new lands at pres- ent being reclaimed at the Dollard will grow crops tor fifty years without an ounce of compost, so fertile are they. There are, however, limits to the fertility even of Dutch polders. These acres in the Haarlemmer Meer that were let at £'/ los. are now let at less than the half, and the farmer who leases them probably has some difificulty in making ends meet on a farm where his predecessor made money. The shutting up of the English and other ports for fat cattle (on the plea, not 28 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS believed for a moment by the Dutchman, of protec- tion against disease) was the heaviest blow to the peasants, and many of them were ruined. In Fries- land, where the rise in prices had been highest, the fall of course was deepest. From want of money, the farmers have let the land deteriorate, the labourers find it difficult to get work, and the poor-rates have increased so enormously that many of the well-to-do inhabitants have left the province to escape the heavy burden. Of recent years a great deal of arable land has been laid down in grass, which means years of out- lay and little production. In such cases, generally, it is true, the landlord is giving compensation, but in Holland a claim for compensation does not lie. Even from the Betuv/e come complaints : competition is killing the profits of fruit-growing, and prices are .fall- ing in the horse-fairs at Tiel, A full half, probably, of the land in Holland is farmed by the proprietor, but he is a peasant proprie- tor. You look in vain for the larcre landowners of England or of Germany who live not only upon their rents, but on the sales from their own cultivation also. You look almost in vain, indeed, for any large land- owners ; for under the Dutch law whereby all the chil- dren share their father's possessions, wide acres are narrowed and the fields belonging to the mansion house lie in a close circle round the elms and hazels of the demesne. The Dutch country gentleman indulges a taste for. gardening, makes a profit out of growing the low hazel that one sees being borne down the HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 29 canals everywhere for a great variety of purposes, and shoots his partridges and hares and mallards. He does not keep a model home-farm and breed fine stock. In Holland the men who breed stock are called boers. Whether they own their hundred acres or rent them, though their bank accounts are fatter than their beeves, the boers are peasants ; a class by themselves, between whom and the professional middle class there is appar- ently no stepping-stone. In a market town in England, you will find together, bargaining, discussing, advising, gossiping, a man who beds his own beasts and follows his Qwn plough, while his son perhaps has a charge of the cattle and sheep on his out-ficlds ; and a man with a son at Cambridge, who himself rides to hounds ; and a score of others of different social grades between. It would be in error to say that in Holland that is an impossible sight. The temptation in writing about a strange country, seen superficially only, as a foreign country must necessarily be seen, is to generalise, to strain facts to suit classifications ; and probably writers on Holland have yielded more easily than usual to that temptation and to the exaggeration of small details. I do not forget the gentlemen-farmers of the Betuwe, or the farm-houses, like mansions, in Groningen. Not that the spaciousness of the dwelling or any such evi- dence of the eyes counts for much. There is — or at any rate there was not long ago — in one of the islands of Zeeland a farm-town bearing over the gate- way a motto in Latin, the meaning of which I believe the farmer knew very well. In his sitting-room there 30 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS was a piano, from which all the musical mechanism had been removed, so that the case might be used as a cupboard. That is not an isolated instance. I could take you to a boerderij in a lowland province, where a boer lives with his wife and several children in a hand- some house, and has a capital account of some thou- sands of guilders. The family use one sitting-room only — the kitchen, — and they all sleep together in one bed-room. Make the thousands of guilders hundreds, and that boerderij becomes typicaL Behind the walls of some at least of these elegant Groningen mansions, I can say, there exists no equivalent elegance of man- ners. Certainly there are many exceptions. From a boer home a man can, and does, rise to high positions in his country; men rise to such from the small shop- keeper class, and after that anything seems possible. There are many farmer households with sons at the University, and daughters who cultivate an elegant taste after the butter-making of the morning. But they are exceptions in their own class, if indeed they can be said to belong to the boer class at all. For, rich or poor, almost invariably the farmer is a peasant. Rich or poor, he dresses as a boer; in the highlands, indeed, less uniformly, but in the lowlands in thick black cloth, peaked cap, light coloured stockings, probably in velvet slippers in place of the discarded sabots, as may be seen any market day. The Dutch boer remains the Dutch boer, self-reliant, rooted to the soil, often keenly intelligent, rather lazy often, the ba^ckbone, the " vital strength," of his country. Yet, The Hayloft. From a painting by J. J. van de Sande Bakluiyzen. 32 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS especially now that it is in a depressed condition, agriculture in Holland may feel the lack of a nobler infusion. Besides dairy-farming and the growing of grain and green crops, there are on the soil of the lowlands other industries characteristically Dutch or engaged in by the Dutch in a characteristic manner. Upon the hyacinth and tulip fields of Haarlem is focussed the Hollander's love and scientific appreciation of flowers, ministered to by the navigators and travellers of the adventurous days, and witnessed to still by the flower- box on the peat boat no less than by the Botanic Gar- dens of Amsterdam and Leiden. In the Westland, between The Hague and The Hook, is to be seen in perfection market-gardening upon a soil magnificently prepared for that end by ingenious labour. The po- tato patches in the hollows of the inner dunes testify to the frugal industry that finds a living also in every reed and willow- sapling, — the patient and penurious reverse of the character of a people who assault the ocean daily, and flaunt the richest colonies in the world in the eyes of their ambitious neighbours. The dunes themselves are planted, and thus from the pro- tection of their defences the Dutch snatch a double profit. Round the coasts, again, are the homes of fishermen who ply an industry more romantic and even more ancient than agriculture. Many who visit Holland carry away the impression that they have seen the pride of the Dutch fisheries in the islands of Zeeland and the Zuider Zee to which they were at- HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 33 tracted by the quaint and variegated dress of the fisher-folk. That is not so. Costume, there, is the beautiful accretion of decay. A cloud rests over these inland fisheries, brightened only by a chance happy speculation in anchovies. The stir and bar- gaining of the picturesque crowds in the fish-markets of Den Helder and Amsterdam too frequently are a grim fight with want. The beautiful interiors of the Volendammers — that stalwart race — are often visited with poverty. I read that the men of Urk are leaving their boats to " take on " in the ocean-going steamers; and so it is, no doubt, in the other islands. The great North Sea fishing fleet does not sail from there, but from the Maas towns and from the coast villages of Scheveningen, Noordwijk, and Katwijk; and we shall find, when we visit Vlaardingen, the head place of the fisheries still, that in them, also, a gradual transmuta- tion is going on. The Scheveningen boms, made so familiar to us by the pictures of Mr. Mesdag, must go the way of the older busses. Sailing boats will disap- pear before steamers, as the local butter-markets will disappear before the factories. The decay of the picturesque may be deplored, but at any rate the spirit of the Dutchman is asserting itself in the fabric he is rearing in its place. Thickly studded, too, over the lowlands are a thousand busy hives, — hamlets that wear the air of villages, villages with the stir of towns, towns with all the paraphernalia of small cities, and small cities that hold up their heads with the pride of equality beside Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Nowhere 3 34 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS in the world, probably, are the realities of life — love, marriage, work, rivalry, death, the niggardliness and bountifulness of Nature, and the art, affection, and neighbourliness of man — brought home to one more vividly than in this little reclaimed delta on the North Sea. Ill From the " tourist area," as I have called it, we pass to the higher grounds in the east by an easy transition in the province of Utrecht. The city of Utrecht (as a glance at the map will discover) lies at the junction of the two. The low meadows flow over the western borders of the province from North- and South-Pf oUand ; but they stop at the city walls. " Have we reached the Continent at last? " Louis Napoleon cried, or so the story runs, when he came to Utrecht in his eastward progression. The ancient city is a gate, as it were, to the higher grounds,^ that hilly country of which the Dutch are so jealous when Holland is described as a land of ditch and tree- less field by those who have not pushed beyond these. Probably many are preserved from the error of speak- ing of a treeless Holland only by the recollection of 't Haagsche Bosch, through which they passed in their drives out from The Hague, or of the Middagter Allee near Arnhem. But from Arnhem to Utrecht there stretches still a grand belt of wood that almost keeps true the old saying that a squirrel can go between HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 35 them without touching ground. This line — by Zcist, Doom, Amcrongen, Reenen, VVageningen, the south- ern borders of the Veluwe, ranged far above the Rhine and the Betuwe beyond — is studded with the summer houses of the city merchants, all with their cosy verandahs, and most of them surrounded by the formal arrangement of lake and flower-plot, so dear to the Dutchman, so petty and ugly in English eyes. Round the country seats of the old families on the same line one finds splendid wood, avenues of beech and fir and lime which it would be difficult to Uiatch anywhere. And when we push farther into the Veluwe, we come to woods more extensive still. In Utrecht province, within sight of the Dom, to go no farther afield, you can walk for miles along ant-run sandy tracks between fragrant pines, or through close- set young firs, glimmering grey, veiling as with smoke the green beyond ; or lie knee-deep in the heather in a great wide waste with no living thing near save the lici-tuters screaming against the turquoise sky. And yet if you had held to the right hand in- stead of to the left at starting, you would have been led through flat deep-green meadows, where black cattle browse and blue-bloused boers make the hay, or would have skirted cherry-orchards, or again the tall bean-sticks; but always you would have struck canals that reflect swinging sails and are spanned by innumerable bridges. And here, too, are to be found some of the quaintest of the old towns of Holland : Wijk-bij-Duurstede, with its castle dating from the 36 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS days of Charlemagne, and Yselstein, — close, narrow- streeted, the flat, grey house-fronts fenced with shady lindens, cut to allow the light to reach the windows, crusted with age, the iron-work ornaments of the six- teenth century, say, seeming modern beside the gen- eral ancientness. One thing the Utrecht province does not have — the sea. And thus, perhaps, in it we miss the greatest charm of all : the approach across the deep green lands to the western dunes, with their delicate green helm, the plodding through these scooped sandhills, and the coming out upon the dazzling white sands, shell-strewed, along which the coast shimmers in the heat haze, with the villages floating in it like a mirage, or is blotted out by the storm when the North Sea roars in the wind, or, again, is enveloped by the copper mist in which the sun stands like a boss of fire in a burnished shield. The higher lands in the east, like the lowlands of the west, have a great variety of scenery and interests, and exhibit in a scarcely less degree the triumph of the Dutch over nature. Soon after leaving Germany and shortly before it reaches Arnhem, the Rhine thrusts out westwards the most important of its many arms. Not far from Dordrecht, the arm so stretched, the Waal, joins hand with another river, the Maas, which In the south has been running a course more or less parallel with the Rhine. Between the two, and reaching a little beyond the Rhine in the north and overlapping the Maas in the south, and watered across by the friendly Waal, there is a tract of river- HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 37 clay, the rich core of which is called the Bettiwe (good land), on account of its fertility, even as to the sandy region, farther north towards the Zuider Zee, is given the name of the Veluwe (barren land). On this pleas- ant country of the Betuwe we can set foot by crossing the Rhine from the province of Utrecht by the ferry- boat at VVijk-bij-Duurstede. For about a quarter of a mile a path, shaded by poplars and great willows, leads through fat fields with a gentle acclivity to what ap- pears a main road. Other paths run to brick and tile works, and to the jetties that dot the river-side as far as the eye can reach. There never was a more restful country-side, we say, nor one watered by a less turbu- lent river. Why should there be need of a dike here? For there is a dike : the broad grass-grown road along which we are now walking, considerably above the level of the belt of fields we have been admiring, and higher still above the cherry-orchards and farm-stead- ings on the inner side. Had our visit been paid seven months earlier, its use would have been more apparent. Seven months ago, this tract, some hundreds of yards broad, without the dike, the intcrivaardcn, was sub- merged. There was not a trace of all these pollards ; the great-boled willows looked like giants knee-deep in water. Had we been standing on the roadway then, and seen all this, and the river lapping the bank at our feet, where we can pick daisies now if we choose, and had turned next to view the orchards and stack- yards and cow-sheds within the dike, in the binncn- waardeii, we should have seen in a flash that the safety 38 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS of a whole country-side depends upon this dike stand- ing firmly beneath us. But if in imagination we have pictured the danger, we walk along the dike this summer day with eyes ap- preciative of the safeguards. Every point in the land- scape wears a new significance. We understand now why it is that each building in the tnterwaarden has its ow^n superior level, its own little scheme of fortification ; why the farms and villages on the inner side nestle to the dike like chickens to the protecting wing. At present there is no danger ; the w^ater does not so much as lap the summer dikes that skirt it here and there. Even in winter, it does not always threaten the peace of the country people ; and every year it plays into their hands by giving them fresh powers to keep it in order. For when it covers the idterwaarden, the clay which in summer is carried to sea deposits itself on the fields, and silts up inlands, thereby strengthen- ing the dike, to which, indeed, in some places the water cannot reach now. At most, the river becomes sportive in little rivulets across the roadway, or causes a scare by burrowing beneath it and bubbling up on the other side. These are trivial outbreaks, compara- tively. It is ice, and not water, that the Betuwe has to fear. The river becomes frost-bound at its winter level. By-and-by the wind changes, going a point to the south : the ice melts, and melts first of all in the upper waters, and enormous blocks come sliding down, one over the other, lump upon lump, mounting to the dike. ''Uruiit! Urtmt! De Waaol die kruut f' is HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 30 the country-side warning at such times, ** Come out! Come out! The Waal is drifting! " And all who can, do come out, night or day, to watch the weak or ex- posed spots. Their worldly possessions, if not their lives, depend on these withstanding the shock. We rest a few minutes at an iiitspanning near Maurik, eat rye bread and cheese, and drink a glass of milk, — a Dutch luncheon, — and over a cigar chat with the landlord and his wife about this enemy that disturbs their otherwise peaceful country. The old woman's mother (so we hear) used to tell of a terrible ijsgang (ice-drift) in "nine," that is in 1809. A few hundred yards from where we sit, the ice pierced the dike, and the water, rushing in, tumbled down build- ings as if they had been houses of cards, drowning some of the inmates, imprisoning others for a time in garrets, and leaving barren for years these cherry orchards from which reach us the sounds of the ** corn- crake " rattles wherewith the little boys of the Betuwe scare the sparrows from the red fruit. That was a bad ijsgang ; but nothing to another that almost happened six years ago, for the oldest inhabitant — we have met him at home — cannot remember so close a shave. The man and his wife chase each other in their con- versation with picturesque incidents of this disaster, still fresh in their memories ; and out of the cloud of broken English and colloquial Dutch, there rises be- fore our eyes the scene that night when the watchers, looking westwards, saw the lights of the ships on the river approach nearer and nearer until they stood up 40 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS to the dike. Then suddenly they swung and went out. The waters had fallen as suddenly, and next morning found the vessels lying high and dry on the road with fields between them and the river now back almost to its normal level. This time, the dike was not broken. The Betuwe is a jewel well worth such strenuous guarding. Nature has favoured it, and the art of its inhabitants keeps it like a garden. It must be visited in spring, as indeed all the polder country ought to be ; then, through the flowery meadows and the orchards in blossom from 's Hertogenbosch to Kuilem- burg is surely one of the most beautiful railway jour- neys in the world. The rivers that water it are crowded with the traffic of middle Europe. The towns upon them — Tiel, Reenen, Kuilemburg, Bom- mel — are among the oldest and quaintest and most sweetly lying in the country. The roads are excellent for the '* bike " — for which, by the way, the populace in Holland have invented the expressive name of Fiets (Fr. Vite)\ and let not the bicyclist forget to take the route by the Linge, V Kleine Rivierke of the author Cremer. Beyond the Betuwe, to the northeast and east, lies the " Achterhoek " or back corner ot Gelderland,. the old countship of Zutphen; with hills and woods and moors and hundreds of little streams dotted with water-mills. To the south of the Betuwe, again, the land slopes constantly upwards until in the south of Limburg it reaches the highest point in the whole of Holland. The clay of the Maas joins the sand of s.. ^.y. < g K o CQ p=; >. o Xi /^ kD 42 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Brabant without any break of hills ; and in the sand itself there is no break, except the well-known desolate high fen, the Peel, that for centuries vied with the Maas as the natural frontier on the east. Beyond the Peel, still farther south, we leave the sand for the older formations of Limburg, where, in the neighbourhood of Kerkerade and Kloosterrade are the only coal mines in the country. The lower grounds in the north of North-Brabant, along the railway route from Flushing to Berlin, form an agricultural stretch where are grown rye, buckwheat, potatoes, and oats, the usual sand products. Round the towns are market gardens : the strawberries of Breda are famous. In the neighbourhood of Bergen-op-Zoom has sprung up a great beet-root industry. Along the valleys of the Maas tributaries, cattle-rearing is on the increase, and everywhere in the sand the cultivation of wood is a source of revenue. Higher up, nearer the Belgian frontiers, the shepherds herd their flocks, and the farmers send out their bees to suck the honey from the buckwheat and the heather blossoms. The Dutch call Limburg the garden of Holland, their admiration of its scenery no doubt being chiefly due to the con- trast it offers to that of the low lands. The soil is a rich, wheat-growing clay, cultivated to the field-edges, and supporting a numerous population that seems well-to-do ; the clay also supplies the potteries of Regout, one of the great industries of the manufactur- ing towns here, which are spoken of as an open sore in the social condition of Holland. Sandy soil and a HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 43 Roman Catholic population, — these are the character- istics of the southern provinces. Here we are among the Flemings rather than among the Dutch. Now let us go back to Utrecht, and strike north- eastwards for the highlands of the north. Our way lies through 't Gooi and the Veluwe. Or, at any rate, we can go round by 't Gooi, — that odd little hilly corner of North-Holland that faces the Zuider Zee without any help from the dikes. The inhabitants of the neighbouring meadow lands, so an old wa'iter tells us, used to go to 't Gooi to see its beautiful variety of landscape. "In the valleys between the heather-clad hills are fertile fields, some sown, some mown, some covered with the white buckwheat blossoms like a sea of milk; from the highest hills, we see in one glance the Zuider Zee, the low Waterland, the blue Veluwe, moorland fields, meadows and woods," — so he de- scribes this beautiful, if not very fertile, corner in which the Amsterdammer often makes his home, as much from the desire to escape the rising taxes of the city as from a love for the beauties of the country. The blue Veluwe. The sandy Veluwe. Here we have the same variety of scenery as in 't Gooi; but there is more water, the hills are higher, and the woods are larger, — some of them, like the Beekbergsche and Soerensche Bosch, the largest in the country. A thin population lives on a poor agriculture and the cultiva- tion of w^ood, and where the mossy sheep-sheds shelter under the trees, we see those shepherds and those sheep to whom the genius of the painter Mauve was 44 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS dedicated. Over the Ysel, we are in Overysel, and there most of the characteristic physical conditions of Holland meet. On the left beyond Meppel is the Land van Vollenhoven, where the cattle meadows roll away into Friesland. On the right is Twente, with many little rivers that rise in the hills in the east ; to all appearance another Achterhoek of Gelderland, only that here there are industries of which Gelderland knows nothing, and corn takes the place of rye and buckwheat. To the north are peat-lands that stretch away into desolate D rente. Drente is the province of waste lands. From Meppel to ter Apel and from Groningen almost to Koevorden is a stretch of heather. In the middle of this stretch is the moorland proper, with villages encir- cled by their strip of agricultural lands. The white, long-tailed sheep crop here all the year round, while the shepherds knit stockings as they tend them, and swarms of bees are brought to make honey in the heather when the colza season is over. It is impos- sible for one who has not seen it in the rainy season to imagine the desolateness of this moorland, when from the soft, slaggy roads the sodden heather stretches away like a vast foreshore of seaweed left by the tide ; with tawny patches, and muddy and sandy hollows, and pools, and inland seas with rippling waves, and birch clumps here and there that loom like headlands through the mists. Beyond these sandy heaths, and also heather-covered when undug, are the high-fens, the famous peat-lands. On moorland and fen, forests c ■r. w ^ ^ o iijn scJiocntjej Gooi wat in 7nijn laarsje Dank U, Sijii A^ic'laasje / " This being translated is '' Sint Nicolaas Kapoentje " (the word has no special meaning in the context, but its value for rhyming purposes is evident), '' put some- thing in my shoes, put something in my boots : Thank you, Sint Nicolaas." And the saint always justifies the anticipation of his kind offices. The traditional Saint Nicolaas, adopted by parents and uncles and elder brothers and sisters for agreeable deceptions, is an old man with a white beard, robed in a gown of red trimmed with ermine (recalling thv; Nicolaas with the furs of the German belief), staff in hand, mitre on head, and riding a white horse. He is attended by a black servant, the zzvarte knccJit (again recalling, perhaps, the Knecht Rupert of Germany), who carries a bag full of presents and another con- cealing a rod ; for the benevolent saint is supposed to chasten the naughty as well as to reward the well- behaved. Once a year, on this Fifth of December, m HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS he and his servant ride over the roofs to that end ; and so it happens that the children are directed .to place carrots and hay in the boots and shoes which they leave under the chimneys for their deserts before going to bed, — to propitiate the steed, if not the rider. And in the morning, of course, carrots and hay have disappeared. One of the special joys of Sint Nicolaas is the SiJit Nicolaas cake, the exact composition of which has not been discovered to me. It is displaying a sad ignorance of things gastronomic to describe it as gingerbread with- out the ginger; but that is the narrowest generalisation to which I can attain. A spiced cake it is at any rate, baked in manifold shapes, — of men and horses and houses and birds. The favourite fashion is an immense flat doll, in the dressing of which in gold and silver tinsel the confectioner takes infinite pains and pride, as Dr. Beets has described in a chapter of his '' Camera Obscura." By judicious art, sex is suggested in the clothing, so that there is no difficulty in following the ancient practice of presenting the maids and the men- servants, each after his kind, with sweethearts in this succulent stuff. I have been more fortunate in probing some of the other Sint Nicolaas mysteries. Borstplaat is simply the sugar-heart of everybody's childhood. Banket, on the other hand, is an almond pasty of fantastic shapes. Sint Nicolaas is the season of the year for the inter- change of gifts. Coleridge, writing of what he saw while travelling in North Germany, described a custom 88 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS of present-giving there at Christmas in terms exactly appHcable to Sint Nicolaas in the Low Countries. The gifts are not costly, and derive much of their value and interest from the care spent in devising such as are curious, or specially suitable, or even pleasantly ridiculous. The great point is to keep their nature secret until the moment of presentation arrives. They must be surprises, and shopkeepers, we observe, keep in stock a supply of '' surprises " — often for the pur- chaser rather than for the ultimate recipient, — which probably is one of the first signs of the decay of the custom. For days and even for weeks previously each shaded corner in the house is held by some member of the family intent on the manufacture of these pres- ents. Every one knows that Sint Nicolaas surprises are in store; but that does not take away from the pleasure of giving or of receiving. Nor, apparently, does it lessen the mystery of the whole affair, which it is sought to heighten by the gifts being studiously anonymous. It is pretended at any rate that the mys- tery is increased thereby; as a matter of fact, few fail to guess the donor, and those who do fail are not allowed to remain in doubt long. We have seen a good-natured uncle sally forth with two boxes under his arm. Both were intended for the same destination; both reached it, but in a roundabout way. The old gentleman placed one on the doorstep of his nieces, rang the bell, and from a little distance watched his summons being answered and his parcel taken indoors. Then, in order that the children should not think that HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 89 it came by the same hand as the first, he takes the air for a time before depositing the second box on the same spot, and watching its disappearance inside in tufSI^T" He did n't deceive the children, of course ; we wonder if really he deceived himself At any rate he dis- covered for us something of that childlike happy- heartedness which is so greatly in evidence in Holland on the Eve of Sint Nicolaas. VII Among this people of simple habits, — -precisely among that section of them in which true simplic- ity of habits is most conspicuous, — learning is culti- vated with the single-mindedness for which Holland has been renowned from a time earlier even than the confederacy of the Provinces. We must distinguish, however, between the learning of her scholars and the education of her people. There have been periods in the history of Holland, — the fourteenth century for example, — when the spread of education within her borders was her brightest distinction ; but the present is not one of them. In her national education she does not set a shining example now among the nations. Yet there is a sense in which it may be held that there is no country in the world to-day better educated. I have recorded my impression already that the Dutch peasants are not very well educated and not 90 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS very well informed ; but it must be understood that I was comparing them, not so much with the peasantry of other countries, as with the other classes in their own. And when I said further that the peasant in Holland does not get the opportunities of improving himself that he seems well able to make good use of, I did not refer to opportunities of schooling, but rather to those of acquiring knowledge from association with men more widely read and more widely travelled than himself, from books and periodicals, and of assimilat- ing the graces and refinements of art and the instruc- tion of science, which are afforded only in social conditions more fluid than those of Holland. The opportunities of education are plentiful. It is one of the chief concerns of the Department for Home Affairs, and the Constitution commits it to the constant care of Government. There must be a school, or schools, in every commune, open to all without consideration of religion, and in these schools, according to the Act, the education is not to be limited to " the three R's," but is to embrace an improvement of heart and mind, so that, to use its own words, the people may be " edu- cated to all Christian and social virtues." I propose to outline in a later chapter the scheme of education in Holland, from which the reader will be able to judge how far, on paper at least, provision is made for attain- ing this high aim. One seldom hears the complaint, it ought to be said, that in practice the scheme fails owing to the manner in which it is carried out in the schools. Nor is the education placed beyond the On a Lonely Farm. From a painting by Albert Neuhuys. 92 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS reach of any one. It is not free, but it is nearly so. The fees are not high. In Amsterdam, for example, a child can have a very excellent elementary education on payment of a fraction above one penny a week; for a fee of fourpence a week, he can have that in- struction with elementary French added. Even from these fees poor parents are exempt without any civil disabilities following the relief. The blot on the sys- tem is not that the schools are not brought to the children, but that the children are not brought to the schools. Education is not compulsory. It cannot be said that in consequence there is a great deal of illiteracy. You meet with a good many people who cannot read, but seldom among the young. Almost all conscripts, it is found, can sign their names at least. Nevertheless, although the number of chil- dren who receive no regular schooling is decreasing year by year, it still is, I believe, as high as sixty thousand, and there are in certain conditions of life in Holland serious obstacles in the way of its ever being brought very low. I may mention two. One is the isolation in which in some parts of the country many families live, — among the moors and fens in the east, for example, which have been described earlier. That, however, is comparatively an unimportant difficulty, and it is being removed as more and more of the fen- lands are being brought under cultivation. The other obstacle cannot be overcome so easily. It is the large number of children — I believe it is estimated at thirty thousand — who live on board ship. The waterways HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 93 of Holland are crowded with small craft, here to-day and away to-morrow, never in any haven for long, but carrying merchandise between far-distant places inland ; and on these vessels whole families live from year's end to year's end. The boats are their only homes. There is nothing degrading in that condition of liv- ing. The vessels are scrupulously clean and neat, " painted like toys and with pots of flowers and cages of song birds in the cabin windows," like the Dutch ships of another class that made Dysart famous for Mr. R. L. Stevenson. I remember once watching some of these boats enter from the Lek at Vreeswijk. They had come from far away up the Rhine, and one would have thought that once they were again within a Dutch canal the family on board would feel like sailors arrived in port. But no. River or canal was all the same to them. Where their boat was, there they were at home. The skippers were not yet done manoeuvring them into the locks when buckets were let down, and the women, without one curious glance at the people on the quay, were busy scrubbing and polishing as if they lived anchored for ever in a cottage in the polders. There is some- thing idyllic in the life on these canal boats as you can see it while they crawl from town to town : the lad on the bank, straining at the long rope from the mast- head himself, or urging the canal-horse to the same work; his elder brother laboriously punting, while a sail is rigged to catch any wind that may be going; the skipper hanging leisurely over the helm, or his wife 94 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS or daughter taking his place while he sits " in slippers on the break of the poop, smoking the long German pipe ; " the stove in the cabin drawing comfortably, The Canal Horse, From a sketch by Jacob Maris. the dinner cooking, the children playing about round the cargo. I have heard ladies in Holland say that to live such a life on such a canal boat was the dream of their youth. Well, in this manner of life lies one of HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 95 the chief difficulties in the way of national education in Holland. There is at the present moment a bill in the Dutch Chambers to make education compulsory, and it is not improbable that before this book is in the reader's hands, it will have become law. During a short visit I paid to Holland, I saw here and there great activity in the building and furnishing of schools ; than which there could be no better proof that a measure of compulsory education is expected, and that at the present moment there is not full provision for the instruction of all the children in the country were the opportunity claimed on their behalf But the difficul- ties in the way are so great that I should think it extremely unlikely that a compulsory Act would be rigidly enforced for many years to come. The place of religion in the national education is a question with bearings far wider than that of com- pulsion. Religion in Holland, as we shall see later, is free. No man suffers any legal disabilities on account of his creed. Speaking very generally, there are two Protestants for every Roman Catholic, and the Jews, of whom there are some 90,000, or rather more than there are in London, are in the proportion of one in sixty of the population. The divisions among the Protestants again are numerous. But although, in accordance with its tolerant traditions, the State pro- vides an education that is severely neutral in regard to religion and politics, and the teachers in Dutch public schools are sorely puzzled to teach — Dutch 96 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS history, say — without seeming to give their instruc- tion a rehgious or poHtical colour, the parents in increasing numbers are seeking a religious education for their children, and schools with the Bible and schools meeting more particular demands of creed are springing up on all sides. Indeed, ten years ago, the movement against the strict neutrality of the State schools was so strong, and was such a distracting element in the political situation and in the condition of political parties, that a compromise was arrived at whereby the State subsidises denominational schools. While, however, the denominational schools differ entirely from the State schools, inasmuch as the in- struction in them has a religious colour, they are under the same control; or at any rate every precaution is taken to keep them under it. The precautions do not apply only to denominational schools wdiich receive State support ; they extend to all private and adven- ture schools. No one is allowed to establish a school, no one is allowed to teach in a school, who is not able to satisfy and (which is more important) continue to satisfy, the appointed examiners as to his or her equip- ment and morals. You cannot open an adventure school in Holland unless you hold a Head Teacher's certificate. Those who had opened schools previously to 1878, had to study and to pass the new examina- tions demanded by the Education Act of that year. Teachers cannot be employed in adventure schools who have not passed the examinations demanded of teachers in the State schools. Neither in one school HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 97 nor another are the unqualified allowed to teach. You may not teach any language unless you have passed a special examination in that language ; and this applies even to natives of the country in which the language is spoken. A strict guard is set thus upon inefficient teaching in private schools. Of neces- sity, however, the standard of teaching varies with the various schools, and no one will be surprised to hear of frequent complaints that in the denominational schools the level of efficiency reached is lower than in the State schools. When he has passed through the elementary school, the Dutch boy finds the educational course branching in two paths in front of him. He is then twelve or thirteen, or he may even be a year older. The one path leads through the secondary schools — the tech- nical schools, or the high-burgher schools — to the industrial and commercial careers. By following the other through the gymnasium and the University he reaches in due course a learned profession. There is no need to examine here the nature and curricula of the secondary schools : they are shown in the chapter on education. I have not the knowledge necessary to speak of the results attained in them. On paper, the instruction at the high-burgher schools is excellent, and in Holland itself these schools have a very high repute. On paper, also, there is abundance of tech- nical education ; but what, it may be asked, is a technical school more or less in the face of workshop 7 98 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS results? From personal knowledge, I cannot speak of the workshop results; but any traveller in Holland to-day can observe signs of great industrial activity. Holland — or such is the impression I have received — has awakened out of a sleep. The new energy which has been noted in agriculture, is informing industry also. This spring, I was astonished to see factories and works of all kinds springing up all over the country, and especially in the east, where, noto- riously, there has been less enterprise hitherto, and less encouragement for enterprise, than in the west; and I have the impression, not uncorroborated by observant Dutchmen well-informed about their own country, that there is a marked revival and a step forward in manufactures and industries in all branches. I am far from attributing this to any system of educa- tion ; but it certainly can be said that, whatsoever its cause, whether it be due to some awakening within or to pressure without, it is a happy coincidence that the technical training is at hand to aid it. As yet, how- ever, commerce has not got fashion on its side. For the supremacy of England in industry, an instinct of national character accounts greatly ; but it is not a little due to the entrance upon the industrial career of much of the best blood as well as the best brain and education among her people. England owes her empire abroad largely to her splendid dare-devils, and it is their brothers at home who have set her in the forefront in more peaceful and orderly enter- prises : the same blood, the same genius in both. v^'Ne>^ A Marken Boy. From a drawing by W. Rainey. lOO HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Now of Holland that cannot be said. There is indeed a daring practical talent among the Dutch, and it is often found applying itself to commerce ; but in very many cases, from choice but still more often because of a certain disdain of commerce, it is content to exer- cise itself so far as it can in more learned pursuits. The professions have gained enormously in conse- quence, but commerce, like agriculture, suffers from the lack of a nobler infusion. One must guard, indeed, against a too literal accept- ance of the impression that there is a firm line mark- ing off the classes that may be described generally as the professional and the commercial. Probably the Dutch themselves would hotly dispute that it exists at all. They would point to Amsterdam with her patrician merchants, more proud than any aristocracy of birth ; and to Rotterdam, a city of 275,000 inhabi- tants, wholly given up to commerce, and not to be dis- missed by a generalisation of this kind. How, in view of these, they would ask, can it be said that there is in Holland a disdain of trading? Cities and towns more typical than Amsterdam and Rotterdam would be made to furnish illustrious proofs that commerce does not lack an infusion of blood and of high edu- cation. It must be so. Everywhere throughout the country men of position and learning and taste are found engaging in commerce ; otherwise the Dutch would be an unnatural and monstrous people, pre- serving social . conditions that in all other countries have disappeared since feudal times. The whole his- HOLLAND OF TO-DAY loi tory of Holland tells of a nation that has been estab- lished upon merchandise. The Dutch, two centuries ago, were the greatest traders the world has ever seen. As has been noted already, there runs through them still, from top to bottom, a certain practical quality that makes them commercial in spite of themselves. We might go further, and with a great deal of truth suggest that their defects are those of their trading qualities, and that instead of a lack of a nobler infusion in their commerce we ought to have discovered a lack of generous and prodigal instincts in the nation as a whole. All these con- siderations, however, do not alter the impression that there is this line between the commercial and the professional classes. It is not impassable. It does not show itself at every turn. Probably it is no more than one of the conditions of a crystallised society that would not seem unusual to any save English and American eyes. But whatsoever it is, it marks off spheres of influence. In Holland, people live in rings, and the system of education, and the fashion of education, it might be added, helps to preserve this concrete condition of society. While the secondary — the high-burgher and the technical — schools lead naturally to commer- cial careers, the gymnasia are the portals to the uni- versity. The boy is twelve or thirteen years old when he has to choose his path. It is, of course, quite possible for him to change his mind later. If he has gone through the course at the gymnasium, he 102 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS is not badly equipped for commercial life. Besides Latin and Greek, he has had a practical training in the sciences. There is a strong feeling in Holland at present that at the gymnasia the sciences are receiving too much attention, and the classics too little. He has a command of several modern lan- guages. The national habits of mind and life are all in his favour. But it is different with the boy who, after passing through the high-burgher school, decides upon going on to the university. His education so far has not prepared him for his new studies. He has had neither Latin nor Greek : his training has been essentially practical. It is too late for him to turn back and enter the gymnasium. He can study pri- vately, but it will require several years of private study to put him on equal terms with a student who enters the university after six years of special train- ing in a gymnasium. The course in the high-burgher school is shorter than that in the gymnasium; still, he is handicapped by loss of time. The universities are open to all, it is true, and boys can pass to them directly from the high-burgher schools without study- ing privately. Many who intend to study Medicine do so ; but in the end they are more severely handi- capped than ever. For although they pass their professional examination, they do not receive their Doctor's degree, and they must go to a foreign university and win it there, if they are not to suffer from the want of the title. And they are punctilious in the matter of titles in Holland, The universities HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 103 say to the boy, in effect: The way to us is through the gymnasia; choose it in time. And the result is that, in order to be in time, the boy's parents choose it for him. It would be wonderful indeed if such a system did not create, or preserve, a ring, — call it, a ring of the university-bred. In Holland this ring encircles very many. Often, one frequently hears, even parents who can ill afford the expense send sons to the universities, though in consequence they have to start their whole family upon the business of life crippled in fortune. We must recollect how small the private fortunes of the Dutch middle classes are, and how much they mean to the possessors. Certainly in Holland the number of men who get a university training seems very large. In comparison, no doubt, there are fewer than in Germany who hold a Doctor's degree ; as we have seen, obstacles are put in the way of a student coming up merely to take a degree in science. But the proportion of men who undergo long special aca- demic training, and attain to a high standard of general learning, is unusually large. I am not speaking with the authority of figures; but I do not think that any one who knows Holland can doubt that that impression is correct. The men practising in the learned professions, of course, are the nucleus of this body of educated opinion. Were it not that all their members appear to thrive, one would say that in Holland these professions are overcrowded : perhaps the small private fortunes 104 HOLLAND AN^D THE HOLLANDERS cover a multitude of failures. One does venture to think, at any rate, that there are too many engaged in them for the good of the country. And if this is true of the professional men, it seems even more true of the civil officials, who swarm in larger numbers still. Quiet and douce men, without an ounce of swagger, the Dutch civil officials are the most effectively all-prevail- ing class on the face of the earth; and many of them are absorbed by this body of which I am speaking. So are many of the notaries, whose excellent services in the registration of contracts do not seem to diminish the ranks of practising lawyers. In addition, a large proportion of the leisured and titled classes take their degree: it is the fashion for them to do so; and com- merce has its share of those who receive the hig-her education. All these men, of considerable, often of great, attainments in learning, in virtue of that very fact exercise an influence in their country that to those accustomed to society in solution, as it is in England and America, appears quite extraordinary. And it is all the more marked because in Holland the military class has little influence, and men of birth, as such, have scarce any at all. Holland, in a word, is not so much a highly edu- cated country as it is a country of highly educated people. A sound and liberal education is brought within the reach of all and is accepted by nearly all ; but notwithstanding the high-falutin' of the Act, it can hardly be said to iiave greatly developed " all Christian and social vu-tues " in the mass of the HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 105 people. The Dutch field-worker is the servant of a bocr, and the Dutch boer is the Dutch boer, as we have seen: should education ever make him any- thing else, it is doubtful if it will leave him so p^ood a The Farm-Labourer. • From a drawing by Jozef Israels. peasant. The workmen .are less easily discovered. I speak with pleasure and gratitude of an hour I spent with one who gave me a most interesting ac- count of his town and its various industries. He wore wooden shoes, which he left dl^tside the house door, io6 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS and he entered the room on his stocking-soles, as any Dutch peasant would ; and he talked in English, and could have talked in French and German even more fluently. But my friend stands all by himself. Still, many workmen show great cleverness in picking up languages from foreigners working beside them in the shops : the gift of tongues has descended upon all Dutchmen; but in the gift of manners the gods have been more sparing. Comparing his own with British workmen, the Dutchman says, " Ours are not so beschaafd^' meaning " smoothed out," as a piece of wood is that has come under the plane. The smaller shop-keepers in the towns, again, exhibit the petty vices and vulgarities of small traders everywhere, and few of the ambitions of our own. The lower classes in Holland are friendly, as a rule, and civil ; but though education may have done much for them, it has left them wanting in savoir vivre. Dutch ladies and gentlemen never travel third-class, alleging that the conversation of the people makes their company im- possible. Well, the Dutch gentleman himself is a wonderfully frank person. Fashion, and not fear of the company, I suspect, drives them to this practice ; yet when such a custom prevails, the company could scarce be otherwise than as they allege. When we come higher, we certainly find a well edu- cated man. Evidently the higher secondary education is thorough. It makes for a very accurate knowledge, for a grasp and retention of fact ; and as it starts with a command of several languages its range is wide. HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 107 Most people in the middle classes read French and German newspapers and books. Most know a little English, — far more than most English people know of French ; yet among the older people that knowledge must have been self-acquired, for in their youth Eng- lish was not generally taught in the schools. Medical students will acquire Italian in order to read the works of Italian physicians and surgeons. Ladies will learn Norwegian before visiting Norway. The education in the high-burgher schools, as we have seen, designedly avoids preparation for the university, but it affords a general culture as well as practical instruction. The best proof of this, perhaps, is the high level of educa- tion among Dutch women. Few of them pursue their studies beyond the high-burgher schools, which do not provide instruction in Latin and Greek, and thus the number of them who seek the higher education is small. But in general knowledge and culture, and in the wide range of their interests, Dutch women are the equals of women anywhere. It would amaze the Eng- lishman and the American to find how well their liter- atures are known among men and women in Holland who have no claim to learning; and of course all things French and German have a still greater interest for the Dutch. And on the practical side, the sec- ondary education seems to give the all-round equip- ment that enables a man to turn from one business and to apply himself with success to another. Whatsoever the man in the street in Holland may lack, it is not a stock of sound knowledge. io8 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS In Holland, the day of the man in the street is not yet. Perhaps it is now on the way, and all these new activities are the signs of its coming ; and if so, it will find him approximating in many ways to the man whom he is to supersede. But the ruling power in Holland still, although its reign may be nearing an end, is that indefinable body that almost is entitled to be called an aristocracy of learning. It appears unques- tionable that it has imposed upon society its arbitrary standards ; it has representatives in every town and village in the country who could enforce therh. Just as it says that matters of law must be decided by men of law, and will have none of a jury system, so it says in effect that matters of taste must be decided by men of taste, — and it, of course, comprises the men of taste. Needless to say, it contains as many stupid men as any unlearned body, and is no more infallible in its taste than in its reading of evidence. But it does seem to have preserved Holland from a cheap culture and a cheap religion.^^ The sensational appeal to the emotions is made to it in vain, and it scornfully rejects all the arts of the charlatan. So long as its influ- ence survives, it will make it difficult for men of merely clever commercial talent to create a following in art or literature that will give to their successes the justifica- tion of a contemporary opinion. It is too proud for that. Whether, if there is to be a change in all this, the educational system is to be held responsible for it, or whether the system is old enough to be judged at all in its results as yet, is doubtful. It is certain, at HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 109 any rate, that it can never be so old that it will be more than one of many determining influences upon that subtle thing, the national character. And it is character that counts. VIII It has always been the wonder of travellers in Hol- land that so many religious sects should exist in so small a country. To-day, there is no less reason for the same surprise. We can still say, as was said more than two hundred years ago, that " in Amsterdam almost all sects that are known among Christians have their public meeting-places, and some whose names are almost worn out in all other parts." That is true of the whole of Holland in a slightly less degree only. The disruptions, of course, are always in the Protest- ant bodies, and one never hears of any reunions. Such sectarianism can be understood where Protestantism holds the whole field ; but in Holland the Protestants barely outnumber the Roman Catholics by two to one (a small majority with which to oppose the compact authority of the Church), and they have not always been so strong. Yet, with every reason to fight shoulder to shoulder, they are ranged in many con- flicting camps, and bitter as is their antagonism to Rome, their differences among themselves are so much more bitter that at recent general elections some of them crossed over and fought side by side no HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS with the Catholics on poHtical questions that in a man- ner involve religious freedom. Therein, some may say, is the strongest proof that, as Sir William Temple found, all the violence and sharpness, which accom- panies the differences of religions in other countries, is appeased and softened in Holland by the general freedom which all men enjoy. I do not think that all the violence and sharpness is ever quite appeased, either between Roman Catholics and Protestants, or between the various shades of Protestantism, and no one could call it even softened who watched its exhibi- tions during the elections referred to. It is quite true, however, that in Holland men enjoy a complete free- dom in their religion. So they have done, by allowance or connivance, for centuries. At least they leave each other alone. Whence, then, comes their tenacity in a creed, or in a ritual, or in the avoidance of one or other? The Remonstrants revolted against the Cal- vinists three hundred years ago, and they remain a separate body, numbering at the most fifteen thou- sand members. The old Lutherans came out from the Evangelical .Lutherans in 1791, and they keep out to-day, although they are only ten thousand strong. Were there ever more tenacious remnants? Yet it does not appear that all this strenuousness is informed by religious conviction. Religious Holland is a complicated problem. It will be well, in order to throw some light upon it, to say something of the various religious bodies of Holland to-day. Their origin and fortunes throw \\r H ^; If) < cq < oi g M o M fq H « O M >! :?: Xi »-H b/1 r! « G o a! a, 1 03 u f3 Ci< O U 112 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS vivid side-lights upon the national history. Two mil- lion and a quarter souls, fully half the population, are members of the Netherlands Reformed Church, the old, and now disestablished, State Church. It is high- Calvinist. The governing body in each congregation, the church-session we might say, is composed of the clergyman and the elders and deacons. In congrega- tions where there are more than three clergymen, clergymen and elders form, apart from the deacons, a body which attends to the spiritual interests of the con- gregation. Different groups of congregations within each province are ruled by " classes," — they might be called presbyteries, — consisting of the clergymen of all the congregations in the group, and an equivalent number of elders. From these ''classes" are sent up the members of the provincial synods, and each pro- vincial synod is represented in the general synod. Besides the eleven clergymen from the eleven prov- inces, there are in the general synod three professors sent by the Faculties of Theology in Leiden, Utrecht, and Groningen; a representative from the Walloon congregations ; three elders chosen in turn by the pro- vincial synods and the Walloon committee ; and a deputy representing the interests of the Church in the Indies, — nineteen members in all, with a moderator and a clerk, who meet at The Hague annually. The system of church government, it will be seen, does not cul- minate in a general assembly, as it does in Scotland, for example, but in a very select assembly. The Dutch are not great believers in the wisdom of num- HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 113 bers. A committee, which sits twice a year, prepares the business for the meeting of the general synod. The financial affairs of the Church are under the con- trol of separate bodies : the guardians in each congre- gation, not elected directly by the members but by the " notables " who have been chosen by the members for this purpose ; the supervising committees in the provinces; and, since 1866, a general Committee of Supervision that meets at The Hague. The Walloons, who though a distinct body have an attachment with the Netherlands Reformed Church, are the descend- ants of the French Huguenots who fled to Holland after the Edict of Nantes was revoked. They have congregations in a few of the larger towns, and their services are still conducted in French. To follow the many secessions from the Mother Church is as difficult as to trace the various wanderings of the Rhine. The oldest, that of the Remonstrants, dates from as far back as the Peace of Twelve Years during the war with Spain, from the teaching of Arminius in Leiden, and the struggle between Maurits and Olden Barneveldt. It is, as it was always, the most liberal communion in Holland, and though prob- ably it numbers not more than fifteen thousand mem- bers, it certainly represents the religious thought and attitude of very many more. The Christian Reformed body, on the other hand, seceded in the first half of this century to maintain a stricter orthodoxy and a form of church government more in accordance with Scripture; and it succeeded so badly that within a 114 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS year a section of it separated and formed the Christian- Reformed Church under the Cross. More recently, after a brisk but unsuccessful strategic movement under Dr. Kuiper, another party in the Netherlands Reformed Church was put out from her. This was the party of the Doleerenden. By-and-bye these joined with the Christian-Reformers as the Reformed Church in the Netherlands; but as was to be expected, some of both parties kept out of that union, and they con- tinue to exist separately under their old names. By this time, no doubt, the reader is completely satisfied that a spirit of sectarianism prevails among the Dutch Calvinists. There was no reason why Holland should be Cal- vinist rather than Lutheran except that the demo- cratic teaching of Calvin arrived in the provinces at the golden moment when they were throwing off the sovereignty of Philip of Spain. The Lutherans, conse- quently, have never been so strong in Holland, but that has not prevented disruptions among them. The original body, the Evangelical Lutherans, numbers at present sixty thousand, more or less; while the Re- formed Lutherans, who came into existence during the civil war at the end of last century through a secession of an Orange and more orthodox party in the Evan- gelical church at Amsterdam, are found almost en- tirely in North-Holland, and number about ten thousand. The Baptists again are fifty thousand strong. They approach very near to the Calvinists ; but retain adult baptism, — by sprinkling, not by immersion, — and HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 115 they do not take an oath. The General Baptist Society at Amsterdam is the only central governing body that they possess. There are congregations of the English Episcopal Church at Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht; of English Presbyterians at Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Middelburg, and Flushing; of the German Evangelical Church at The Hague and Rotterdam. The Evangelical Brotherhood of the Herrnhutters, the Moravians, have churches at Zeist and at Haarlem; and there is a Catholic Apos- tolic Church at The Hague, and a Scots Church at Rotterdam. The Roman Catholic communion in Holland forms one ecclesiastical province, and is divided into five dioceses. These are the Archbishopric of Utrecht, and the suffragan Bishoprics of Haarlem, 's Hertogenbosch, Breda, and Roermond. The dioceses are subdivided into sixty-four deaneries. The clergy number about twenty-two hundred, and minister to a million and a quarter souls. There are also some six thousand Jan- senists, under Archbishoprics at Utrecht, Haarlem, and Deventer. The great influx of the Portuguese Jews into Holland was in the end of the sixteenth century; that of the German Jews in the beginning of the seventeenth. Together, they number to-day nearly ninety thousand, of whom the half live in Amsterdam. The Nether- lands Israelite Church has twelve head-synagogues^ seventy-four ring-synagogues, and seventy-four asso- ciated churches. The Portuguese Jews, an able and ii6 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS superior body, have head-synagogues at Amsterdam and The Hague, and one ring-synagogue. All these churches are upon an equal footing. There is no State church. It has not always been so, how- ever. When in 1579 the Seven Provinces united, each of them was left free to order religion within itself as it thought best; but very soon, from, a variety of causes, the Evangelical religion was imposed upon them, and at the Synod of Dort Calvinism was formally adopted as the national creed. There was freedom of religion for all men : even Roman Catholics, indirectly though not directly, were protected ; but the offices of State could be held by adherents of the National Church only. So it continued until the fall of the Re- public, with the fortunes of which, and of the House of Orange, the Netherlands Reformed Church had been so closely associated. Separation of Church and State was explicitly recognised by the revised Constitution of 1 848. The sovereign ceased to approve the orders of the Church, and to nominate the Moderator and Clerk of the General Synod, and at its meetings he was no longer represented by a Commissioner. In regard to finances, however, there was still a connection between the Church and the State, as there is to-day. In 1798, the possessions of the Roman Catholic Church, which had passed into the hands of the Reformers, were secularised, and the State undertook to pay the salaries of the clergymen of the established church for a certain period, after which the church was to be left to herself. Another system was adopted by the Consti- pq w a o < oS 1-1 O > >1 -n bfl C H C! nS U. rt a o fe Ii8 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS tution of 1815. Salaries and pensions, not of the Netherlands Reformed Church only, but of the Roman Catholics and of all Christian sects, were paid by the State ; and, save in the case of certain churches and congregations- that refuse it, — the Baptists, for ex- ample, only accept it when they are too poor to pay their minister, and that is seldom, — that payment is continued. But the Christian-Reformed Church, and bodies that have come into existence since 18 15, have no claim upon State aid. The State, of course, retains a supervision of all churches in the interests of public order. The only limits it sets to freedom in religion is interference with other people's freedom. Ecclesiastical bodies are in- sured liberty in regard to things concerning religion and its practice within their own folds ; but the orders of their institution and administration must be com- municated to Government. Without the sovereign's consent, a foreigner may not hold office in a church. Ecclesiastical officials, again, are not permitted to wear their robes of office outside the church buildings or enclosed places, save at those ceremonials, such as Roman Catholic processions, which were allowed pre- viously to 1848. The State carefully seeks to preserve from offence the feelings of any religious body, and so shrewdly has it anticipated possible causes of offence that it controls the tolling of church bells, — a matter out of which actions-at-law have arisen before now in other Calvinistic countries. In Holland people shatter the peace of communions HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 119 over a fine point of ritual. They cling tenaciously to some rag of doctrine. Considerations of religion com- plicate their most beautiful schemes of government and education. And withal, it does not appear that religion is a very active, living, individual force in the country. It may be that many, by a reading of their history, have come to look upon religious conviction as something incidental only to political freedom. So it was to some extent in the great Spanish war which made Holland a nation. Ever since then, religion has been constantly used as a political weapon, and that may have debased it in many eyes. Religious cries have been raised unfailingly in the fight that has lasted between the two great political parties from the days of the House of Hainault's rule down to modern times. At the present moment liberal Dutchmen speak bitterly of a Pope enthroned in the midst of Dutch Calvinism, who is fighting unscrupulously in alliance with the Pope at Rome against their political liberties. Religious conviction may have been sapped of its strength in those tenacious endeavours to defend a creed. The strenuous differences of dissent, per- haps, have disgusted learned and cultivated men, to whom, in their pride of knowledge, the faiths of the people naturally seem foolishness. Republican Hol- land has always had an instinct for a ruler, and tolerant Holland, perhaps, has suff'ered from the want of authority. Account for it as we may, there is not that fire of spiritual conviction which we should ex- pect from so much smoke of religious controversy. I20 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS I am speaking of the Protestants, of course. The Church of Rome always commands the allegiance of her people, and nowhere more exactingly than in Holland, whose toleration is a subversive example to her people. Among the Protestants, the strength of the Netherlands Reformed Church lies in the ex- tremes of society, the higher classes and the peasantry, and therefore in the country rather than in the towns. The Court is strict in its orthodoxy and constant in its attendance at the services of the Reformed Church. So are the landed gentry, from the conservative in- stinct of their class of course, but also, in some cases at least, from a personal leaning, or fashion, towards evangelicism. Among them, probably more than among any of the other educated classes in Holland, do we find people concerning themselves in all that is known by " religious work." As for the peasantry, they too are orthodox, and they are religious on Sunday. A very deep and genuine piety, it is always said, exists among the fisher people. In political questions that involve considerations of religion, — that is to say, in all political questions almost, — the peasantry in many parts of the country are liberal; but all resent innovation in the church services. Men still stand to pray and sit to praise; the women sit throughout; neither man nor woman kneels. To stand in praise is a change which many clergymen would like to see introduced ; but some of them have assured me that they would fear to propose it. Some- times they will request their congregations to stand in HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 121 singing a special psalm ; but they do not always get them to adopt the suggestion, and the innovation must not be repeated too often. We need not be surprised. Precisely the same persistence in the same stupid way, by better educated men, has rent congregations in our own country. In the middle classes, between these extremes of society, religion does not appear to have nearly so firm a hold. As might be expected, especially in that educated class that has been referred to already as exercising so peculiar an influence in Holland there is a strong body of liberal opinion and thought that practically, though not nominally perhaps, is dis- associated from any religious communion. A large section of the people in the towns — of the men, perhaps we ought to say: the assumption is evident that religion is a thing for women especially — do not attend church, or attend only at one or two set seasons. To be a member of a church, and even to be strongly attached to a particular body, does not seem to impose upon either man or woman the duty of church attendance. The country churches, it must be said, are generally well filled at the forenoon service; but I have been in the Old Church and the New Church in Amsterdam at the beginning of morning service, and found only a handful of people assembled. But for the children of the orphanages, there would not have been twenty worshippers. It seemed to me that, in the English Presbyterian Church close by, there were more Dutchmen — pre- 122 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS sumably desirous of perfecting their English ~ than there were in the Old Church of the city. Yet in Amsterdam there are probably as many religious bodies as in any town in Christendom. It would be wrong to present this impression to the reader, and not to set beside it another, — of the culti- vated and conscientious and well-disciplined lives led by the educated middle classes of Holland. Possibly mistaking the form for the spirit, I may have exagger- ated the extent of the indifference to religion among them. Certainly, they do not make broad their phy- lacteries. Their fault rather is to be scornful of those who would wear phylacteries. They are not given to making prayers, either long or short. But they do set the example of the good life. I am not speaking of the accidental moralities, but of the essential virtues of endurance and honesty and justice. You would not dream of associating with them high thinking and laborious days. Their interests are frankly practical. They concern themselves, not with the things unseen, but with the ordering of the things that are seen; and they order them diligently and well, and at the same time comfortably. They are bound in custom, but singularly free from cant. They are scornful of the religious quack, and often they do not distinguish between the quack and one who is only over-con- scious of religious zeal. There is a pride of knowledge and there is a pride of faith. Fads and excesses get no encouragement from them. It has often seemed to me that in that cold atmosphere many aspirations HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 123 are checked, and many delicate and pious souls starved. With the knowledge of men of the world, they are content to shut their eyes, but when they open them, they see wholly. They tolerate public lotteries, but it is very certain that, if they did enter upon a crusade against gambling, they would not stay to argue whether a betting man's stool in a paddock is a place, when they knew of a place, without doubt, at their own doors, where gamblers in stocks were subverting their country's honour and justice. Let us complete these impressions of the religious life of Holland b}^ attending morning service in a country church. A solemn Protestant bell rings us to worship. The boers stroll to the kirk, ** perplex'd wi' leisure," like Mr. Stevenson's Lothian ploughman, and they gossip at the door until the last stroke of the bell. Inside, the building smells familiar. I suppose it is that it smells orthodox. Three miles away from this village is another, wholly Catholic. Here, however, every one, from the burgomaster to Willem, the coach- man's boy, is severely Protestant, — in varying degrees, of course. There is another and a stricter sect gather- ing itself together somewhere within sound of our dol- orous psalm singing, the more worthily to defend the faith. So I am told; but I can scarcely believe it. This Netherlands Reformed Church is strict enough in all conscience, and these hard-featured, clean-shaven men, erect in prayer in front of their seats, with their 124 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS peaked caps before their eyes, seem veritable stalwarts. You perceive in their attitude a rational consciousness of duty, nurtured on the Shorter Catechism or the like. In appearance the men are more reverent than the women, who sit down-stairs (with little stools for their feet, stoofjes, containing peat fire in winter, which is well, for the sermon is not shorter then than in summer), and are, all save the few in native costume, sadly over-dressed. The men-folk may sit beside them if they care, and some of them do ; as a rule, however, they abide by the old order which keeps the sexes apart. So they crowd the gallery, pausing, ere they seat themselves, in that stern attitude of prayer. Meanwhile, the precentor — there is an organ now, but previously the precentor gave the tune, hence his title of voorsanger — reads a portion of Scripture and the Ten Commandments; and then the minister enters, and with him the gentle-folks of the country- side. But listen ! The minister is giving out a psalm. Surely, despite the unfamiliar tongue, we are worship- ping with the Auld Lichts. In which body else would they sit to sing this laborious measure? In which, bear with a discourse so long that it must be relieved with a hymn as intermezzo? The sand-glass, cased in brass, still stands at the minister's right hand, but it does not work. Perhaps it has become sulky at being ignored, even as the staves of the collection-bags seem to have been made supple by consequential usage. De bitterheid van den dood is voorbij gegaan, *' The bit- HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 125 terness of death is past," says the minister, giving out his text; and immediately a chubby deacon from the pew beneath unhooks the velvet ladle from the wall, and sets out on behalf of the poor upon a mis- sionary journey among the pews. He works the long handle for all the world like a hay-fork, now pitching it to the uttermost corner; now whipping it elegantly, yet dangerously near Mijntje's new bonnet, across a passage ; now manoeuvring it and himself dexterously round an awkward bend. And ere he has got half-way to the gallery, and while the preacher still fondles his first " head," another deacon, chubbier than the first, arises, unhooks another ladle on the minister's other hand, and braces himself to circumnavigate the pews. His is the appeal for the expenses of the kirk. Thus is the natural order reversed, and necessity follows on the heels of charity, — and closely. Do what I will, I cannot rid my mind of the idea that these two plump deacons are running a handicap race ! If they are, the result is a dead-heat. They pass the winning post of the pew of the elders together, winded, and perspir- ing, as the fifth sub-division of the third " head " is reached. If we have sinned in looking upon all this as a diversion, we do penance in what of the sermon still follows. Never was anything more dreary, and never did congregation disperse more rapidly, or with such evident relief, upon a benediction. You must stand to that, with your hat in your hand, and it is the depth of bad manners to resume your seat. So out we go, helter skelter, into the dusty highw^ay, to return 126 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS no more for one week at any rate. There is no after- noon or evening service this Sunday. See these grave church-goers two hours hence, making hoHday in some inn-garden, and the resemblance between the Scots and the Dutch Sunday seems to have vanished. The resemblance is there, nevertheless, and the difference is slight in reality. They come a little more quickly back to the world here ; that is all. IX If I were to be asked what I consider the most typical thing in Holland, I should reply, " The family tea-drinking in the evening after dinner." When the Dutch Indian civil servant, in Celebes, it may be, shuts his eyes and allows Memory to cast home-pic- tures on the darkened lids, the most affecting, I think, must be that of the corner of the verandah all aglow at the tea-drinking hour, where the mother sits amidst the paraphernalia of her laborious housewifery, — the blue Delft, the spoons carefully resting in their case, the trim spirit-lamp, the singing kettle in the " tea- stove," the bowl for hot water, in which later on she will wash the cups and saucers with her own hand, — while the family are grouped around her, simmering tranquilly like the urn, speaking of the exile with dim eyes, but drinking an excellent brand. I do not know that anything could be in greater contrast to our usual conception of the Dutchman, — ** manlike, but A Man of Long Views. From a drawing by Jozef Israels, 128 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS withal very harsh, as one ready at every word to pick a quarrel," Camden described him, putting the gen- eral sense into few words. Yet, probably, in this domestic retreat better than anywhere else, we can run to earth the true character of the Dutch which has been our pursuit in all these pages. The Dutch : not all Dutch people in Holland. A distinction must be made here that governs all these impressions. The majority have the easily recognised characteristics which we associate with their nation. They are, if I may use a Scots word to describe them, " kenspeckle." There are a minority, however, espe- cially in the upper classes in cities like The Hague and Arnhem, who have been pressed into a less na- tional mould. This does not necessarily make them less proud of the traditions and qualities of their people ; but with some there is an affectation of superiority, which is carried beyond the point of the ridiculous, and almost to that of the unpatriotic. There are households in Holland, I am told, in which you will scarce ever hear a word of Dutch spoken. A foreign language is used in the conver- sations at social gatherings, — at afternoon tea (itself an imported custom) and at the dinner-table, — and even in the talk of the nursery. For a time French was the choice of this fashion, but, recently, English has taken its place. I once witnessed an amusing incident which show^ed that this was resented by the people. In one of the steam-trams that ply between Arnhem and De Grebbe HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 129 was a little party of ladies, English and Dutch. The English ladies spoke excellent Dutch, — so excellent, indeed, that the folks in the tram did not detect the accent of the foreigner in the few sentences they had occasion to utter in that language. Evidently they be- lieved them to be their own countrywomen, and when, a little later, the talk fell into English, and the Dutch ladies of the party joined in it volubly, they jumped to the conclusion that here was this unpatriotic pre- ference for a foreign tongue. And then follow^ed a scene which greatly tickled the fancy of the English travellers. In very forcible Dutch, remarks of ex- ceeding bluntness were passed up and down the car about the absurdity of pretending to be other than you are. '* It was a ridiculous thing (was it not?) that Dutchwomen should attempt to pass as foreigners, — especially as English. If they must be ashamed of their own language, now, they might adopt French. That, at least, was melodious. But English ! " And so on. The amusing thing was that the Dutch ladies at whom these asides were levelled were good patriotic Dutchwomen, with a strong grudge of their own against the inroads of English speech and fashion; and tlieir wrath at these unjustified innuendoes was not hid, and was amazing to behold. It is the typical Dutchman, then, that we are in search of; and he also, let it be said, is cosmopolitan. He is so, of necessity. It is given to few to have the capacity, to fewer still the will, to navigate headlands of aspirates and to weather torrents of gutterals, and 9 I30 HOLLAND AND TFIE HOLLANDERS to reach the haven of the Dutchman's understanding in his own tongue. The Dutch are polyglot for very life. Their necessity has compelled the gift of tongues. The tea-drinking hour that I have described is a time for quiet reading and conversation. The portfolio of the circulating library that is being handed round holds books and magazines and papers in many lan- guages. The whole family can read them, the whole family has been trained in Universal History, as it is called, and conversation leaps from one event of in- terest to another in every part of the globe. The serious business of life is over for the day, — with the men, at least; Dutch housewifery is never-ending, — and to turn from Holland to compare it with the rest of the world is a relaxation. For, notwithstanding their cosmopolitanism in speech and interests, the Dutch are insular. That is only natural. Holland is a small island, or a small congeries of islands, to the area of which the Dutch are constantly adding, and as surely as they are enlarging it, it recedes from the sphere of world influence. Yet they are con- stant in the recollection of the promise of earlier history, and of the performance also ; while by the rest of the world it is forgotten, they never cease to remember that once theirs was the country round which the destinies of all the nations revolved. The Dutchman is rebellious in heart, as well he may be, against the fate that has lost him his place among the Great Powers. He is conscious of the possession of ruling qualities. With physical habits HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 131 so orderly that all the world thinks and talks of him as phlegmatic, he is watchful and courageous, endur- ing of purpose, a man of long views. The land he lives in is at once the proof of that, and the explana- tion. To make it and to keep it, and to make it worth the keeping, he has had that long fight with the waters, in which, after victories and defeats, and loss and reconquest of territories, he has won at last, and yet has won so barely that he dare not for a moment relax his vigilance against the fresh surprises of his enemy. How enduring and daring that fight had made the Dutch was shown in their other struggle with Spain, — a handful of cities against the mightiest Power on the earth, — carried on for eighty years in spite of defeats and difficulties, and atrocious cruelties that might have broken the bravest and most tenacious spirit; carried on to a successful close through three generations, when in the course of nature that spirit might have flagged and died of itself. Conceive if we can — yet for us who live in these shrieking days it is well-nigh impossible — a people, under the strain of that struggle for a period as long as from Waterloo to now, not only achieving marvellous triumphs in drainage and land reclamation, educating themselves, producing the foremost scholars in Europe, and a body of almost unparalleled painters, but also welding themselves into the greatest commercial and colonis- ing Power then existing in the world, and we have some idea of the endurance and the long views of the Dutch three centuries ago. 132 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS The nation was too young, too ill-trained, and too ill-developed as yet in its constitution, for such a struggle, and it was overstrained. At that moment, there came into the field another rival, England, of more mature stamina and more trained vigour, and for Holland the race was lost. But to the people of Holland the war with Spain brought new qualities of greatness, to add to those bred in them, and still put to the test in them, by the fight with the waters. It crystallised in them a hatred of oppression in any form. The roots of that hatred may lie in the Frisian race, which in a sense is the core of the Dutch nation. The reader has been warned already against accepting the popular conception that Friesland is superior to the rest of Holland to-day, and against finding corrobora- tion of that idea in recent disturbances in Friesland, which only prove that there is a rather troublesome people there. But while it is impossible in Holland to-day to distinguish the races that compose her, the special qualities of these races shine out in the nation as a whole, and not least of all those of the Free Fries. A hatred of tyranny, at any rate, was dis- played in the war with Spain, and the struggle en- shrined it in the national character. To-day it has little cause to show itself, for all those liberties which peoples, as opposed to individuals, can fight for, Hol- land possesses. She is as free as any nation in the world. There is not a single liberty she could gain by becoming a Republic again. I have seen the impatience of the Dutch with all policing — the Trie- A Peasant Bqy. From a drawing by Jozef Israels. 134 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS tion between the people and the poUce of Amsterdam, for example — spoken of as showing that they are still possessed of the old spirit of freedom; but that is a poor compliment to pay both them and it. No one will hold them up as pre-eminent in the ordering of themselves, — though in this respect they are well enough. The supreme sense of self-order in a people involves compromise, and compromise is alien to the Dutch character. It is opposed to a quality that the Dutch have in excess : they are almost immoderate sticklers for their rights. I am speaking of them individually as well as in the mass. It is a disagree- able quality, and earns for the Dutchman the reputa- tion of being hard and ungracious, whereas in reality he is one of the most obliging, and often one of the most generous, of men. But it carries with it the rare and splendid quality of justice. The Dutchman will have his rights ; but asks no more. He is infinitely just. It is his most outshining attribute. The sense of justice is one of his only passions. There is no impression of the Dutch borne in upon me more strongly than that. It has been produced by a hun- dred experiences, and especially by one this spring. I had the opportunity then of conversing with Dutch- men of all classes, in all parts of the country, and I found nearest the heart of all of them, — workingmen in Twente, packmen in Brabant, farmers in the fen- colonies and in the polders, fishermen on the Maas, merchants, lawyers, shop-keepers, clergymen, men and women of all sorts and conditions, — an amazing indig- HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 135 nation over the Zola trial. It was something quite different from the feeling the case aroused in our own country; it was so fierce and widespread, and it was so enduring, for at the time of which I speak, the trial was long past, and had ceased to be talked of in Eng- land. It is true that many Dutchmen had read of it in the French newspapers, and so received a more intimate impression of it; but, in reality, their indig- nation was little affected by their belief in the guilt or innocence of Dreyfus, or by their opinion of M. Zola's wisdom. It simply blazed out at what they considered so flagrant a travesty of justice. The experience was a revelation. His constant fight with the insensible elements has taught the Dutchman to discern the hard facts under- lying the appearances of things. Howsoever he may be startled into an enthusiasm, a cool calculation suc- ceeds to it, and he cuts clean through beauty in search of utility. He is not scJiwdrmerisch, like the German. A dispassionate reasoning directs his counsels and his actions to safe ends. He is inventive, and rich in con- trivances. His talent lies in his firm grasp of material realities. This practical sense is so exaggerated, in- deed, that in the conduct of affairs it often defeats itself, and since it suffers no illusions, he seldom feels the splendid glow, or attains the splendid results, of those who are inspired by passion to high endeavour. Yet withal that he is uncompromising and utilitarian, the Dutchman is a sentimentalist. Plain of speech, often brutally truthful, a sufferer of no illusions, he is 136 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS childlike in his affections, and in his shows and cele- brations thereof. It is then that we catch a glimpse in him of those ancestors of his as shown to us in jovial scenes painted by Frans Hals and van der Heist. Sometimes when he is surprised out of his calm pro- priety he exhibits an extraordinary abandonment. That is not only true of the peasantry at the Kermis, but of the more refined classes. Every fifth year, each university in Holland celebrates its foundation by a week of feasting, — a mode characteristically Dutch ; and it was my good fortune once to follow the gaieties of one of these feast-weeks. It is a time for the meet- ing of old friends; and on the first night the members of each year's class, who have come from all parts of the country to attend the celebrations, dine together somewhere in the town, and afterwards march to- gether, headed by bands of music, to the pleasure- garden where the festivities are wound up each day. It is impossible to describe the hilarious excitement as these parties kept arriving, marching or, rather, leaping and dancing arm-in-arm, through the garden to the strains of lo Vivat ; and it reached a climax when the older members appeared, survivors of classes away back in the "forties" and "fifties," dancing and sing- ing with as great spirit as the youngest. The next day these elders at least had relapsed into their usual grave demeanour, not to be tempted from it until five years later, if they lived so long. No one who knows these Dutchmen would grudge them that hour of high jinks, or think the worse of them for it; but it may be HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 137 doubted if there is another country in the world where professors and statesmen and lawyers and country- gentlemen would be found sufficiently ingenuous to present such an exhibition of abandon in public. The reader, remembering one of the failings of the Dutch- man, may say that Schnapps loosens the joints. But neither his frolicsomeness nor his sentimentality is merely imbibed. Both are as much part of his nature as his intellectual hardness. We might say of him as Mackellar said of the Master in Stevenson's novel, that he has an outer sensibility and an inner toughness. Yet he is at the other pole from Mr. Bally. The Dutch have an instinct for the precise and safe ordering of their lives, which is a direct outcome of the physiographical conditions in which they live. The trim and sober towns, the straight lines of the canals that enclose and drain the fields and the exactitude with which these must be kept at their proper level, and the abiding sense in the people that they live and work in dependence upon a mechanical precision in these things, — all this has its direct and natural influ- ence upon Dutch habits of life. A proof of this is that in the low-lying provinces an extreme and exaggerated orderliness of existence is most visible. Sir William Temple, with an eye upon the province of Holland mainly, noted particularly the disposition running through all degrees of men in it in his time to orderli- ness in their expenses. Not in that respect only, but in all the details of life, this precision is noticeable to- day. We have seen it in the furnishing and decoration 138 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS of houses and in the laying-out of gardens. It is car- ried into the direction of home and of business. If you were permitted to penetrate to the mysteries of store-room and hnen-cupboard, you would often find method pushed to a deplorable extreme of mere mechanical arrangement. For all their contrivances to insure comfort, the Dutch fail to attain to ease in living. They add infinite friction to life in promoting a machinery for making it smooth. They are cum- brously comfortable and painfully at ease. As it is with the Dutch lady in her house, so is it with the Dutchman in his business. The rule of the neat, of the netjes, even governs the conduct of affairs.: this is shown by the love of the Dutch for elaborated schemes ; although here, no doubt, there is a trace of the system- atic methods imposed by the French upon their gov- ernment. Most of all, it is seen in the curious formahty that encases the hearty and simple social life of Hol- land. Through their liking for order in details, they submit themselves to the yoke of officialdom. You cannot travel a mile by train in Holland without learn- ing that man was made for the railways, and not the railways for man. Where the official ceases to prevail, Mrs. Grundy steps in with a hundred principles of con- duct not less imperious, to mould social intercourse upon the punctiliousness of the country town. All this, it is true, is changing. The hand of the official is lighter, and the rule of custom is being broken down, and seems likely, by the way, to be driven out before an army of cyclists. To dwell longer upon this double o < < c o c o I40 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS tyranny, and to cite, as one could, any of its ridicu- lous exhibitions, would be to leave a wrong impression of Holland of to-day. But in certain places, and in certain conditions of Society, of which Amsterdam perhaps affords the best examples, an extraordinary stiffness and formality is still associated with a simple habit of life. Life in Holland is simple, and it is safe. Extremely frugal the Dutch are not, although they are often re- presented as being so. They live comfortably and well. But the simple plainness of William of Orange's later life, which the historians have noted, is far more typical of the Dutch to-day than the splendid enter- tainments recorded of his youth ; and the magnificence of a Leicester would still cause a scandal. Even in the pomp and show of life there is an absence of competi- tion among them. As compared with many other countries, of course, the Dutch are not wealthy, al- though they are as far removed as any from being poor. Great fortunes are .made in business— in petroleum and tobacco, for example — and on the Ex- change ; but all over, wealth is more evenly distri- buted and incomes are smaller than in England. A millionaire among them is a man possessed of a mil- lion of guilders ; and he is rarely met with. Fortunes more moderate, but still large, are found in all classes. Sometimes their possessors are boers whom you can see in velvet slippers on a North-Holland causeway, or clanking about a hundred-acre farm in wooden shoes. They may have made their money, or they HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 141 may have inherited it; but they remain steadfast in their class, and the sons and daughters they leave it to will be peasants, like themselves. Money circulates in Holland, but not the people. The law of inheritance in Holland, again, discourages the conservation of great fortunes and great estates. That is why, although there are large afforested tracts in the country, — in the East, to which the tourist seldom penetrates, — you nowhere find the wasteful splendour of old wood that can be seen in every county in England. It is in the middle classes, however, that the smallness of the in- comes is most noticeable, — or one should say, rather, is least noticeable. Not only comfort, but a certain grave and cultivated luxury also, appears to surround the lives of many households which — difficult as it is to believe It — are In receipt of an Income that would not be a laree waee for a London mechanic. In the professions, there are few plums, and the best of them are very small. Men of splendid talents, acknowl- edged to be at the top of the ladder In medicine and law, have to work hard to earn as much as a young buyer In the City. Holland possesses at present a band of enthusiastic and original writers, and now, as always, great painters : the most successful of the painters probably make a moderate competence, but It may be doubted If there is a man living in Holland to-day and writing In Dutch who can earn ;^i50 In a year by pure literature. Nor, as far as the necessities of life go, is it apparent that the cost of living In Holland is so much lower that It counterbalances the com- 142 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS paratively small remuneration that men, in the middle classes at least, receive for their work. Outside of the very largest cities, workmen can live very well upon nine guilders a week. Families do live in the towns in more than comfort, as we have seen, on ^200 a year, and i^700 and i^iooo a year are very large incomes. There must be a difference in the cost of living, of course, but as I have said it does not lie in the neces- sities of life. Rents are not low, and while food, the produce of the country, is fairly cheap, clothes, which are mainly imported, are notoriously dear. All this seems a sufficient explanation of a simple habit among a people given to the well-ordering of their expenses ; but there is another cause for it, less accidental, and more influential on the individual and national character. A scarcity of money is not one of the impressions made upon the visitor in Holland to- day; but there are a hundred evidences that to live in security and safety, not only from the inroads of his constant enemy, the waters, but from changes of For- tune as well, has become a ruling instinct with the Dutch. It has always been said of them that they are avaricious. There is a quick expressive action with finger and thumb, and a talk of dubbelijes (the diibbeltje is a small silver coin worth twopence) in the conversa- tion of the lower classes, that seems to show how large a place money takes in their thoughts. But that which seems the vice of avarice is often in reality a virtuous abstinence from extravagance. It has been forgotten that the Dutch have good reason to set a high value jW3 i " ' ('»i- ' V"i"^ l i ! Wa ' Mi iw nx i'" - ' ; jffg * - ' • ' ' "p. '< •' ■••• f"' — ^■p;:? J. ' "? - "^ f '- "1 In an Eastern Province, By Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch. 144 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS upon money. There have been many periods in their history, when, under the reverses of war, compelled to pay enormous taxes, crippled in the colonial trade upon which their non-productive country so largely depends, and with all their resources sucked dry, they lived in great straits. There was such a period at the beginning of this century, when the Dutchman had even to forego his pipe ; and although the country quickly recovered from it, the effects of that pinch were still felt in their youth by the generation that is just passing away, and its influence upon their habits was great. Money does not lightly go in Holland, but neither does it lightly come. The instinct of the Dutchman to secure himself against the rainy day has been bred in him by necessity, and that it is not in- spired by avarice is sufficiently proved by his charities, which are not by any means limited to the splendid in- stitutions for which Holland is famous. Of all the qualities of the Dutchman which we have discovered, none seems to affect the social conditions and the national character so greatly as this instinct for securely entrenching himself in life against the assaults of Fortune. It affects them for bad even more than for good. In such an atmosphere as it creates, great enterprise does not flourish. I am not speaking of speculation, as gambling in stocks is called. There is plenty of that pestilent vice in Holland, as else- where. But the Dutch show little spirit in hazarding their fortunes in legitimate ventures. It has been said already that there are signs all over the country of in- HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 145 creasing commercial and industrial activity, and I am informed that they are no less evident in the Indies ; but far too much of Holland's capital is tied up in foreign securities still, and far too little of it sunk in developing her resources at home and in her colonies. Save in one direction, that of adding to their country, the Dutch are not enterprising. They are ingenious, diligent, laborious even, but they lack expansive energy and ideas. While they have an extensive knowledge of all that is going on in the world, and watch it with their strong intelligence, their own in- terests are narrow. They are centred too wholly upon the home; one might say, I think, too wholly upon the house. We are brought back to the tea-drinking hour, when woman presides. I know that at the present moment there is a mild agitation in Holland on the subject of Woman's Rights, and that there is much that seems unjust in the legal position of the Dutchwoman ; and it is not without deliberation that I say that Holland appears to suffer from the excessive influence of women. It must not be supposed that they interfere in public affairs, or compete with men in their own field. Far from it. Her husband and chil- dren and house are the Dutchwoman's only concerns. To make the house comfortable for the husband is her chief end in life. And so eminently does she succeed that he is never happy out of it. Her affectionate care cajoles him from his ambitions. He has no sport, no golf let us say, to steel himself against the insidious softness. Woman's triumph is complete. Without 19 146 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS putting a foot in his realm, she entices him into hers; and though the law may call the husband head of the household, it cannot make any one save herself the head of the house. Thus everything confirms the Dutch- man in a safe and uneventful life. As with the individ- ual, so with the nation. Holland came out of her great war laden with spoils but shorn of strength. She can never recover her strength, and she retains the spoils only because she is protected by the public conscience of Europe. Of necessity her policy is negative and colourless. No one knows better than the Dutchman how futile are the cannon that stand pointed up the Rhine, The Dutch build a navy and pre- pare schemes of inundation, with little belief that they will ever be needed, and no belief at all that if they are needed they will avail. So Holland lives on, self- centred, entangling herself in no European questions, splendidly administering her colonies without osten- tation, allowing no dream of Empire, no intoxication of glorious memory, to tempt her into one moment's presumption in speech or action ; and prudence, her own supreme virtue, says that that way lies safety. Yet in her security lies her danger, so true is it of nations and of men that to save your life is to lose it. In the Dutchman all the plain elements of greatness, good and ill, lie awaiting some integrating force to make a man of him ; as it is, each pops up its head in him and proclaims him fifty men at once. And as the man lacks " devil," so the nation awaits an inspiration. Yet for Holland, it would almost seem, there can be no HOLLAND OF TO-DAY 147 inspiration save that of danger from without. She can never be inflamed by Imperial sentiment, or claim of prestige, or even by lust of power. Fate has willed it that in all the elements of offence she is impotent. But in the uses of defence she has been splendidly disciplined ; and it is possible to foresee contingencies when she would find that the conscience of Europe was a feeble reed to trust to, and her character might flower again in the sacrifice of a hopeless vindication of her liberties. That is not an impossible destiny. For when we see, as I think it is easy to see, in the less heroic sides of it, a continuity and unbroken development in the national character, we are justified in believing that there lie in it still, ready to be quick- ened by a national danger, the strong and enduring qualities that leaped forth to great ends in her golden Dogs in Cart. From a drawing by Charles Rochussen. HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED IN the foregoing Impressions, nothing has been said of two things which always, more than any others, more even than the fight with the waters, although they are really less important than it, have interested travellers in Holland, — her pictures and her system of government. The marvellous body of painting by the old Dutch masters was one of the manifestations of the outburst of energy in Holland in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries when, it almost seems, all her powers burned up in one bright fierce flame. So much we can say; but that does not make its appearance in that time and in that place the less inexplicable. It is easy to find analogies between Dutch art and the conditions and character of the nation which produced it: to note in both, for example, a firm grasp upon the things of earth, a burgher quality, an absence of aristocratic tendencies. How easily, and how falsely at the same time, analogies are drawn, is shown by the discovery of many critics that the colour-sense of the Dutch comes to them, somehow or other, through contrast with the gloomy and dull country in which they dwell ; whereas it might be thought that every traveller in Holland knows that HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 149 the note of Dutch landscape is a bright and luminous gleam of silver and emerald. It is difficult, at any rate, to correlate the work of the Dutch painters with Holland of to-day, and it has seemed to me best to consider it as an accidental interest, and to speak of the pictures only as we may happen upon them in the cities and towns that we shall visit later. With the system of government, of course, it is quite otherwise. It is a living and influential thing, with its roots in the past of Holland, and still shooting and developing; howsoever many exotic growths have been grafted upon it, it is a product of Holland, and intimately related with the life and character of her people. No excuse need be ofl"ered, therefore, for treating of it in a separate chapter. To do so fully, indeed, would involve the whole history of Holland, and is a work for the historian with many volumes at his command ; but it may be possible in a few pages to give the reader an idea of the system of government to be found in Holland to-day, and, in some measure, of how it is connected with the golden age, the relics of which are still the chief attractions of the country. The spirit of self-government seems to rest over Holland. The persistent windmills, the cosy farm- steads, the hamlets and villages, and the towns so self- possessed and debonair, are all symbols (or are easily mistaken for them) of a people going on in their own well-ordered way. Guicchardini, Sir Thomas Over- bury, Sir William Brereton, Sir William Temple, and many others, have described the majesty of civic ISO HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS rule in Holland in by-gone days, the pomp of the schepenen and the dread sentences of the vierschaar ; and even in the jovial gatherings in the canvases of the old painters we are not allowed to forget the rule and discipline of city life. These impressions, gathered from the landscape and the pictures and from travellers' tales, are corroborated by history, which tells of a nation fashioned out of many petty sovereignties and free towns, difficult to bind because of their individual laws and rights, and at once strong and weak because of their tenacity in them. Thus, whereas in describing most constitutions we begin with the sovereign authority and watch its decentralisation in local governments, in the case of Holland it is natural and more correct to start with these and to arrive by way of them at the central power. The unit of self-government in Holland is the com- mune Qgemeente), of which there are to-day some eleven hundred. In these, urban and rural districts and populations are mixed indiscriminately. The com- mune is a territory of varying extent. Sometimes it is a town or city, limited strictly by the walls ; more often its borders are spread wider. Most often of all it is a village or a group of villages with more or less land around it. In any case it is of historical growth : in form irregular, and often inconvenient, fixed with little or no consideration for the needs of the inhabi- tants. In many cases, no doubt, the communes could be traced back to the old *' marks," and to those erec- tions whereby the overlords, as early as Floris V. in HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 151 the thirteenth century, sought to strengthen themselves against the power of the nobihty. The inconvenience caused by the retention of these ancient boundaries, — which is in curious contrast to the instinct of the Dutch for the pretty ordering of things — is illustrated in Delft, in situation, appearance, and historic associa- tions one of the most typical towns of Holland. In Delft three communes meet — Delft, Hof van Delft, and Vryenban — each with its own administration act- ing in severe independence, which causes innumerable and often ludicrous annoyances to the citizens. The Provincial-States, or rather a standing committee of the Provincial-States, have the power to legislate for a fresh delimitation, where they think fit; but in prac- tice the only changes they make are in the cases of growing cities, in order to give them rating powers over new suburbs, and a stronger hand in matters of sanitation and police. By the Franchise Act of 1896, however, communes with over 15,000 inhabitants have been divided into three wards, and some of the larger cities into more. Thus there are now nine wards in Amsterdam, five in Rotterdam, and four in Utrecht. At the head of each commune, appointed by the sovereign and acting as his representative, is the burgomaster, that important functionary, apparent source of all authority, to be thought of only as a grave and reverend Mynheer dispensing justice in the gate. As a matter of fact, the burgomaster as often as not is a young man of some family, not weighted particularly with either dignity or wisdom. The com- 152 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS mune governs itself, and the fount of authority is the communal council ^gemeente raad), elected by the en- franchised inhabitants from among themselves. The number of councillors ranges from seven to forty-five, according to the population they represent; and their term of office is six years. Every second year, one- third of the Council retires, and the retiring members may be re-elected. The members of the communal councils must be Hollanders who have lived a year in the commune, and are not under twenty-three years of age. The elec- toral qualification will be most easily explained if we state first of all the qualification of voters for the mem- bers of the Second Chamber, and it may be allowable to do so in a tabulated form for the sake of clearness. By the new Franchise Act of 1896, then, — a halting step on the road to manhood suffrage, — the electoral qualification for the Second Chamber and for the Pro- vincial-States is possessed by All inhabitants of 25 years of age, not foreigners, able to exercise all civil and civic rights ; a. Who pay at least one guilder (i^. 8<3^.) towards the Imperial Capital or Income Tax ; or Who pay anything at all in the personeele belasting (that is to say, for the use of a house or of a part of it) ; or b. Who dwell in a house of a certain weekly rental (it varies, according to local situations and advan- tages, from \s. Afd. minimum to 4^. 2d, maxi- mum) ; or The Stadhuis at The Hague. From a drawing by Klrnkenberg. 154 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Who have a •certain annual salary or income (the limit for this varies also: the minimum is 225 guilders, the maximum 350); or Who are registered in the Great Book of Consols as possessors of 100 guilders nominal, or as depositors in the Government Savings Bank of 50 guilders ; or Who, irrespective of other qualifications, have passed an examination, fixed by law, for certain offices. Now the electoral qualification for the communal council differs from this in one point, and it is impor- tant. Under the second head must be added the pay- ment in the communal rates of a certain sum, which varies according to the importance of the commune. The communal council, therefore, has a greater power than the States-General over the purse of the citizens, and the local, communal franchise is restricted in an important degree in consequence. There exists, thus, the anomaly that men who have a vote in imperial affairs have no voice in the government of the muni- cipality in which they reside. To take an example, out of 94,305 inhabitants in the city of Utrecht in 1897, the number of electors for the Second Chamber was 9,677, and that for the communal council only 7,145. It is an interesting illustration of the tenacity of local rights which has been so powerful a condition in the history of Holland. In order that we may arrive at a better understand- HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 155 ing of the powers of the council, and especially of those of the burgomaster, let us go back over the history of municipal government in Holland. We find ourselves at once in a maze of local usages and rights, but it is possible to find a key to it. In the period when Hol- land was a collection of fiefs, under counts, who held of different ruling Houses, the count, the overlord, had officials who represented him in the town or city, a sellout, or baljuw (the French hailli), and several schepenen, or sheriffs, who administered justice, and, with the burgomaster, formed the governing body. The position of the burgomaster varied in the differ- ent towns, but he represented the burghers and was chosen by them. In course of time, however, the counts, grown jealous of the burghers' power, limited it by choosing from among them a representative body, the vroedschapy or council of wise men, as it was called, although really it was composed of the wealthier citizens, between whom and the mass of the burghers there was a natural separation. At the same time they took away from the burghers the election of their burgomaster, and either kept it in their own hands, or placed it with the representative body and their own officials. In the fifteenth century, under Burgundian rule, the policy of which was always union and the centralisation of power, this representative body of the count's choosing became more and more a per- manent council, while the actual government was kept still more exclusively than ever in the hands of the count's officers. 156 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS When we come down later, to the moment when the Seven Provinces threw off the yoke of Spain, we find an extraordinary variety of rule in the towns. Most of them had three or four burgomasters, several sheriffs, and a council or vroedschap. Dordrecht, which was in the unusual position, for a city in the province of Hol- land, of having only one burgomaster, v/ho, however, was clothed with great state, had in addition to a coun- cil an '' Old Council," composed of thirty or forty ex- councillors, and in this respect approximated more nearly to the government of the towns in the other six provinces. Everywhere, however, the power that had crossed from the counts to the burghers was well con- solidated in the council and the magisterial body; so much so that the representatives whom the cities sent to sit with the nobles in the General-States were mere machines for the delivery of the council's votes. From curious glimpses which we receive in Sir William Brereton's journal of a visit he paid to Holland in 1634, when the struggle with Spain was coming to an end and the country, under Frederick Henry, was en- tering upon the most glorious period of its history, .we see less uniformity in municipal government than ever. Dordrecht was still singular with its one burgomaster who was always attended in public by his halberdiers. Rotterdam had three burgomasters, who held office '* some one, some two, some three years . . . they are equivalent to our bailiffs of cities or towns corporate," and no man waited on them in the street, though '* sometimes you might see a woman, a maid, following HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 157 them." Sir William's party had some trouble about a stolen coat, and were referred to the burgomasters, whom after some delay they found '* in convivio qttodam, at the State Harbour, the Cross Keys, upon Erasmus Bridge," and greatly too busy to attend to the affair, but the '* baylie," who spoke English, did what he could for them, though he '' also was epicuris- ing at this time." Besides the three burgomasters and eight sheriffs and twenty-four aldermen, there were three '' friend-makers, to mediate," which no doubt was necessary if the burgomasters set the citizen an example of how to conduct business; the baylie, or high-sheriff, it is important to notice, was appointed durante vita, by the States-General, into whose hands, we see thus, had fallen some of the old powers of the counts. In Delft, again, there were four burgomas- ters and a crowd of other officials, including ** friend- makers," and forty-four members of the vroedsckap, "who," Sir William says, "are the common council, consenting to taxes and levies." The Hague, which was still "a village without a corporation, — a dorp — but the finest in all Holland," varied matters by choosing its two burgomasters from among the alder- men for three nlonths; while Haarlem had a high- sheriff for night as well as for day. Sometimes the power of the States-General was in the ascendant, sometimes that of the Stadhouder; in any case, the central authority was represented in the government of the towns in certain offices. Finally, after the experiments jn constitution-making, while the French 158 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS were in the country, William L came to the throne, and bit by bit the government of the communes was put upon the basis on which it rests to~day. Having glanced at its development thus, we can examine it with an eye for the compromise that has been struck in it between local rights and the sovereign authority. The present-day communal councils, as we have seen, are popularly-elected bodies, or at any rate they are as popularly elected as the ** importance " of the town will permit. The burgomaster, on the other hand, is appointed by the sovereign. He carries on in his office the representation of the sovereign power in the communes, which in the case of the towns we have traced back to the fifteenth century. But although he is responsible to the commune for his administration and is paid by it, which in the case of every other per- son is a disqualification, the burgomaster is eligible as a member of the communal council. His position, in fact, is altogether peculiar. As the sovereign's repre- sentative, he is president of the council ; ex officio he has an advising- voice in its deliberations. If the electors choose him as a member, then, of course, he has a vote. By virtue of his office, he has further powers. He is at the head of the executive body in the commune, the College of Burgomaster and Wethouders. The num- ber of Wethouders, whom we may call magistrates, varies with the population; there must be two, and there cannot be more than four ; and they are chosen by and from among the members of the council Be- sides its administrative functions, this college prepares HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 159 the resolutions to be taken by the council, — though it must be understood that any councillor has the right of initiating business. It is clear, therefore, that the burgomaster, if he is a strong man, can exercise a very considerable influence in the council, whether he pre- sides over it as a member with a vote, or presides merely with an advising voice, ex officio ; and his hands are strengthened by the power that is given him of staying, when he thinks right, the execution of any of the council's decrees for thirty days while he appeals to the sovereign. The burgomaster must be at least twenty-five years of age. Another qualification is that he be an inhab- itant of the commune ; but, ostensibly in the interests of the commune, the sovereign may appoint an out- sider to the office, and often he does so, though whether always in the commune's interests is not so certain. The salary attaching to the office varies with the importance of the commune; from as low as £40 in some country places, it rises to ;^500 in Utrecht, and to ^625, nearly, in Amsterdam. The same man may be burgomaster and secretary (but not treasurer), and he may be burgomaster of two adjoining communes if they do not exceed five thousand souls. There is, to all intents and purposes, a profession of burgomaster. It is not the salary, however, that causes the office to be sought after, or not, at least, in the rural communes. It is looked upon as an honourable position for young men of some fortune, drawn from a class from which chiefly, since as far back as Sir William Temple's day, i6o HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS it has been customary to fill the civil offices of State ; and it is acknowledged that especially in communes composed for the most part of peasants these men play a useful and important, if not a very arduous role. The Burgomaster of Marken. As a rule, the councillors receive no salary. Provi- sion is made, however, for paying a member when necessary, and if one is paid, all are paid. Now that workinsf-men are finding- seats on the councils, though HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED i6i slowly, this provision is more frequently taken advan- tage of. The fees, called ** presence-money," never exceed the 4^". 2d. per session of about three hours allowed in Amsterdam. Within the last thirty years, a great change has come over the persomiel of the councils. Working-men members are still few, but there are many business men undertaking the duties now, whereas from 1800 to i860 the councils were composed almost entirely of doctors-of-law. This is an interesting corroboration of the impression recorded earlier that the highly educated classes in Holland have been exercising an unusually strong influence on her affairs, which now is being weakened. As a rule, the best men in all classes of society are willing to serve on the councils. Communal officials — the Commissary of Police, if there is one, clergymen, schoolmasters, and others — are not eligible as mem- bers, but almost all State officials are ; frequently they have much leisure time on their hands, and probably they are in a majority on the councils. It cannot be said, however, that the people take a warm interest In local government. At the bi-yearly elections, a per- sonal, partisan feeling is sometimes aroused; but Im- perial politics have no effect upon them, and it is hard work to bring half the electorate to the poll. It is not necessary to follow the councils into their routine of business, which exhibits no peculiar prin- ciple, unless it be that in some cases decisions are left to the arbitrament of the lot. One of the special duties of the council is the appointment of teachers and the II i62 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS supervision of education in the commune, of which more will be said in another chapter. Poor-relief, though it is part of the work of the local authority, is in a still greater degree a charge imposed by the churches upon themselves. Each religious body accepts the burden of its own poor; almost all of them have their own almshouses, some of them even their own hospitals. The cost of the relief of paupers un- attached to any church is all that the commune has to defray. The various sources from which the com- munes derive their revenue will be seen at a glance if they are set down in a tabulated form : — Property. Some of the possessions of the communes, especially lands belonging to the rural communes, are very valuable. Rating. The communes can impose: — An additional percentage of the Imperial property tax. The maximum is 40% of the tax on built property, and 10% of that on unbuilt. An additional percentage (in some cases as much as 70%) of Xh^ personeele be las ting, that is, the State tax for the use of a house, the number of chimneys, the number of servants, etc. A direct communal tax. Theatrical and dog licences. Petty customs, rriarket-money, port-dues, and the like. HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 163 The communal councils cannot levy for libraries or museums ; the only special communal rates are those to cover the cost of opening up new roads and streets. In all their expenditure, the communal councils are supervised by the Provincial-States, by whom also the salaries of burgomaster, secretary, treasurer, and some other officials, are fixed. The Provincial-States, to which we will now direct our attention, need not hold it long. They have a certain historic interest as a link between Holland of to-day and Holland of history. But they are no more than a link. The present Provincial-States are not a development of the Stateii-Provinciaal of former cen- turies, who, after throwing off their allegiance to Philip of Spain in 1581, were the real sovereigns of the country, with the Stadhouder, when there was one, as their first Minister, though as often as not he was their master. Except in one respect, and that of the highest importance, the Provincial-States to-day are merely an administrative body, without any legis- lative power. The exception, as will be seen later in the chapter on " The Fight with the Waters," is the control of the defences against river and sea. It may be said that the Provincial-States must be political bodies, because the members of the First Chamber are elected by them ; but the First Chamber has greatly less power than the more popularly elected Second Chamber, and the political influence of the Provincial-States is not so great as might be supposed. They themselves are popularly elected ; but not for political ends. i64 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Their duties are limited to the severely practical work of administration. With them lies the regulation of all provincial works, as well as of traffic and means of communication within the province, with a special view to the development of its commerce and indus- tries. They look after waterworks and waterways, grounds from which peat has been dug, mines, and polders; and the dike-survey is under their control. Poor lunatics are in their cure. The greater part of these duties, of course, is undertaken by the Stand- ing Committee, the executive body, under the control of which comes, partly at least, the government of charities, prisons, the militia, the reserves, and even of certain matters more directly the concern of the State, such as preliminary education. The Provincial- States, as has been said, are a purely administrative body. In their case, therefore, it is not necessary to trace any development. The great question of State Rights, the bugbear of the Dutch Republic, can best be dis- cussed in connection with the States-General. It is sufficient to say of the Provincial-States that, generally, in the conditions and rights of membership and in the conduct of business, there are many parallels between them and the communal councils. For example, the sovereign, who is represented in the commune by the burgomaster, is represented in the province by a commissary. At one time this official was governor of the province, and that is why the offices where the affairs of the province are conducted are still known HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 165 popularly as the " Gouvernement." The commissary resides in the city in the province which the constitu- tion has fixed as the meeting-place of the States. He presides over that body and has an advising voice in it; and he has a vote in the Standing Committee, which is composed of himself and six members. The qualification to vote for members of the Pro- vincial-States is the same as that for members of the Second Chamber, with the addition, of course, that the electors must be inhabitants of the province. The members themselves, also, must have been in- habitants of the province for one year, and they must be at least twenty-five years of age. They are elected for a period of six years, and every third year half of them retire. In some provinces, the States contain as many as eighty members. To have all the electors voting for all the representatives would be too clumsy a method ; the provinces, therefore, are divided into electoral districts. The revenue of the Provinces, it may be added, is not large. Its main sources are a percentage of the imperial property and house taxes, and tolls, lock- dues, and provincial possessions. The States have the power to levy a provincial tax. In North Brabant, for example, tolls on the roads have been abolished, and the States have imposed a tax upon horses ; but this, like all provincial taxes, has been sanctioned by the two Chambers. And neither the Provincial-States nor the communal councils can impose excise duties, or any tax that would hinder trade. Throughout Holland, commerce is entirely free. i66 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS It has been said that the present Provincial-States are not a development of the Provincial-States that in former centuries played so important a part in Holland^ Let us see, now, what these earlier States were, and the position they really held in the country. In that way not only will light be thrown on the Parliamentary system of Holland to-day, but we shall have found some clue to the whole history of Holland. We have seen the towns rise to power as towns always did rise in the Middle Ages. The counts who ruled over them in the provinces, nominally for the emperors, in reality as independent overlords, bought the support of the burghers against the nobles, and paid for it in grants of privileges. In course of time they called together the burghers with the nobles to consult with them about war and supplies and other questions affecting the province ; until at length this privilege was interpreted by the burghers as a right. Thus the two Estates of Holland, the nobles and the towns, came to be represented in council, and the representatives, being identified with those who sent them, were known as the States of the province. The smaller towns, however, finding themselves treated as of little account, kept away from these gatherings ; they kept away the more readily that by doing so they managed to evade payment of some of the moneys voted at them. To some extent, they continued to be represented by the nobles ; but the nobles also, being in a minority, fell away in their attendance. The gentry are called to the Provincial council for order's sake, HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 167 but the merchants and tradesmen are predominant, Sir Thomas Overbury wrote in the seventeenth century, and so it was long before the war with Spain. In the Provincial-States, the cities were predominant. Take Holland and Zeeland, the nucleus of the Union. In the Provincial-States of Holland, that is of the present North- and South-Holland, the nobles, few in number, were represented by one vote, and one vote each was possessed by six great towns, whose names are interesting. They were Dordrecht, Haarlem, Delft, Leiden, Amsterdam, and Gouda, — the large towns to- day. We see how ancient a place the present Holland is. In Zeeland, again, the nobles had one vote, and the Abbot of Middelburg had one, representing the large possessions of the Abbey of St. Nicolaas in the province; while the towns with a vote each were Middelburg, Zierikzee, Goes, Tholen, and Reimerswaal. All of these, save the last, still exist, though fallen from their old estate ; Reimerswaal with all its civic pride was swallowed up by the sea in the seventeenth century, and lies at the bottom of that arm of the Schelde which the traveller crosses between South Beveland and Bergen-op-Zoom. As it was in Holland and Zeeland, so it was in all the seventeen provinces which were brought together under Charles V. Each of the provinces had its rights, to which, like the towns, it clung tenaciously; each of the Provincial-States had its own peculiar constitution. Even thus early we see the persistence in State Rights which worked the ruin of Holland. i68 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Philip the Good, of the House of Burgundy, whose interference with the government of the cities in order to strengthen the central power in them, has been noted already, pursued the same tactics with the States of the provinces. From time to time, he called together all the Provincial-States to advise with him, and this policy was continued by Charles V., who during his reign summoned at least fifty of these councils. But both failed to inform the Provincial-States in general council with any authority. Especially in the north, many of the States would not attend. Friesland refused, holding that she was prevented by her ancient privilege of never having to cross her own borders to appear before a foreign judge. Drente, Overysel, Groningen, and Gelderland had their own reasons for staying away. And there was one condition of these united meetings which made them ineffective. The decisions taken in them were not binding on the minor- ity. It was so in the Provincial-States themselves. The resolutions of the majority were disregarded by the nobles and towns who had voted against them. The counts, naturally, contended that they were binding, and if they were strong enough they enforced their opinion ; but, generally, they were not strong enough, and the minority acted as they had voted. Precisely the same principle of weakness was introduced into the general gatherings of the States. Charles V. abdicated in favour of his son Philip. Philip n. of Spain had still less respect than his father for the privileges of the Netherlanders. He HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 169 was going to rule them with a hand of iron, and re- gardless of their rights and customs make them con- form to his will in religion and government and policy. At first, he was opposed by the nobles only, but by- and-bye the burghers were roused to revolt, and at length, in 1568, when Alva was devastating the coun- try by his bloody policy, William of Orange took the field. Several years were to elapse before allegiance to Philip was thrown off. But we are not going to follow the rise of the United Provinces, or the fortunes of the Republic in the succeeding centuries ; our con- cern is only with a few incidents in that history which illumine the development of the Dutch Constitution. One of these was the Pacification of Ghent, in 1576. It was the union of Holland and Zeeland in the north with thirteen provinces in the south in the demand for the restoration of their liberties, and it recognised the meet- ing of the States of these provinces in general assem- bly for a purpose in which they were all united. It is necessary to point out a distinction, not, however, rec- ognised by all, between such an assembly as that of the Pacification of Ghent, — the General States it might be called, — and the States-General. The General States was the assembly of all the Provincial -States of the Union in general council, and in Holland we find it meeting at The Hague, as late as 165 1, under the presi- dency of the poet Cats, — the " Great Meeting " it was called — to consult on questions of government. The States-General, on the other hand, was an assembly of the representatives of the Provincial-States, soon to I/O HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS become a permanent assembly, which may be said to have been estabhshed by the Union of Utrecht in 1579. Between that event and the Pacification of Ghent, much had happened. Alva had reduced the southern provinces. Between north and south, the difference in religion had become more and more a marked line of cleavage. The opposition to Spain was consolidated in the northern provinces; and when these leagued together in the Union of Utrecht, and soon after threw off their allegiance to Philip, the first lines of the Dutch Constitution were 1 ^. It must not be supposed that even in their oppo- sition to Spain the northern provinces were brought into union at once. A few of them signed the Union in 1579; the others joined piecemeal. Parts of pro- vinces came in, and separate towns; separate towns and parts of provinces held out. Nearly twenty years passed before all the signatures were received. It was the old story, — jealousy of State rights and of civic privileges. Yet by the conditions of the Union these rights and privileges were carefully guarded. The provinces were united *' in eternity," and were to remain united as if they were one : so it was laid down ; but the condition, quite irreconcilable with that, was admitted that each town and each province was in- sured its own privileges. No attempt was made to bring uniformity of constitution into the Provincial- States. The provinces were to govern themseh !S as they liked, even as we have seen the towns were doing. HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 171 It was the representatives of the Provincial-States who met together as the States-General : at first from time to time, in different cities, Utrecht, Delft, The Hague, now in one, now in the other; but shortly after the departure of Leicester, in 1593, as a perma- nent body which gradually took the government into its own hands, including much of that which hitherto had been in those of the council of State. But it was constituted in a most irregular manner, which lasted all during the Republic. There were, it is true, as many votes as .here were provinces, but there was no uniformity in the representation of the provinces. The accounts of the meetings of the States-General given by travellers in Holland at different times seem quite irreconcilable, owing to the fluctuating number of deputies mentioned in them. It is impossible to follow Sir William Brereton, who wrote about 1634, when he attempts to detail the representation of each province. Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, who made some notes on the government of Holland one hundred and fifty years later, gets to the root of the matter when she says that the chief depositaries of the sovereignty were not the S :ates-General, but the Provincial-States, of whose deputies the former were composed, and with- out whose consent they never voted upon important measures. She adds that in the States-General, each province had one vote ; which, with the reasons for it, n ight be delivered by an unlimited number of deputies. Thus it appears that at the very end of the Republic, at which time Mrs. Radcliffe wrote, the 172 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS confusion in the government, which we find when the war with Spain was going on, was only worse con- founded. During the whole Republic, though there were only seats in the council-chamber of the States- General for twenty-two representatives, there were always far more present, and sometimes several hun- dreds. The vote and the reasons for it were delivered by the ** unlimited number of deputies; " and the vote was in accordance with instructions from the Provin- cial-States, with whom lay the real sovereignty. We might go further, and say that the depositaries of the sovereignty were not the Provincial-States, but rather the nobles and the councils in the towns, whom they represented. The States-General had to await the decision of the Provincial-States, the Provincial-States that of the nobles, and of the towns, of which there were nearly a hundred. It is a fact that some, twelve hundred persons had to record a vote before impor- tant action could be determined upon by the central authority. And all this, be it remembered, in a coun- try that had to fight Spain and England and France, and to build up and maintain an empire. This, however, was not all. In many cases unani- mous consent was necessary before any action could be taken; and in any case the vote, when it was cast, did not bind the minority. It generally did, it is true, under a strong and masterful Stadhouder like Maurits ; but the question whether it did or did not was ever cropping up to paralyse the central government. Be- tween the provinces, there was a constant clashing of 174 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS interests, and an unequal distribution of burdens and of influence. Each province had one vote ; but for long, out of every hundred guilders contributed to the national treasury, the province of Holland paid fifty- eight and Overysel three and a half. It is little wonder that the province which paid the piper thus should seek to call the tune, as was the case after the Peace of Munster, when the Stadhouder William H. had to lead an army against Amsterdam to compel the up- keep of the soldiery in the province. Drente, again, had signed the Union early, and she contributed one per cent to the treasury, but she had no representation in the States- General. Immediately after the Union she had been occupied by the enemy. She did not lose her right to a vote thereby, but only had been prevented from exercising it: so it was ui^ed in her behalf when she claimed representation later. Her claim, however, was refused. The maritime provinces could not allow the land provinces to be strengthened by a single vote. The difference of interests between the two was always a trouble, and sometimes a serious trouble, ^f^he union of Utrecht, the first Constitution of the Republic, had made provision for the settlement of differences between the provinces by referring them to the Stadhouder; it did not take into consideration the possibility of there not being a Stadhouder. Again, it allowed the provinces to have separate Stad- houders, or to have the same one in common, without defining the powers of the office. Thus no more check was put upon too great a consolidation of power HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 175 in the central authority than was put upon an excess- ive diffusion of sovereignty tliroughout the provinces. Between those two extreme dangers of a RepubHc, Holland was tossed. The diffusion of sovereignty we have seen ; the tyranny of the Stadhouders was no less clear. The office had become hereditary in the House of Orange. Position, wealth, something like genius, above all, enormous services to the State, placed the Princes of Orange in the position of master, when nominally they were only servants. The differences among the provinces were weapons in their hands. It was union that the Republic required, and the Princes of Orange fought for union. That was their policy, whether they were sacrificing themselves and their fortunes, or Olden Barneveldt and De Witt. But it was Ji policy that realised their ambitions, and their ambitions, realised, realised the needs of Holland. "^The strong Stadhouders usurped a central authority which the Union failed to provide. They became hereditary Stadhouders, the '' Eminent Heads " of the State in name, sovereigns in all but name. They had the filling up of numerous offices. By-and-by, they made alliances in marriage with royal families. For- eign powers might treat with the States-General as representatives of the Republic, but they asked audience of the Prince of grange. In this way the power of the States-General was doubly weakened. ^ Moreover, it had a rival in the council of state, a body older than itself, and less subject to provincial . dissensions, since the provinces were represented on 1/6 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS it in proportion as they contributed to the national expenses. At the beginning of the RepubHc this council was much more powerful than the States- General. Very soon, however, its influence became less. Maurits weakened it greatly. But it never was broken, and its power, now greater, now less, compli- cated still further the conditions of government. It had the affairs of the army in its hands without mak- ing any easier for the Stadhouder and the States the delicate question of the control of the troops. It was the council of finance, or was during a period at least, and as its budget was sent to the States-General, to be laid by them in turn before the Provincial-States, there was interminable delay here also ; and very often, in the end, the province of Holland had to pay the deficiency caused by the neglect or the refusal of other provinces to contribute their share. The Constitution of the Republic, in a word, was an impossible constitution. There was not one Republic, there were seven. Before the Spanish wars, the sover- eign power, whether it was Burgundy or Austria or Spain, had held the provinces together in a manner. When it was thrown off, nothing took its place. The States-General did not, for the sacrifice of their rights by the provinces, which alone could have made that possible, was never dreamed of. The Stadhouders did in a measure, but their authority depended on individual personality and the temporary needs of the nation. A pressing danger was as an authority to the provinces, but when it was removed dissension and HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 177 secessions returned. The wonder is not that at last the Republic collapsed, but that, constituted as it was of weaknesses, there should have been found in it the noble and virtu- ous elements to hold it together for such marvel- lous performance. The old Republic may be said to have fallen with the flight of Wil- liam, the Fifth Stadhou- der, to England in Jan- uary, 1795. In 1 81 3 his son returned to Holland, to be crowned as Wil- liam I. During the years between these two dates Holland was a Republic — the Batavian Republic — experimenting in gov- erning herself by systems based upon the latest French models; then a kingdom, dependent on France, and with Louis Napoleon on the throne ; and lastly a mere prov- 7^ A Peep in the Hague. From a drawing by Klinkenberg. 12 178 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS ince of France, with her capital, Amsterdam, counted the third city in the Empire. In each period there are one or two events that throw h'ght upon the present Constitution, to which we have been leading up in this survey. The leaders of the Patriot party, which brought in the French and expelled the Stadhouder, were im- pressed with the need of union. They were also strongly influenced by French revolutionary ideas. The spirit of States sovereignty was not dead : it existed in the provinces, and showed itself in the National Convention, which made the first attempts at drawing up a Constitution. The extreme Unionists, therefore, effected a coup d'etat, cleared the conven- tion of the party of State Rights, deprived the fol- lowers of Orange of all power, and proceeded anew to the business of constitution-making. Church and State were separated. The aristocracy of the towns were reduced. To break down the old State feeling, the boundaries of the provinces were disregarded in the political divisions of the country. In place of the provinces came eight departments, and these eight departments were broken up into eight equal sections. They were also broken up into rings, from which the members of the departmental governments were sent up. Irrespective of the departments, the country was divided into ninety-four districts, each with 20,000 in- habitants. Each district sent up a member of Parlia- ment, elected by a complicated system of nominations from sub-districts. The Representative body consisted HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 179 of two Chambers and kept the legislative power in its own hands, while the administrative power was en- trusted to ministers of its own choice. This elaborate Constitution was unmanageable. It threw^ upon the administrative body too much work, and it gave the departmental governments (so they thought) too little power. But though a new one was called for almost immediately, this Constitution had a lasting influence. Before it could be modified, Napoleon had interfered to pave the way for the annexation of Holland, which followed a year or two later. Of the Constitutions imposed upon Holland before the Restoration, it need only be said that they recognised again some measure of State Rights, and restored the old provincial divi- sions of the country; they were more moderate, so that, for example, the members of the Orange party were no longer excluded from office ; and, ultimately, were more monarchical. With Louis Napoleon at the head of the State, the legislative body consisted of thirty-nine members, and there was a States council of thirteen. The ten provinces were given equal rights, and there was a governor and a council in each. The Code Napoleon, specially adapted to the kingdom of Holland, and a jury system, were introduced. The Code remains, but the juries have disappeared. Finally, in 1 8 10, when Holland was incorporated with France, the departments were given prefects and under-pre- fects, and French names ; the burgomasters became mayors; conscription was introduced; the freedom of the Press was limited; and education, for which i8o HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Schimmelpennick, Napoleon's pensionary, had done so much, fell into a deplorable condition. Then the country, wearied out and drained of its money, wel- comed a Prince of Orange as its king. The troubles of Holland, however, were far from being at an end. In the Constitution with which William L came to the throne, in 1814, three great principles were embodied : freedom of religion, equal- ity before the law, and the independence of the juridi- cal power. There re-appeared in it many of the institutions of the old Republic. The Estates were still represented in the Provincial-States, which were elected, by the most highly-taxed subjects, from among the nobles and the councils of the towns. The Pro- vincial-States chose the States-General, which sat in one Chamber, and one-fourth of the members had to be selected from the nobility. But it was sought to avoid the weakness of the Republic by giving the States-General complete independence in legislation from the Provincial-States, which were reduced accord- ingly to be a merely administrative body. Scarcely was this Constitution adopted, than, by the Congress of Vienna, the Belgian provinces were incorporated with Holland, which it was intended by this means to reinstate among the Great Powers. The experiment was not successful. Between the northern and the southern provinces there was friction constantly; aris- ing partly, as of old, out of the religious question, and still more from their opposing fiscal policies. Belgium was protectionist and at the same time liberal ; on i82 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS which very account free-trading Holland seemed to become more conservative. The union with Belgium had made a revision of the Constitution necessary, and among the changes was one that considerably reduced the representation of the Estates, and gave the land- ward villages a share with the towns in local govern- ment. After the revolt and separation of the Belgian provinces in 1830, Holland carried these modifications still further, as we see in the Constitution of 1848. By that Constitution Holland virtually is still regulated. We can now take a brief glance, therefore, at the pres- ent system of government in Holland, which we can do with a better understanding of its development after this rapid survey of changes and revolutions in the past. The communal councils and the Provincial-States, we have seen, are popularly elected bodies. In the f ' same way, the legislative power in the State lies with the people through their representatives in the States- General. The name States-General remains, but the Estates themselves have disappeared completely. The States-Provincial have not a shred left of their old sovereignty : they are, as the reader has been asked to note already, merely an administrative body. The States-General, on the other hand, consist of two elective Chambers : the First is elected by the Pro- vincial-States, the Second, the more important, popu- larly known as The Chamber (^de Kamer)^ directly by the people. The fifty members of the First Chamber are chosen HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 183 from among the most highly taxed subjects in each province, the quaUfication being so fixed that there is one ehgible person for every three thousand of the population. Since 1887, however, men occupying, or having occupied, certain high positions in the State, though not possessed of the necessary money qualification, are eligible for election to the First Chamber. The members are elected for a term of nine years, and every ,^year one third retires. Earlier in this chapter it was shown that the elec- toral qualification for the Second Chamber is the same as that for the Provincial-States, and that the franchise for them often is wider than that for the communal councils. The Act of 1896, by which it is fixed, also created one hundred electoral districts, each sending one representative to the Second Cham- ber. Of these districts, Amsterdam with Nieuwe Amstel contains nine, Rotterdam five. The Hague three, and Utrecht two. The Second Chamber dis- solves every four years. No one is allowed to be a member of it who is not at least thirty years of age. The Chambers sit at The Hague, in the Binnenhof, the old palace of the Stadhouders. The Binnenhof is the true heart of Holland. It was here that the Counts, and later the Princes of Hainault and Bavaria, had their palace, and lived and ruled. The building in it where the archives of the Home Office are preserved to-day was the hall of the Knights of the Middle Ages. It was in the Binnenhof that the representa- i84 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS tives of the Seven Provinces formally threw off their allegiance to Spain and founded the Republic. In the court in front of it, a little more than a hundred years later, Olden Barneveldt was beheaded, sacrificed to the dissensions through which ultimately the Re- public was to fall. It witnessed the welcome of William III. of England, the humiliation of the Fifth Stadhouder's flight, Holland's humiliation when Louis Napoleon entered it as her king, — all those changes which we have been following in this chapter. It is in the midst of these associations, inspiring, or so they ought to be, to every Dutchman, that the States-General meet. The room of the First Chamber was once the meeting-place of the States of Holland and Friesland. The Second Chamber sits in the old dancing-hall, in which William the Fifth Stadhouder appeared for the last time in public before h6 left for England. The Chambers sit together at the open- ing and closing sessions, and at the coronation of the sovereign. If it should ever happen that they have to take the reins of government into their own hands, owing to there being no capable heir, they will have to be elected anew, in double numbers, and sit together. The Second Chamber meets under the direction of a president who is nominated for the session by the sovereign. Any member of it can initiate business, and has the right to propose amendments to any measure. The First Chamber, on the other hand, has not the /right of initiative or of amendment. It can only reject or accept bills as they are sent to it from the < O K ?: w H ^ ;?; ;^ « >> I I « :^ H O fa ttl O 6 W W H 1 86 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Second Chamber. The president is appointed for j ' each meeting by the sovereign. In both Chambers there are committees which con- sider proposed legislative measures, and report upon them to the government. It is the usual practice for ministers to answer their report before the question is debated in the Chamber. Government bills are submitted first of all to the Second Chamber, the members of which may question the government, and the ministers in charge of them are present, and reply, unless they put forward a plea that to do so would be prejudicial to the interests of the country. After the various interpolations, the usual course is for the Chamber to pass a Motion of Order, giving its clear opinion on the matter in hand. If the subject under debate is of vital importance and causes strong party feeling, the opposition may move a vote of no con- fidence ; or the ministerial following may move a vote of confidence ; either of which courses may lead to the resignation of the government. The ministers are at the heads of eight departments : Foreign Affairs; Justice; Home Affairs; Finance; War ; the Navy ; . Waterstaat, Commerce, and Indus- try ; and the Colonies. They are chosen by the sover- eign, who has the right of abolishing any department, and of creating a new one, as was done in 1877 when Waterstaat, Commerce, and Industry were separated from the Department for Home Affairs and erected into one by themselves. A Department for Agriculture has been created recently, but without a minister at HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 187 the head of It. The true government lies with the body of ministers: they are Its guiding hands; they advise the sovereign, whose person Is inviolable, and are responsible to the nation. There is no provision in the Constitution for the sovereign and ministers consulting together; but they do so consult. All administrative decrees of the sovereign have to be countersigned by one of the ministers. It may be said that in that respect the sovereign's power Is merely nominal; but the influence of a strong ruler upon the whole process of government can be very great. The sovereign .has the power to declare war without con- sulting the Chambers ; the necessary supplies, how- ever, must be voted by the representatives. He need not report to them treaties made with foreign powers if he considers it against the interests of the State to do so ; although treaties embodying cession of terri- tory or pecuniary obligations, or touching a matter of lawful rights, must be confirmed by the States-General, unless previously they have conferred special powers upon the sovereign. The sovereign maintains an army and a navy, appoints, promotes, and dismisses all offi- cers, appoints ambassadors and consuls, and, with cer- tain exceptions, regulates the salaries of officials who are paid out of the country's treasury. The preroga- tive of mercy is In his hands, and he can create nobility and bestow orders. Further, and this is an Important point, he has the right to dissolve Parliament, and he can propose measures to the representatives, and can reject their measures. 1 88 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS The sovereign is assisted in carrying out these duties by an advising body chosen by himself, known as the council of State. This is the Raad van Staat^ which, we have seen, has existed in Holland for centuries. The sovereign is president of this body, which com- prises a vice-president and fourteen members, and a crown prince becomes a member of it as soon as he reaches the age of eighteen. Government bills are examined by the council of State before they are intro- duced into the Second Chamber, and when a private l\ member's bill has passed both Chambers it goes to the / council of State before it receives the royal assent. As a matter of practice, however, ministers pay just so much attention to the deliberations of this council as they think useful. The really important function of the body is the exercise of the royal power in certain cases foreseen by the Constitution, as, for example, when the sovereign is unable to reign and there is no regent, or when the succession is in doubt. In addi- tion to these councillors of State proper, the sovereign may appoint Honorary Councillors, to the number of fifteen, who when called upon to advise with the Raad van Staat are given equal powers with the ordinary members. As this council of State is called upon to advise the sovereign in certain cases where a final appeal is made to him, it has to that extent some judi- cial powers ; but, except when it takes up the royal power, it cannot interfere directly with government, and the right to dissolve Parliament is never placed in its hands. HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 189 In the Second Chamber, the Lefts are the Liberals, while the Rights are the Clericals, — the Roman Cath- olics and the Calvinists who sit in strange alliance here. The extreme Radicals in the Chamber are very few. The Liberal party, however, is split into Mode- rates and Progressives, the differences between them having been emphasised in connection with the recent Reform Act. The Progressives supported a bill, in- troduced by a Liberal government, which practically would have given the country manhood suffrage ; but the measure was withdrawn when the Chamber accepted an amendment greatly narrowing the effect of the franchise clauses, and at a general election which followed the government was defeated. The timid Act of 1896, the provisions of which we have seen, was a com.promise between the Progressive Lib- erals and the various groups with more conservative and plutocratic tendencies. But the real dividing line between political parties in Holland, it must be remem- bered, is Religion. The alliance which has sprung up between Calvinist and Roman Catholic has given a piquancy to Dutch politics of recent years, and is one cause of the revived public interest in them which is so marked in the present day. There are one or two points in the representative system as it is found in Holland to which it is neces- sary to call special attention. The right of dissolving Parliament, as we have seen, lies, not with ministers, but with the sovereign, and as generally happens when it does lie so, he uses it so rarely that it need scarce be 190 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS considered as a factor in the system. The hold upon the representatives, by both the government and the people, is weakened in consequence. In Holland, however, parties seldom degenerate into groups to such an extent that there is no clear issue to determine the situation, and thus, though the selection of minis- ters is in the king's hands, there are almost always parliamentary, not royal. Cabinets. If a minister falls, almost invariably all the ministers resign with him, and, in most cases, they do not return to office without their colleague. The most important point of all is that ministers are not chosen wholly from within the legislature, and that those of them who are, and accept office, do not as a rule seek re-election to the Chambers. As a matter of fact, most ministers are selected from the Second Chamber, and the Pre- mier almost always is. But it is not at all times possi- ble to select ministers from within the legislature, for, with few exceptions, they are chosen for departments in keeping with their professional fitness. The Minister for War is an officer of the Army, the Foreign Minister is a diplomatist, the Minister for Waterstaat an engi- neer. And as there cannot always be found in the Chambers men suitable, in this respect, for office, men who are, have to be sought for outside of the legislature. Ministers have the right to sit in both Chambers; indeed, as they introduce and defend government measures, the Chambers have a claim upon their at- tendance. Moreover, they are eligible for election to either Chamber. Some twenty years ago, one of the HOW HOLLx^ND IS GOVERNED 191 ministers of the day was a member of the Second Chamber; and in the present government there are two ministers who are members of that Chamber. They entered it at the election of June 1897, were made ministers, stood for re-election, and were success- ful. But these are probably the only exceptions in recent times to the rule that ministers, even when they have been chosen from within the legislature, do not allow themselves to be re-elected to either Chamber. In this sketch of the methods of government in Holland to-day, the attempt has been made to corre- late them with the political history of the past, not with the thought that we can trace the growth of a system of government, for anything like a perfect development there was not, but only that the reader might have suggested to him, in the existing political institutions of Holland, no less than in others that we have considered, the enduring qualities of the national character. Stress was laid especially upon the per- sistence with which the Individualism of the Dutch has been displayed throughout their political history. More remarkable still, however, and more naturally- impressed upon our minds at the present moment, is the vitality of the House of Orange. *' Oranje boven ! " was the cry with which the Dutch went into their long battle with Spain, the cry that time after time since then has resounded through their cities ; and as I write these pages, the words are leaping to all Dutch lips and the sentiment that inspires them is filling all Portrait of H. M. Queen Wilhelmina, in Frisian Costume. HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 193 Dutch hearts. The genius of the House of Orange / is to be " on top ! " Three centuries ago, this noble / family, at the head of which was a woman of singu- larly simple and sterling character, a true mother of him who was to be Father William to his people, emerged above the political horizon of Europe. By the sacrifice of many sons, it endeared itself to a nation. Through a succession of warriors and statesmen of the first order it consolidated its own and its country's position. With a leap. Orange became Holland, and Holland became one of the great Powers. There followed times of trouble, betrayals of trust, dissen- sions, humiliations, the shipwreck of the House and of the State; but both survived together. I do not know whether the story is a testimony more to the vitality of the family or to the enduring affections of the nation. And at the present moment, both are holding the eyes of the world. The real significance of the rejoicings of Holland over the installation of Queen Wilhelmina on the throne is missed if we see in it merely the expression of a nation's loyalty to a sovereign and its delight that a minority has been happily passed. The hold of the young queen upon her people is altogether singular. She is their pet, — the pet of their fancy. With her personality they are only slightly acquainted. She has been brought up by a wise mother in a strict seclusion. Her people believe that she has grown into a woman of strong and inde- pendent will, patriotic, cultivated as Dutchwomen are cultivated, homely as they are homely. But of her 13 194 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS real personality little is known by her people, and by an unwritten law the Dutch press is prevented from professing to instruct them further. She is the em- bodiment of an idea; that is how their affection has grown round so vague a personality. A^t the thought of the minority over, and the queen ascending to the throne alone, ruling, though it be for a short time only, without a consort, wise Dutchmen give a sigh of re- lief. One of the great dangers of their country is past. In her person, thus. Queen Wilhelmina stands for safety. Yet wise Dutchmen know that behind the rejoicings of the coronation lurk new dangers; that, for example, of alliance through marriage with reign- ing houses, to which their whole history points a warn- ing finger. For it has to be remembered that Queen Wilhelmina holds her people's affections, not wholly because of her youth, not at all because she is the queen, but because she is a Princess of Orange who rules over them. A queen of the House of Orange: that is the idea she embodies. If, unhappily, she had not lived to her eighteenth birthday, to fill the place of the immortal heroes of her House, Holland, it is not improbable, would have become a Republic. Holland is not now, at any rate, less Republican than ever she was, and Dutchmen with the welfare of their country closely at heart cannot but at times reflect that the future may hold events whereby it might be convulsed with an internal struggle. In the moment of the na- tional rejoicings, however, these forebodings may be put aside. A young queen is on the throne, ruling HOW HOLLAND IS GOVERNED 195 over a happy and contented and patriotic people, at the head of a nation that at this auspicious moment shows signs of a remarkable quickening of industry and science and art and literature; secure in her place in her people's hearts because she is of the family of Orange, for whose services the Dutch have ever shown themselves affectionately and enduringly grateful. The Palace in the Noordeinde. THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS. A GREAT part, and by far the most characteristic part, of the government of Holland comes under the head of the Waterstaat. Previously to 1877, the Waterstaat was controlled by the Minister for Home Affairs ; in that year it was erected, with Commerce and Industry, into a separate Department, under a Minister for Waterstaat, Handel en Nijverheid. This Minister, under the Sovereign, has a general supervi- sion over all the various works for repelling the outer waters and expelling the inner, enemies against which he keeps an army of engineers constantly employed. The outer waters, so called, are the sea and the rivers : it is necessary to remember the distinction in seeking to understand the drainage system. The inner are the morasses, the marshy pools and soft fens caused by overflow or rainfall, the inland seas where the outer waters washed out the soft mud or for which the Hollanders had made a bed in their already over- run country by exhausting the peat. Of the inroads of the ocean we have already heard much. The inn- keeper in the Betuwe brought home to us the dangers THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 197 amid which, even now, the people by the Rhine and the Maas hve when the river waters are out. The in- vasions of ocean and river are readily pictured without any intimate knowledge of Holland. They threaten 'tUlA^ Thk Little Mill. From a drawing by Willeni Maris. most countries, and have been hurled on occasion against most, and it is not difficult to imagine the nature, even the magnitude, of the defences raised against them. But with the inner waters it is otherwise. 198 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS They are different from the inner waters elsewhere because Holland is different from other countries; they are greater in extent, a greater menace, at once more difficult of reclamation and more urgently re- quiring to be reclaimed, as we can realise only when we have learned that the half of Holland itself is below the level of the outer waters, is guarded from them by dikes and dunes that it is perilous to pierce by exits for the inner waters, and yet, if the inner waters are not carried out through these dunes and dikes somehow, is certain to be submerged and its inhabitants drowned like rats in a trap. Quite evi- dently, the drainage of the country is a work of com- bined reclamation and defence that Is peculiarly characteristic of Holland. It may be thought that in the following pages this point is urged at unnecessary length and with super- fluous detail. The character of Holland is a matter of common renown, it will be said. For all English- speaking people, at any rate, the satire of Andrew Marvell has made it memorable. " How did they rivet with gigantic piles Thorough the centre their new-catched miles, And to the stake a struggling country bound, Where barking waves still bait the forced ground, Building their watery Babel far more high To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky ! ■# Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid, And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played, THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 199 As if on purpose it on land had come To show them what 's their mare liberuin. A daily deluge over them does boil ; The earth and water play at level coil. The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed, And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest. And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs saw Whole shoals of Dutch served up for Cabillau, Or, as they over the new level ranged For pickled herring, pickled heerin changed. Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns. So rules among the drowned he that drains; To make a bank was a great plot of state. Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate." There, in a few lines, is the whole story of reclama- tion and defence, and it would be worth no writer's while to amplify so happy a satire by the plain prose of facts and figures. But the difficulty is to be per- suaded that it is literally true. Between common knowledge of the Dutchman's fight with the waters, and intelligent comprehension derived from the sight and study of the fight actually in progress, there is all the difference that exists between a platitude and a conviction. And, then, to visit Holland is not neces- sarily to be convinced ; even, it is not necessarily to see any marks of a struggle. The agencies emplo^^ed by other peoples against hostile elements are self-evi- dent. Though they cease to be active, they still leave patent to the eyes some testimony of the enterprises that have been attempted or performed. The arma- 200 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS ments of the Dutch in their conflict with nature, on the contrary, are for the most part hidden under- ground, and neither fighting nor disabled do they catch the easy homage of the eye. Sometimes one is so fortunate as to see them in the course of construction or being placed in position, before the earth or the sea has covered them up, and with the sight, the whole problem of Holland is discovered. I remember my own delighted amazement a few years ago at Ymuiden in such a fortunate experience. The new locks on the North-Sea Canal were being built; they were nearly completed, but the channel connecting them with the harbour had not been cut to admit the water, and sluice-heads and lock walls and gates and channels stood there naked and apart among the dunes. It was a revelation. I had spent an hour previously beside the old locks : they are not so large as the new ones, but they have been dug out of the same sandhills and face the same ocean, and that was sufficient to stir the imagination to some understanding of the difficulties that had been overcome in them. But they left one almost indifferent; whereas before the marvel and beauty of construction in the new locks as yet uncov- ered by the water, there came to one in a flash the conviction of the skill and daring of Dutch engineer- ing. It is rarely, however, that such a happy opportu- nity presents itself, and, instead, we have to impose upon ourselves the study of facts and figures and the exertion of trying to realise them. In what follows about the battle with the waters in Holland, therefore. THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 201 many details are insisted upon, but I would ask the reader's patience in considering them. They are nec- essary to an understanding of how the battle is fought, and they cannot but assist to a juster appreciation of the character of the nation who fight it. Since the Middle Ages, the Dutch have been re= claiming their country from these inner waters. There is a tradition, that as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century a hydraulic windmill was set up near Alkmaar. Early in the next, it is probable, impolder- ing was in general practice on a small scale. In 1600, we know, the 7ijpe, in the north of North-Holland, was drained. By 1625, the Purmer, the Wormer, the Beemster, the polders to the north of Amsterdam, which every stranger visits, as well as those to the east of Stavoren, and between Workum and Hinde- lopen, had come into existence. The Schermer fol- lowed soon after. In 1643, Adriansz Leeghwater published a scheme for draining seventeen thousand acres of that inland sea. Two hundred years later his dream was being realised by the aid of steam. Between 1833 and 1877, Holland had increased from 8,768 square miles to 12,731 square miles. In that extension were included, besides the bed of the Haar- lem Lake, the Y-polders created by the drainage of the Y at the making of the North Sea Canal. Com- 202 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS paratively, there remains little of value to be reclaimed in the interior, and the Dutch are turning wistful eyes upon the Zuider Zee. If they do not attempt to drain it, the reason will be that they do not think the enter- prise worth their while, and not because they are afraid to essay it. The Haarlemmer Meer, we have seen, was a monster that for three centuries swallowed land and villages and smaller lakes, growing ever greater and more ravenous, until in 1836 it almost devoured Leiden and Amsterdam themselves. Leeghwater's scheme in the seventeenth century contemplated the draining of seventeen thousand acres only, and by means of one hundred and sixty windmills. In the next two hun- dred years a full score of plans were put forward to get rid of the evil that every day was becoming greater. One of them, Baron van Lijnden's, proposed that steam should be used, and its author was at the head of the Commission which actually took in hand the work of draining by steam-mills, after the tempests of 1836, by which time, possibly, nothing but steam- power would have availed. The Meer, even in normal conditions, was now over forty-five thousand acres in extent, and the annual cost of keeping it within these bounds involved an expenditure that would have fur- nished forth a herring-fleet. The water to be drained was some eight hundred millions of tons at the start, with another hundred millions, or more, to come from rainfall and infiltration : all below the lowest possible point of outfall. To lift this body of water out of THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 203 the country, and so empty it into the outer waters, — that was the undertaking. Except for the magnitude of the operations, how- ever, there was nothing unusual in the plan of work- ^ On the North Sea. From a drawing by Philip Sadee. ing. A canal was dug encircHng the lake, and the excavated earth helped to build the encircling dike on the inner side. Earthen dams plugged up the in- lets. The monster was at least caged. Then engines w^ere planted at different points on the dike. In May 204 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS 1848 pumping began, and by July i, 1852, the lake was dry. Along the length and breadth of the newly- drained territory canals were dug, and the whole area was further divided into sections by smaller canals and ditches, and the sections were sold. Two years later they were fields of splendid colza, with the bees busy in the golden crop. That is the usual course of impoldering; but here it was carried out on a gigantic scale. Figures are an inadequate means of realising the undertaking, but with the help of figures one must be content. The encircling canal is nearly forty miles in length, and as wide as the Thames at Shepperton. It had not merely to receive the pumped-out water; the lake traffic had to be carried on by it as well. For making the dike, the earth from the canal was not sufficient, as the sand diggings at Bennebroek still show. Canal and dike together cost i^i6o,ooo. The area of water they enclosed was over seventy square miles. An English firm designed an engine ^apable of discharging one million tons of water in a little over twenty-five hours, and three such engines were built, and set to work upon the one thousand million tons. To build them in position, and to keep them running, cost an additional ^^"200,000. One, the Leeghwater, — all three were named after famous Dutch hydraulic engineers, — was placed at the south-west corner, and pumped the waters into the Kager Meer. From there they were carried down the Warmonder Lee to the old canal from Leiden to Haarlem ; from this canal another THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 205 joining the Old Rhine near Katwijk was dug to receive them, and in consequence of this influx of waters into it, the works constructed at Katwijk forty years earlier for lifting the river into the sea had to be made stronger. The Cruquius, again, was placed half-way up the west side of the Lake, on the Spaarne, which then flowed past Haarlem and fell into the Y at Spaarndam. Here was a natural exit for the water pumped by this engine. The third engine, the Lijnden, is at the north end. The water raised by it was led into the small Lutkemeer (impoldered since then), and from there into the encircling canal, which had an outfall into the Y near Halfweg. By these three engines the lake was drained in exactly four years. But they are still at work. Infiltration here, as in most Dutch meadows, is a constant danger; and the polder, too, is deeper at the centre than at the sides. Over such an area, the rainfall is considerable. So the engines have to raise some fifty-four million tons of water sixteen feet on the average, annually. The two main transverse canals are each eighty feet wide, while six of less width cross the breadth of the polder, and four the length. The land reclaimed in all is 41,675 acres. One hundred and thirty miles of roads cross the polder, and the canals are spanned by sixty or seventy bridges. The total outlay on the work was about ^^^800,000, and it has been fully repaid. A foreign syndicate came forward with an ofl'er to buy the whole polder at the rate of i^io per acre. At the latest sale of re- 2o6 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS claimed land of the same kind, previously, the average price realised was under £6 an acre, so that this offer seemed good ; but owing to certain conditions in the issue of the drainage loan, it was not accepted. A year after the draining of the Lake, there was a first sale of some two thousand acres, of which the City of Leiden claimed the ownership. Before the auction opened, a protest was lodged, on behalf of the city, against the sale, and purchasers were threatened with proceedings if they attempted to settle on their lands. The government checkmated this by a guarantee to all purchasers of undisturbed possession. The sale then went on, and the price reaHsed on the average was not £6, or £io, but £2/\. \6s. %d. per acre. A very much higher price, it is worth noticing, was obtained for the reclaimed lands in the Y polders which were drained in the construction of the North Sea Canal, — one of the engineering triumphs of the century. The 12,450 acres realised £Zo on the aver- age. Some of the ground, of course, was very near Amsterdam, and suitable for building upon, and it sold for as much as ^340 per acre. This brought up the total yield; still, i^ii2 per acre was paid in some cases for agricultural land. As has been said, the new polders generally have been bought at too great a price, and as a result agricultural enterprise is ham- pered by the high capital value. And yet the Dutch are dreaming dreams of still greater conquests. At NIeuwe Diep we take a fishing boat of Oudeschild and sail from the mainland to the X 5 fe 2o8 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS island of Texel. The strait, in which some naval cruisers are manoeuvring, was once the mouth of the Ysel; the half-crescent of islands — Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland — was part of the mainland then, and the Zuider Zee did not exist. Some token of that is given by the sandbanks that show their bright tops in the cold sunlight on our left. To the right, and behind us, lies the island of Wieringen, like a row of enormous poles topping the water. Farther south, North-Holland shoots out a spur, a line of blue, into the mists of this wonderful sea. For the sweep of an arm, the horizon-line is the meeting of sky and water. Here it seems are boundaries of Nature's own delimitation, not to be revised. But the Dutchman does not think so. In his ambitious imagination the scene upon which we are looking takes another shapCo He sees a gigantic highway running from North-Hol- land to Wieringen, and from Wieringen again to the mainland of Friesland. The fishercraft have disap- peared from the sea within. Its bays are become rich pastures ; fields stretch from Wieringen to Medemblik, from Stavoren to Kampen, the bight of Hoorn is dry, and the south shore of the Zuider Zee is a straight dike from the Ysel to the Y. There is no longer a Zuider Zee, indeed, but only the inland lake of the waters of the Ysel, which discharge at the sluices at Wieringen ; and the dead cities have come to life again. That or something like it has been the dream of Dutch men for fifty years, now, — ever since the Haarlem Lake was drained. Still, they hesitate to THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 209 try to realise it, chiefly because they are not certain that if the Zuider Zee were made dry, they should find a fertile bed like that of the Haarlemmer Meer or that of the Y. Convince them that they should, and no doubt they would start upon the drainage works to-morrow, with a light heart for all the obstacles between them and the reclaimed hectares. Yet the obstacles are enormous. Consider, for one : into the sea that it is proposed to impolder, there falls, at Kampen, the river Ysel. How will the waters it pours into the Zuider Zee be got rid of? Build a dam to Den Helder, and carry on it to the North Sea, as through a town's water-pipe, a river like the Medway? That has been seriously proposed. If the work is undertaken, however, it will be in all likelihood on the lines of the scheme presented in 1892 to the Government by the Zuider Zee Association, the en- gineer of which was Mr. Lely, now the Minister for Waterstaat. The Government submitted the plan to a Royal Commission, who reported upon it favourably; and it is on it that is based the ambitious scheme of the Hollanders as I have described it. Let us examine it more in detail. The island of Wieringen supplies the natural start- ing point for the works. Between North-Holland and Piaam in Friesland, from mainland to mainland across Wieringen, is some thirty or thirty-five miles ; and right along the twenty-five miles of this distance between the island and Friesland is to run an embank- 14 2IO HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS ment, with a height of seventeen feet eight inches on the average above sea-level at Amsterdam, and a breadth at sea-level of two hundred and sixteen feet. The actual summit of the dike will be between six and seven feet broad; but a little lower, on the inner, or Zuider Zee side, a level stretch of fifty-five feet nine inches in width will carry a railroad, and the ordinary trafhc. It is estimated that the building of this em- bankment, which is to be begun at Wieringen and the mainland of Friesland simultaneously, will take ten years. Between Wieringen and the North-Holland mainland is the Amsteldiep. This will be closed. At Wieringen are to be constructed two sets of locks. To keep out an enemy's ships, the locks will be small : one, three hundred and twenty feet by thirty-three feet, the other, for fishing boats, one hundred and thirty- one feet by twenty feet. These finished, impoldering may be begun. In the centre of the Zuider Zee will be left a large lake, the Ysel Meer, as a storehouse for the waters of the Ysel. The northernmost polder will consist of some thirty thousand acres, enclosed by the dam of the Amsteldiep and a dike sweeping round from Wieringen to Medemblik. On the Friesland side, a dike from about Stavoren to near the north bank of the Ysel- mouth at Kampen will shut in two hundred square miles ; while a third widely encircling the Golden Sea will add a hundred square miles to North-Holland. Finally, nearly four hundred square miles will be re- claimed from the south bight between Amsterdam and THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 211 the Ysel. In all, a Province as large as Zeeland will be added to Holland ; reclaimed and kept drained in exactly the same way as all polders are reclaimed and drained. The dikes will keep out the Ysel Meer, and the inside waters will be raised step by step till they can be poured into the outer waters. If the works were to be begun now, the eight hundred square miles might all be under the plough by the middle of the twentieth century, — scarcely before; but as actual reclamation can be carried on from the start, long ere then some portions of the bed of the Zuider Zee would be yellow with colza. At least thirty million pounds will have to be spent on the transformation. We were right in saying that the Hollander takes long views. All this may help us to realise the magnitude of the work of reclamation in great and notable polders like those of the Haarlemmer Meer and the Y-basin: of reclamation in the first instance, and of keeping them dry from hour to hour and from day to day ever afterwards. But the drainage of the largest polder is not to be considered by itself; it affects the drainage of the whole country. A polder is any basin made dry, and the greatest polder of all is the whole Lowlands of Holland. They lie below the level of the outer waters ; they were a swamp, if not a sea; and just as the small- est polder, once drained, has to be kept drained, so the whole of the Lowlands, reclaimed from the waters, are kept reclaimed only by continual and strenuous labour. Thus the drainage of the country is one system, in which the smallest polder equally with the largest has its definite place and interest: proof once more that 2 12 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS the safety of Holland may be a question merely of half an inch of water. Besides the works of reclamation within the country, the greatest of which, finished or in contemplation, have just been described, there is going on constantly, on the broken fringes of Groningen and Friesland, and of the islands of Zeeland, a system of impoldering from the sea. The conjoint action of Nature and of man in these sea-polders is this : The ocean leaves against the dike-faces, rapidly at first, nlore slowly as the deposit mounts higher, layer upon layer of clay that at last keeps a dry head above the waters save at high-tide. This wet, sea-washed clay is known as slikken^ and is deposited chiefly in the months when the wind is off the land, and the jabble of the tides consequently less : these months are known locally as slik-maanden (^///^-months). Once lifted above the ordinary sea-level, the slikken become covered with growth, first with sea-coral, and afterwards with sea- grasses, and are then known as kwelders. Upon the kwelders agriculture is not possible, for the high-tides still overrun them; but sheep and cattle are put upon them to graze. At length, when the soil has mounted suf^ciently high to seem to justify impoldering, they are encircled by dikes, after the system we have seen followed in all polders, and the work of reclamation goes on apace. Such is the process at work con- stantly all along the broken coasts of Holland. Stand- ing upon any of the sea-dikes there at ebb-tide, we observe towards the sea, first the grass-grown kwelders^ then the kwelders covered with sea-kail, farthest out of THE FIGHT WITH THE Wx\TERS 213 all the brown slimy slikken left exposed by the falling waters. If we look inland, there, as likely as not, is an inner-dike, perhaps another dike within that again, once the defence against the sea, but now high and dry amid the reclaimed fields. I cannot give a better idea of the practical work of sea-impoldering always proceeding on these coasts than by quoting from the The Bridge in the Meadow. From a drawing by Stortenbeker. Rotterdamsche Courant of one day in April last, the following from its correspondent in Hunsingoo, in the extreme North of Groningen. "The Province of Groningen grows continually in the North. The sea is busy day after day, and the progress it makes in a short time is astonishing. The farmers have dug ditches, running from south to north, with little straw-covered mounds on their side that bear the name of ' dogs.' These * dogs ' and ditches are real mud catchers, and their cost in 214 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS wages to the farmer is soon repaid. The formation of the soil spreads from the west to the east. Behind Pieterburen and Westernieland it goes on rapidly. Fifteen or twenty years ago there was a decrease of land noticeable behind the Andel ; but now there is an increase again, and behind Usquert, and especially behind Warfum, the new soil is plainly to be seen. The North polder, stretchmg from Westernieland to Usquert, was diked in, in the year 1811, and now the sea can be seen forming a new polder. When it will be diked in, is uncertain ; so soon, at any rate, as the farmers see that impoldering will repay them. The outer fringes of the Province, the kwelders, are of great importance as meadow land. Horses and cattle are put upon them ; but above all sheep, the rearing of which, as it happens, is a profitable business in the country just at present. The great drawback to the kwelders is, of course, that when the north- west wind blows, they are flooded, and for days are useless. To mitigate this, the farmers have had some forty hectares behind Westernieland and Pieterburen surrounded by a summer-dike of a few metres in height, with conduits so constructed below them that the water can flow out of them, but cannot enter. This dike, however, suffered greatly by the storms of February. i\ few day-labourers contracted to restore it, but their work did not satisfy the farmers, who stopped it accordingly, and took the repairs in hand them- selves under the direction of a surveyor. These small indik- ings are forerunners of the greater ones." So much, by way of popular description, for the polders and the drainage works of the WaterstaaL It is necessary to say a word about the dikes. The THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 215 reader is now acquainted with the river-dike at Mau- rik that protects the orchards of the Betuwe from the irruptions of the Rhine. It is faced with a layer of fascines, and covered, save on the roadway, by a coat of green turf. At dangerous spots it is strengthened by basalt, and it is supported in places by piles. It is a good example of an important river-dike. Later on, at Helder and at Domburg, we shall visit the still greater bulwarks of Holland against the ocean. Giant dikes like these stand upon immense rafts of earth and stones sunk one upon another in the water; they are girded with granite, and tower above the ocean whose thundering tides are broken against their basalt greaves. We can learn, if we wish, all about their height and weight and cost. Here, we have to remember chiefly that it is only on account of their magnitude that they are to be considered by themselves ; that the simplest mound round a polder belongs to the same system as the West Capelle, which has cost in upkeep its own weight in copper. II The whole of the low-lying area of Holland whicl. requires protection from the outer waters is divided up into sections of varying extent. In some cases the boundaries of these sections correspond with the boundaries of the Communes. In almost all they are fixed in view of the parity of interests concerned in the defence against the water. Each of them Is 2i6 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS known as a waterschap, and the legislation for these waterschappen and the administration of their affairs is of the highest interest and importance. But before they can be properly understood, it is necessary to realise clearly how closely the waterschappen are linked in a common system. The simple polder is sur- rounded by a dike that keeps the outside waters from entering it, and makes it possible to regulate the level of the waters within. The superfluous inside waters are pumped out of it into a lake, river, canal, or other convenient basin ; and several such storage basins at the same water-level encircled by dikes and dams make what is known as a boezem. But the same water some- times belongs to more than one boezem; in which case, of course, it is divided into sections by dartis and sluices, and each section is kept at the water-level of the boezem to which it belongs. Take the Oiide Rijuy for example. That branch of the Rhine, having parted with the Vecht at Utrecht, crawled on to Leiden and so to the North Sea at Katwijk. Centuries ago, however, it had become so decrepid that it had to stop far short of its destination at the coast; it sat down, as it were, in the middle of the Rhineland, and for some hundreds of years was an object of contempt and a nuisance to the whole country side. At length imder the direction of Louis Napoleon, early in this century, it was helped on to its feet again, and given a new set of crutches, and so partly lifted, partly shoved, into the sea at Katwijk. The figure of beg- garly decrepitude will not avail further; and it may THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 217 as well be said that it is not a trae figure according to everyone's reading of the evidence. Floods and drain- age-works, the forces of Nature and the contrivances of men, have within historical times completely altered the course and branches of the Rhine after its entry into Holland : that is undoubted ; but precisely the changes that have been made are matters of dispute. Especially, the course of the Old Rhine, and whether (as my figure assumed) it ever had a mouth at Kat- wijk, are interesting and debateable questions. Here it is sufficient to understand that what has happened to this Old Rhine is that it has ceased to be a river, practically, and is cut up into a series of basins, with dams and sluices, at varying water-levels. So it is wnth other waters ; they are subdivided into reservoirs. Lakes, where they exist, perform the same service. Now these boezems, again, communicate with the outer waters, or, if these are at a very much higher level, with higher hoezems ; so that, by a succession of steps, the superfluous waters of the lowest polders are brought to the outer waters at last. Finally, the country is pro- tected from these outer waters by dikes, smaller or greater according to the volume and force of the outer waters, largest of all, of course, where the outer water is the driving ocean tides, at Den Helder or at West Capelle. It is now clear why the Waterstaat is so great and so characteristic a part of the government of Holland. From very early times it has been recognised as an 2i8 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS institution of the highest importance, requiring a sep- arate administrative system. By the end of the Eighty Years' War, the country was broken up into water- schappen : an old house in Delft still exists as a memo- rial of the Dike Counts and their assessors of the Rhineland. Nowadays, each waterschap is governed by heemraden, who are elected by the proprietors of land within it. A hectare entitles to one vote, but no proprietor may exercise more votes than a fourth of the hectares in the waterschap. The heemraden con- duct the business of the district from day to day, the matters of greater importance being dealt with by the proprietors iingelanderi) in council, or, in waterschappen of large extent, by their representatives {hoof d-inge Ian- den). The President of the heemraden^ in the smaller districts, is nominated by the Standing Committee of the Provincial-States ; in the larger, by the Sovereign. The body has the power to levy the money required for the upkeep of works and for the general adminis- tration, and for making police regulations for the use and protection of the works, and for enforcing penal statutes. From what we have seen of the system of draining, however, it will be evident that many of these sections of country form part of more than one waterschap. Thus a polder, or small waterschap, has its own admin- istration, with its mills and canals, levying its own taxes ; it pumps the water into canals, or other stor- age reservoirs, com.mon to other polders, under the administration of a great waterschap, which levies rates o H in w K H s p 220 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS against the upkeep of engines and sluices for carry- ing the waters to river or sea; while over all there is a heemraadschap, levying for its dikes against sea and river. The powers given to these dike and polder govern- ing bodies are very great. They are not confined to those of taxation and police regulation already referred to. Certain heemraadschappen have, by ancient usage, the right of digging out of the uiterwaarden the clay that is necessary for the building of the dikes. They can use the clay, that is to say, the best of the land, when they find it on the nearest spot and can take it with the least damage {te naaster lage en minster schade). This really is an ancient burden on all the uiterwaarden^ dating from a time when the ground outside the dikes was of little worth. Now the value of these outer meadows is very great, and still the proprietor is indemnified for a small part only of his loss; although it seems likely that before long full compensation will be allowed. There are few things, indeed, that the governing bodies may not do, if the doing of it seems necessary for protection from the waters. The country threatened by flood is in a state of siege. The dike governor issues his orders and they must be obeyed. In Holland, no one can be dispossessed of property without a special act declaring the expropriation to be for the common weal and without the previous pay- ment or the assurance of indemnity; but the Consti- tution of which that is an article expressly excepts cases of war, fire, and watersnood, and watersnood com- THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 221 prises not only broken dikes and actual inundations but the imminence of these as well. Then, the government of the dike or the polder can take posses- sion of anything, and can occupy any place, as they think fit. They can call for any service they require. When the dike is threatened by a flood, it is protected by osiers placed upon its face. If the waters appear likely to mount over the dike, then the dike-slopes are temporarily heightened by planks, and the space on the top between the planks is filled up with anything that comes to hand. The polder-proprietors have to supply labourers as ii\ feudal days proprietors supplied soldiers ; but others iway be impressed for the work. Carts, wagons, wood, brick, manure, anything in fact that can be useful, may be appropriated without by- your-leave or more than the understanding that the value will be refunded. Houses can be demolished to supply stop-gap materials ; houses have been demol- ished thus by dijk-graven who still live to recount the urgency of the danger that required measures so heroic. Something of the same necessary arbitrariness is to be seen in what is known as the normaliseeren of the rivers. Let me take by way of illustration our old friend the Lek, of whose turbulent doings the innkeeper and his wife at Maurik have told us. I have been fortunate in getting hold of a sectional plan of the scheme for normalising that river some thirty years ago, and from a description of it possibly the reader will be able to gain a clear idea of the process. The 222 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS section represents about three-quarters of a mile of the river considerably below Vianan. At this point, the distance between the great North and South dikes varies from about 190 yards to 450 yards. In winter floods, the water stretched from dike to dike. Nearer the channel are shown the smaller summer dikes that confine the river in summer, leaving the lands between the summer and winter dikes — the uiterwaarden — smiling to the sun as the reader saw them in his first ex- cursion into the Betuwe. Such was the varying bed of the Lek at this point. It has to be noticed that along the course of the summer dikes there are thrown out into the stream piers and jetties, — kT'ibben\hQ Dutch call them because they " crib " and confi.ne the soil deposited by the river. Even the bed between the summer dikes varies greatly in extent ; and thus the ordinary current of the river is irregular, — fast in the narrower parts and slow in the wider. In the wider, a large amount of sand is deposited, and the current is diminished still more. When kribbcn are constructed, however, the bed becomes narrower, and the current, digging out this narrow bed, deposits the sand between the kribben. After the space between them is filled up with the sand, a layer of clay forms upon it, grass begins to spring up,, and thus new land is added to the idter- waarden. A glance at the chart, however, shows that the kribben are of two kinds. Some run out at an angle, with the current, while others stand up to the current boldly. The first are not part of the scheme of normalising. They have been made by the pro- THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 223 prietors with a view to enclosure, and are condemned as being unscientific in principle. It is no longer allowable to construct them. All the kribben that are built now are of the other kind and run boldly out into the water. As has been explained, they are designed to bring the river into a normal channel lying between the two normalising lines that we see indicated in the chart as running parallel to each other and touching the outjutting kribben on each bank. The river flows in this deepened channel, the evils of flood are mitigated, and it is found that the ice melts quickly in these deep waters in the centre of the stream, and that the danger of an ijsgang is lessened. That is the principle of normalising the rivers, which the observant traveller can see traces of in his railway journey over the Maas, the Waal, the Lek, between 's Hertogenbosch and Utrecht, or indeed at almost any point where the train crosses a river. The arbitrariness with which it is applied is made plain in the chart. The normalising lines are shown running through the tdterwaarden, and for the portions of land on the river side of these lines, which are broken away by the current, the proprietor gets small compensation. In the last revision of the Constitution, in 1887, an article was inserted which seemed to hold out to the proprietor a promise of full indemnification against loss sustained in this manner. But as yet it has not been fulfilled. He is no longer allowed to build kribben and enclose at his discretion, and he has no claim upon the ground enclosed by the approved kribben unless he incurs the cost of construct- 224 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS ing these. If, as generally happens, he declines that undertaking, the State builds them and becomes the possessor of the new uiterwaarden. Now it is in connection with this whole system of drainage, for protection and reclamation, that the Provincial-States play so important a part. All their other duties, as has been shown, are purety administra- tive, but the legislative powers placed in their hands in this exceptional case are very great indeed. They can form, unite, separate, the various waterschappen ; they lay down the laws of their constitution ; and the Standing Committee i^Ge depute erde Staten) have the permanent control of their administration. It is evident that when there are so many bodies, all interdependent in view of a common danger, yet each of them representing separate interests, there must be frequent cases of diversity of opinion, of cross-pur- poses, and even of competitive action, calling for the exercise of this power of the Provincial States. An action at law recently before the Dutch courts admi- rably illustrates this clashing of interests. It con- cerned the dikes upon the Lek, of which so much -has been said already. The North dike, which pro- tects a tract of country stretching to the gates of Amsterdam itself, had always been higher than the South dike, that guards the Betuwe. It ought to be explained that neither dike really was as high as it ought to have been, else the relative measurements would not have mattered. As it was, the lower height of the South dike gave the country to the north com- The Mill. From a drawin.-; by Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch. 226 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS parative immunity, and in that selfish assurance the heemraadscJiap in the north were lulled into inaction. The direction of the South dike, however, was in very energetic hands, and one bad morning, when there were threats of inundation to rouse them, the north body wakened up to discover that the opposite dike was higher than their own. Immediately the cry was raised that Holland proper was in danger. A higher dike in the north was customary, and the customary, the heemraadscJiap contended, had passed into the right. They threw the onus of the present danger upon the shoulders of the heemraadschap in the south, and of the government that had permitted them to heighten their dike. But the southern heemraadschap had a spirited answer. It was, they said, opposed to the root principle of the defence system to put limits to the energy and foresight with which a dike control protected a country under their guardianship, and they suggested that it was for the Provincial-States to step in and order a corresponding heightening of the dike on the north. This was exactly the course the Pro- vincial States took ; they gave instructions that the North dike was to be raised half a metre. In the meantime, however, the heemraadschap on the north side had come to the conclusion that their dike must be heightened, and they had enlisted the assist- ance of the heemraadschappen of the districts in North- and South-Holland, which the danger threatened, in a scheme for raising it a metre. So the instructions of the Provincial-States were met by the request of the THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 227 heemraadschap to be allowed to make the half-metre a metre, and ultimately this was granted. And now arose the interesting questions that in time came be- fore the courts for decision. For the addition to the dike, earth had to be abstracted from the idterwaarden: were the proprietors to be indemnified against its loss? Then there was a difficulty about compensation for the trees upon the dike. It was contended by the heemraadschap that they ought not to have been there. The old practice of planting the Dutch dikes, with the idea of strengthening them thereby, had been con- demned, and an order issued by government against the trees. The proprietors, however, chose to assume that in the absence of direct instructions the old trees upon a dike might be allowed to remain, and, remain- ing, they were on the Lek dike now to give rise to this litigation. Lastly, a change in the height of the dike involved a corresponding change in its slopes, and the consequent occupation of fresh land within the dike as well as without it; and here again was a ticklish point of indemnity to be settled. On all counts, I believe, the heemraadschap won the day, but that does not specially concern us. The whole history of the case is instructive as showing the nature of the questions that come before the Provincial-States for settlement. 228 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS III I MUST invite the patience of the reader a Httle fur- ther, while I mention another set of engineering works that exhibit the Hollanders' fight with the waters. In writing of the great waterways of Holland, it will still be necessary to employ figures, which for many are a distraction rather than a help ; but not so largely as in the case of those undertakings already described, the machinery of which is almost entirely hidden out of sight. Unlike the drainage works, the Dutch water- ways have something to say for themselves. One might be standing in the middle of the Haarlemmer Meer, and have no reason to suspect that he was in a polder, or that he found a footing there only because, somewhere or other, enormous pumps were busy dis- charging thousands of tons of water from it. But it is impossible to sail along the North-Holland Canal or the North-Sea Canal without realising some of the labour involved in its construction and upkeep. The canals of Holland are innumerable. Broad and narrow, they flaunt like ribbons through the land. Here they are little dividing ditches, there the singels round the towns, again they are connecting chains between the great rivers. Sometimes, constructed for drainage, they become highways of traffic ; at other times, they have been constructed as highways of traffic, and are absorbed into the drainage system. Their involutions are bewildering. Between canals THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 229 close-linked and canals flying loose ends, rivers canal- ised, rivers dammed, rivers given new mouths or lifted out to sea, we are befogged. He is not setting himself an easy task who would demonstrate how it is that the so-called Maas which flows past Rotterdam is in reality the Lek, and that not a drop of water from the Maas sources in the Ardennes falls into the sea by the Maas mouth at The Hook. As we go round Hol- land, we shall strike the main lines of the canal system, and be able possibly to clear up some of these mys- teries. For our^ present purpose, it is sufficient to visit the two great waterways from Amsterdam to the sea. These waterways are the outcome of the needs of Amsterdam as a city of commerce. In earlier days, and in earlier conditions of trading, she did not require them. Without any outlet to the ocean save the impracticable channel of the Zuider Zee (which is choked at the city mouth by the great sandbank, the Pampus, and is strait and dangerous at the other end where it cuts off Texel from the mainland), she was in a state of splendid isolation that favoured, rather than retarded, her commercial superiority. Some- times the merchant ships came as far as the Pampus, whence their cargoes were carried to her in the scheeps kameelen^ or ships camels, lighters specially constructed for that traffic; others, too large for the shallows of the Zuider Zee, lightened at Den Helder. The day arrived at length, however, when the necessity of an outlet to the sea became imperative if the capital was 230 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS to hold her own, and in 1819 was begun, and five years later was finished, the North-Holland Canal, with an exit at Nieuwe Diep. It is interesting to notice that as far back as the mid- dle of the seventeenth century, one Jan Pieterzoon Don had prepared plans for a canal across North-Holland at its narrowest part where the North-Sea Canal now Hes : though it ought to be observed that his object was not so much to provide communication with the ocean as to get rid of the inland sea of water which robbed the country of thousands of acres and threatened to rob it at any moment of many thousands more. A hundred years later, an engineer of the Waterstaat revived the project, and in the second decade of this century William L strongly advocated it. But in 1820 the country was no more ready for the undertaking than when Don planned it in 1634, and the canal that was determined upon was the North-Holland Canal issuing on the sea at Den Helder. Even now, perhaps, that is the Dutch canal best known by the visitor to Holland. De Amicis says that it is nearly fifty miles in length and forty-three yards in breadth, and estimates its cost at ;£"i, 250,000; and he speaks of it as one of the most wonderful works of the nineteenth century. Most of the notable descrip- tions of Holland, like that of De Amicis, have been written before the completion of the rival canal to Ymuiden : and, indeed, the winding course of the older waterway, by innumerable locks and under innumer- able bridges, past Zaandam and Alkmaar, quaint and THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 231 characteristic, and other show places, out to the sea at Nieuwe Diep, gives it a picturesqueness at least that North Sea Fishermen. From a drawing by Elchanon Verveer. cannot be claimed for the shorter, straighter, more business-like canal to Ymuiden. For some fifty years this North-Holland canal was the only waterway for Amsterdam ships to the sea. But the locks at Den Helder, crowded and unrivalled 232 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS thirty years ago, stand deserted now, eclipsed by the great works at Ymuiden. In one forenoon, last spring, when we sat beside them, delighting in the never- ending movement and play of colour in the wharves at the Willemsoord, one vessel only, a small gunpowder boat for the forts, passed through the gates. The North-Holland Canal, with its tortuous course and many locks and bridges, has outlived its usefulness ; the very qualities that give it picturesqueness have made it unserviceable. It happened often that the great ocean ships were sighted from the heights at Velzerend days before they could enter at Den Hel- der; not infrequently, in tempestuous winters, weeks, months even, passed before they reached Amsterdam. So in 1865 the Prince of Orange put the first spade in the sand at Ymuiden, where (as has been seen) it had been proposed to put it half a century earlier. The North- Holland Canal was dead, the North-Sea Canal was coming into existence. The Haarlemmer Meer had been drained ; but there still remained the gulf of the Zuider Zee known as the Y. It stretched south to Halfweg (on the present railway route from Amsterdam to Haarlem), and on the north to near Zaandam, and westwards almost to Beverwijk at the foot of the North Sea dunes. To- day it is a polder : save for the canal and its branches, a stretch of fertile green. The inland sea has been drained ; a canal has been run through it from Amster- dam to the coast at Ymuiden ; and the reclaimed land of the Y-polders has been sold and has been occupied THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 233 as we have already heard. All 's well that ends well. But that was an undertaking entered upon, and little wonder, with hesitation, and with opposition even. Timid citizens of Amsterdam, as they well might be, were fearful for their city and their province. Con- sider: to give exit to the canal, the dunes had to be cut; the natural defences of the country were to be deliberately broken down, and that at a point where the North-Sea comes thundering upon them. More- over, many interests were concerned, many interests clashed ; and the cost was in proportion to the dan- ger. In the end, however, all obstacles were overcome. For twenty years, now, the great ships have been pass- ing to Amsterdam through that impoldered stretch. As a picturesque route, as has been said, the North- Sea Canal cannot compare with the other which mean- ders through North-Holland northwards to Nieuwe Diep. Its great points of interest are its locks. Those at the throat of the Zuider Zee, at Schelling- woude, over against Amsterdam, are three in number, conjointly named the Oranjesluizen, after the late Prince of Orange. At the same time as the Oranje- sluizen, two locks were constructed' at the North-Sea end of the Canal, at Ymuiden ; but after a time they were found to be too small, and w^ork was begun upon other locks of greatly larger dimensions which were finished and opened for traffic in 1897. ^ will ask the reader to join me in a visit, already referred to, which I paid to these locks in the summer of 1896. Instead of making the railway journey all the way to 234 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Ymuiden, we alight at Velen junction, and walk. By doing so, we come gradually and with better under- standing upon the main works : First, a mushroom hamlet, not Dutch in :' ' character, but sprung out of the needs of I ; ^ the enterprise, and in 1 its squalor and ne- glect, and curiously enough in its back- ground setting also, reminding us of a familiar mining vil- lage in the east of Scotland. For the next few hundred yards, however, we are in Holland : the road is of klinkers ; peasants in Dutch costume pass along it, and over the flat landscape to the right appear, now and then, a mast, a sail, a column of moving smoke, — indications of a canal. Suddenly, at a bend of the road, the melting morning mists discover, pale but bright, the village of Ymuiden, with two tall lighthouses rising apparently from its In the Docks, Amsterdam. THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 235 midst, and, beyond, the sea. On our right, as we walk along, are the works themselves,^ the branch canal to the new lock, dredgers vomiting forth yellow water at the tail of the bank, endless chains of buckets, cranes, sheds, lighters, steamers, groups of navvies ; and all the while, on the main canal nearer us, the everyday traffic, and cutters and fishing-smacks skipping across the harbour beyond the locks. For a hundred yards or so the road becomes the main street of Ymuiden, and by a sharp turn at the farther end leads on to the quay. A Grimsby smack or two lie beside it, unload- ing for the auction proceeding, in Dutch fashion, close by. After a time spent in watching some vessels entering the old locks, we cross the canal to visit the new works. A courteous native of whom we make inquiries about them is eager to impart all the informa- tion he possesses, and insists upon being our guide. He is a fish-buyer or a ship's-chandler, a plain citizen at any rate, but in these last five years plain citizens of Ymuiden have become as voluble about hydrome- chanics as an engineer of the Waterstaat. So we are piped on our way to the new locks to the tune of marvellous dimensions. From here to the East-dock locks at Amsterdam, it seems, is a distance of fifteen miles and a half Throughout that length, the canal has an ordinary water-level of i ft. 7 in., and a depth of 27 ft., below A. P., a bottom width of nearly thirty yards, and a width at water-level varying from sixty to a hundred and twenty yards. Then come figures to prove the superiority of the new locks over all the 236 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS other locks in Holland, and from them I extract this comparative table, which contains all the information on the point that a reasonable man can desire : — Length Width Depth below in feet. in feet. A. P. in feet. Main lock at Schellingwoude 315 59 14 Old Main lock at Ymuiden 394 59 25 New lock at Ymuiden 735 82 33 Our guide follows up his figures with a boast. " The biggest steamer in Holland will be able to enter Amsterdam now," he declares, and I have a rea- son of my own for believing it. A Rotterdam man had been telling me of a large new steamer that was sail- ing out of the Maas, — the largest vessel in the Dutch fleet. '' Will it be able to sail from Amsterdam when the new North-Sea locks are opened, do you think?" I asked him. " That," he replied, looking very grave, " is a doubtful question ; " whereby I was convinced that the largest vessel in the Dutch fleet cou/d sail from Amsterdam. A Rotterdammer does not give Amsterdam the benefit of a doubt. But now there is no more need of the paeans of our guide, for we have crossed the island between the two channels, and can see for ourselves the new lock and all the marvel of its construction. It lies farther inland than the old locks, and about seventy yards" from the old channel. That was as near as they could venture to bring it, in view of the dangers of ground water. The canal branches off to it at a point about a third of THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 2^^ a mile to the eastwards, and on the sea-ward side a channel has been dug to connect the harbour and the lock some three hundred yards below the old sea- gates. Water lies in the branch canal up to the inner sluice-head ; but the trough of the connecting channel is nearly dry, for the natural dam between it and the harbour will not be cut until all the other operations are finished. How shall I describe the lock itself, — or rather the locks, for though there is only one open- ing, there are two pits, a shorter and a longer, so that in the passage of smaller vessels as little sea-water as possible may enter the canal? Imagine the Strand, a greatly widened Strand it must be, from Waterloo Bridge to the Adelphi, lined with unbroken walls of solid, beautifully-finished masonry where now are houses, and with gigantic gates at either end and somewhere about Southampton Street between. Im- agine further that the level of the house-tops is the level of the surrounding country, and that you are standing there on the edge of the walls, and looking down into the Strand. You will then have some idea of the appearance of the locks before the water had been admitted. Unfortunately, however, there is a little water in the locks covering the floors, and so even we at Ymuiden have to exercise our imaginations if we are to understand all the wonders of their construction. With our guide at our elbow and the Strand fancy in mind, however, it may not be difficult to realise some of them. First of all, the pit in which the locks are situate 238 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS had to be excavated, and I do not know that we get any clearer idea of the labour which that involved when we have learned that fifty million cubic feet of sand were removed. There are other figures rather more informing. The original design was to make the thresholds of a depth of a little over twenty-seven feet, nine inches below A. P. Later they were planned for three feet deeper, and ultimately were brought to thirty-two feet, nine inches below A. P. But this last addition of two feet cost close upon ;^30,000, and be- fore it was sanctioned by Ministers, it had become '' a great plot of State." The reader may be spared the consideration of the results of borings, experiments with ground water, and calculations as to the rise and fall of the tides, that determined the manner of constructing the thresholds. The pit kept dry, drier than had been expected, and the subsoil was firm. The chief concern, it seemed, was to offer a sufficient resistance to the high water outside the gates in its efforts to force a way within. To accomplish this, a floor, eight feet thick, had to be laid of beton, a rough concrete composed of brick, sand, slacked lime and tufa. To receive this beton, a framework — a wooden tub as it were — was sunk round the bottom of the pit. It was fashioned of planks, a foot wide and eight inches thick, and no less than twenty-six feet long. This great length was necessary because, from the fear of water when they dug deeper, the engineers sunk the planks when the bottom of the pit was only twenty-six feet deep, and they had to allow them a hold sufficient THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 239 to resist the outside pressure when the pit had been further excavated to thirty-two or thirty-three feet. It can easily be understood that to drive home this framework was enormous labour. To overcome the great resistance at this depth, pipes through which water was pressed were inserted on each side of the plank, so as to loosen the sand before it in its way down under the blows of the rammer. Moreover, since the framework had to be nearly as watertight as it could be made, the planks were not merely driven into the soil, but were deeply grooved into one another. It gives us some idea of the quantity of materials used in this frame, when we learn that the grooving of the planks necessitated an additional fourteen thousand cubic feet of wood, and increased the cost by ^1,000. Nearly nine hundred thousand cubic feet of beton were swallowed up, and the cost of floor and frame together was ;^50,ooo. We have had more than enough of figures, else we might go step by step through the different stages of construction, and learn exactly how, and at what a cost, Holland's enemy was circumvented and subdued. There was a critical moment in the fight, when the ■ water rushed from below through an old boring in one of the sluice-heads, burst, and scattered aside the beton floor, and seemed to be about to demolish triumphantly the work and skill of years. It is an interesting story by what means, now hidden from sight, that assault was met, but we will not tell it. There is no need of hidden proofs of the ingenuity and daring of the 240 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS engineers. The lock itself, just so much as we can see of it, without any explanations of guides or blue- books, proclaims their triumph loudly enough. So we bid farewell to our guide and his miles of bewildering measurements still unrecited, and are ferried across the fisher-harbour to the light-houses. After a blowy walk along one of the piers, which the harbour shoots, like gigantic feelers, into the North Sea, we return to the outer light- house, and climb to the top. And now, far more vividly than in metres and kilo- metres and tons and cubic feet, we realise in a wide view all that we have been gazing at in detail. Here, unbroken, save where the harbour stretches a neck through them, are the dunes, from sixty to eighty feet high, that shelter the low-lying country from the ocean. But for them, the whole country to the very gates of Amsterdam would be at the mercy of the sea. To pierce them, The Ditch. From a drawing by Anton Mauve. /'""'/» ^''^:^ The portion of the country marked ^j^H/; is under the level of the sea. The portion of the country marked W/I/I//I/I//1 is under the level of the rivers, 242 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS trusting to these fragile arms to keep back the enemy, is surely daring confidence in human skill. To-day the sea lies peacefully shimmering in the sunlight; but think of it, as we have seen it many a time, thundering hoarsely under a grey sky. And then the eye turns in- land to the locks. Enormous locks and enormous gates, beautifully and ingeniously constructed, giants among engineering works, yet, after all, pigmies beside the ocean when the tide has risen six feet, say, above the normal water level of the Y at Amsterdam ! We need no figures to persuade us of the wonders of that sight. The whole story of the fight with the waters surely forces upon us the consideration that, howsoever brilliant and daring and successful it has been, if it have not an enduring and ennobling influence upon the national character, then it has been in vain. In it- self, to pump water out of peat-bogs, and to keep them drained, is not a high destiny, and in Holland it is not even a work that has repaid the cost. What, of itself, is another province of Zeeland gained? If there is no other result than that from all this expenditure of energies, it would have been better had William of Orange, as it is said he once contemplated, carried his people to a new home across the Atlantic, and allowed the sea to find and to keep its level right up to the Eastern sandhills. Ltictor ct Emergo would be a poor motto for Holland if she had come out of the fight possessed of nothing more than a few thousand hectares of land. Our figures and our descriptions have failed THE FIGHT WITH THE WATERS 243 of their purpose if they have not called up to the reader the picture of a whole nation going about their daily work peacefully below the level of the sea, se- cure in the constructive skill and patience and daring that have bridled its powers, and opposed a barrier to its inexorable assaults. No estimate of Holland and the Hollanders is complete that omits that pregnant consideration. HOW HOLLAND IS EDUCATED IN several places earlier in this book, I have set down my impressions of education in Holland as it seemed to be discovered by Dutch men and women, in the relations of life which education chiefly influ- ences. I must ask the patience of the reader now, in following an outline of the scheme of education in Holland, so that these impressions of practical results may be supplemented by a plain statement of theo- retical opportunities. Those who are concerned with the question how far a practical education, an educa- tion that from the beginning keeps in view the spe- cial career for which its recipient is intended, is necessary for a nation that is to hold its own in the world, will find much to interest them in this pretty scheme of the Dutch ; while by the comparison which it institutes between Holland and herself, as it were, more light is cast upon the character and social con- ditions of her people. Elementary Education {Lager Onderwijs) in the State schools is divided into two grades. In the lower, the instruction must include reading, writing, arith- metic, the elements of Dutch grammar and Dutch HOW HOLLAND IS EDUCATED 245 history, the elements of geography and natural his- tory^ some physics, singing, the rudiments of drawing, and simple calisthenics ; and girls are taught useful needlework. Children enter these schools at the age of six, having already (in the larger towns at least) passed through Infant Schools {Bewaar Scholen), which for the most part are free; there are half-yearly pro- motions, and the course is six years. To the instruc- tion of the lower schools are added, in the higher, French, German, English, and universal history, — some or all. The dividing line between the curricula of the lower and the higher schools is not very sharply defined. Thus, in Amsterdam the elementary schools range through four grades : (i) Mixed schools, for boys and girls from six to twelve. The instruction is that prescribed for lower schools, and the fee (from which poverty exempts) is a fraction over a penny a week. (2) Mixed schools, for boys and girls from six to twelve. The instruction is that of (i), with a little French ; and the fee is fourpence a week. (3) Separate schools for boys and girls. French, universal history, and an advanced course of calisthenics, are added to the subjects taught in (i), and the fee is 22 guilders (^i, i6s. Sd.) a year. (4) Separate schools for boys and girls. French, 246 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS German, English, calisthenics, and universal history are added to the curriculum of (i). The pupils are kept until they are fourteen or sixteen, and for most girls the course is considered a sufficient education. The fee is 75 guilders {£6, ^s.) a year. Varying conditions are found in all the larger towns : for example, the highest fees in Leeuwarden and Groningen are less than half the highest in Amster- dam. In all these schools, books and the necessary materials are supplied free. All over the country there are private elementary schools, especially for children whose parents wish for them religious instruction — an increasing class. Private schools of every kind are subject to the same educational and sanitary inspection as the State schools, and the teachers in both pass the same examinations. Speaking generally, adventure schools do not receive support from the State; they do, however, from the communes in many cases. For example, the case occurs to me of a private school for girls which receives 200 guilders a year from the commune in which it is situate, and 100 guilders from a neighbouring commune. The two villages consider it worth their while to contribute £2^ a year in support of a school v^hich may attract fami- lies to settle in them. The law, however, provides for State assistance to denominational schools which comply with certain conditions in the interest of Education in general. This is the result of a com- 1-3 < o ^ ^ fc/j o c u fe 248 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS promise arrived at in 1888, when the joint clerical parties were in a majority in the Second Chamber. The teachers in the elementary schools are of two orders, according to the certificates they hold, Teachers and Head-Teachers ; and under the super- vision of a Head-Teacher classes may be taken by Assistant Teachers, who are young men and women, from fifteen to nineteen, studying for a Teacher's cer- tificate. Only a Head-Teacher can open a private school. When, as often happens, foreigners, English, French, or German girls, say, teach in such schools, they can do so as Assistant Teachers, that is to say, without passing any examination, up to the age of nineteen ; but after that they must have qualified by passing precisely the same examination in the lan- guage they profess (w^hich in most cases, of course, is their own language) as native teachers in the high- burgher schools, and even then they must have the Royal sanction. And deception as to age is not easy, for every foreigner settling in a commune in Holland has to lodge a certificate of birth with the burgomaster. Foreign teachers over nineteen are comparatively few in consequence. The training of teachers is carried on in a variety of institutions. In Nymegen, Maastricht, Deventer, Groningen, Haar- lem, 's Hertogenbosch, and Middelburg there are State Normal Schools, which admit, after examina- tion, pupils of fifteen or sixteen, and provide some twenty bursaries each of i^20 for brilliant students without private means. To each of these Normal HOW HOLLAND IS EDUCATED 249 Schools is attached a Teaching School (^Lecr School) for practical instruction. Many communes have es- tablished Normal Schools on similar lines. The one in Amsterdam has a four years' course, and in the Leer School connected with it there are generally about three hundred young teachers in their third and fourth years of study. Leiden and Groningen have two-year- course Normal Schools also; that of Leiden especially has a very high repute. In places where there are no Normal Schools, the Head-Teachers in the pub- lic schools can give training instruction, "Normal Lessons " they are called, on Saturdays, and in the evenings. An examination has to be passed before admittance to these is granted. There are courses of instruction in twenty-six communes for candidates for a Head-Teacher's certificate. The State gives a grant to certain private establishments for the train- ing of teachers : such are the private training colleges for girls at Arnhem and Haarlem, the Roman Catholic training colleges at Eysden and Echt, in Limburg, the Netherlands Reformed Church's school in Amsterdam, and the so-called ''Christian-Schools" at the Hague and Zetten. The State and the communes spend about ^100,000 annually in the training of Teachers. Under the control of the Minister of the Interior, three Chief Inspectors supervise the education in all schools in the Maritime, the Southern, and the North- Eastern Provinces respectively, and they are assisted by twenty-five District and one hundred Arondisse- ment Inspectors. Further, there are local inspec- 250 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS tions : in places with fewer than three thousand inhabitants by the burgomaster and magistrates ; in places with over three thousand, by a specially ap- pointed ** School Commission." To sum up. As yet, education is not compulsor3^ Elementary instruction, however, is provided in each commune, and relief is granted to parents who are too poor to pay the small fee charged for it. An extended elementary education is brought within the reach of almost all. In the higher elementary schools, children are taught — and taught to speak, chiefly — several modern languages while they are still of an age to acquire them easily and well ; and a little French is included in the curricula of all save the lowest schools. In the public schools, the education is strictly neutral in the matter of religion, but schools with special religious instruction are plenti- ful, and many of them are in receipt of State aid. All schools, whether supported by the State or not, adventure and denominational schools as well as the public schools, are under State supervision. No un- qualified person is allowed to teach in any school, and the qualification to teach practically is the same for all. Secondary Education {Middelbaar Onderwijs) covers all the instruction given in schools between the ele- mentary schools on the one hand and the gymnasia and the universities on the other. It is regulated by an Act of 1863, but the system introduced then has undergone many modifications. According to it, HOW HOLLAND IS EDUCATED 251 secondary schools are of two classes: the lower, called Burgher Day and Night Schools (^Burger Dag-en- Avond-ScJiolen)y and the higher, High-Burgher Schools (yHooge Burger Sclioleii) with three and five years' courses. It is in connection with the burgher day schools that the chief change has been made. Established originally for industrial and agricultural workmen^ these day schools were failures, and most of them were closed twenty years ago. The only one still in existence is at Leeuwarden, where the course em- braces mathematics, elementary mechanics, physics and chemistry, natural history, technical instruction in agriculture, the elements of geography and history, the rudiments of the Dutch language, simple social economy, artistic and mechanical drawing, and calis- thenics. To take the place of these burgher day schools, there have been established technical or industrial schools, for the training of carpenters, blacksmiths, joiners, mechanics, painters, turners, plumbers, and the like. As a rule, there is a three years' course of instruction, and a fair pass in the elementary schools is demanded before entrance ; but local conditions con- trol the entrance examinations, the length of the course, and the nature of the curriculum. In Enschede, for example, weaving and artistic draughtsmanship are taught. In the school for mechanics in Amsterdam the course is four semestres and a year of practical work ; after which a diploma is granted which gener- 2^2 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS ally ensures employment in the sugar-refineries of Java, in railway construction, ship-building, and the like, or as engineers on board ship at home or in the colonies. In Amsterdam, The Hague, Arnhem, and Rotterdam there are industrial schools for women, open to pupils with a fair pass from the elementary schools who are over thirteen years of age. In these the lower school studies are continued, and there are classes in fancy- work, book-keeping, the making and drawing of pat- terns, wood-engraving, drawing and painting on wood, satin, and china. All the materials used are free. At the end of the free three-years' course, the girls are taught for a small fee dressmaking for six months, and there are evening classes in fancy-work for those who wish. In the Amsterdam school, special atten- tion is paid to drawing, and to the training of lady assistant-chemists. In some sixty towns in Holland there are day schools for instruction in drawing. The Fine Art Academy at The Hague has no fewer than eight different courses. It is attended by five hundred or six hundred students, men and women of all ages and classes, of whom fully ten per cent go forward to the examinations. At the Haarlem School for Decorative Art, which in the evenings workmen can attend, botany is made a special study. Lectures are given in the Rijks Museum in connection with the Amsterdam School of Decorative Art. The application of architecture, sculpture, and painting to all branches of industry is the special y; Ci w CIh H -G < p-( W ^ tUO >- c < D 'i rt O 13 ffi a: p s fe Pi' 254 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS study; there are two courses of two years each, and diplomas are granted. Two different diplomas — *' Maitre de dessin," for lower drawing, and '* Profes- seur," for advanced — are given after the three-years' course in the State Normal Drawing School in Amsterdam. So much for the industrial schools which have taken the place of the unsuccessful burgher day schools established in 1863. Meanwhile the burgher night schools, founded at the same time, have increased in number and in reputation. There are in Holland to- day some forty of them, attended for the most part by working men and women who have obtained a fair pass in the lower schools. Most of them are free or the fee does not exceed lOs. per year; the cost is borne by the communes, and special instruction is given in the local industries and manufactures. The largest of the night schools is in Rotterdam. The special subjects taught in it are modelling, anatomy, the history of architecture and of sculpture, and hor- ticultural drawing, and, for mechanics, English, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, physics, artistic and mechanical drawing. Over a thousand students are in attendance at this school. In Leiden, again, in addition to the curriculum of the day schools, there is special instruction in the princi- ples of ornament, modelling, architecture, and hydrau- lics ; and in Utrecht there are classes for training car- penters, bricklayers, blacksmiths, instrument makers, joiners and stone-cutters, goldsmiths and sculptors, HOW HOLLAND IS EDUCATED 255 painters and lithographers. The Utrecht school has generally about two hundred and fifty pupils. All this practical instruction comes under the head of Secondary Education, the higher and more theo- retical branches of which are supplied by the high- burgher schools. These high-burgher schools are of two grades : those with a five-years' and those with a three-years' course. The conditions of entrance and the qualifications of the teachers are pretty much the same for both : the course of the one is the first three years of the other. There are twenty-four three-years high-burgher schools in Holland, ten of them founded by the State. Of the thirty-nine five-years schools those at Tilburg, 's Hertogenbosch, Gouda, Alkmaar, Middelburg, Utrecht, Leeuwarden, Zwolle, Groningen, Assen, and Roermond are State schools, and the re- mainder, including a commercial school at Amsterdam, are founded by the communes. There is also a free Roman Catholic training school for the priesthood at Rolduc. The age of entrance is twelve years, and there is a preliminary examination. The instruction, carried over the five years, includes mathematics, physics, mechan- ics, chemistry, natural history, cosmography, the study of the political institutions of the Netherlands, social economy, artistic and mechanical drawing, geography, history, the literatures of Holland, France, England, and Germany, book-keeping and the commercial sciences, caligraphy and calisthenics. At the five- years school at Amsterdam, the pupils pay four hun- 256 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS dred guilders (;^33, 6s. Sd.') a year: the ''golden school " it is called. The fees at The Hague are lOO guilders, and elsewhere they range from 50 to 60 guilders. There are high-burgher schools for girls at Arnhem, Soldier. From a drawing by Papendrecht. The Hague, Rotterdam, Leiden, Dordrecht, Haarlem., Leeuwarden, Utrecht, Groningen, Amsterdam (two), and Deventer. Except at Deventer, all these schools have a five-years' course; and the ladies who teach pass the same examination as the teachers in the boys* schools. The course of instruction, too, is much the HOW HOLLAND IS EDUCATED 257 same as with the boys, but the use of the needle is carefully taught, from plain sewing in the first year to " cutting-out" in the fifth. Every girl is taught to sew. For music, a girl has to go to a music school, and she is sent only if she shows a natural talent ; whereby one of the horrors of our home life is escaped. Mrs. Lecky, who knows, wrote in an English magazine a year or two ago that ''Dutch girls of all classes are proficient in needlework, and in the remotest fisher- micn's villages the neatness of the quaint and often elaborate costumes, of the linen on the bed and in the press, is faultless." Every one who has lived in Hol- land must have noticed so much, and possibly may have had an opportunity of seeing the skilful needle- work of the orphanages. The Industrie School voor Meisjes in the Wetering Schans in Amsterdam, the industrial school for girls already referred to, has a very high repute. The coach which the people of Holland presented to their young Queen for her Coro- nation was embroidered and decorated there. The pre-eminence of the Dutchwoman in sewing, however, is not in fancy-work. I have seen more artistic sewing in farmhouses and decayed shipping towns of Scotland than in any Dutch huis-kamer , but never anywhere more beautiful useful needlework, mending and patch- ing. In many Dutch families still the saying is that machine should never touch linen. There remain to be mentioned under the head of Secondary Education certain schools of instruction in one or other special subjects. An annual course in 17 258 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS butter-making in the school of Bolsward, in Friesland, is open to women who are seventeen years of age, and have had good elementary instruction. It is rather curious that it is at Bolsward that one of the largest but- ter-making works has been established, with the result that the local butter market is rapidly decaying. The same subject is very successfully taught on farms in Overysel and Gelderland lent by the proprietors for the purpose. Those who receive the diploma as agricultu- rist in the State Agricultural School at Wageningen are allowed to proceed to a course of forestry. The Horticultural and Forestry Schools Gerard Adriaan van Swieten, on the ground of the Society of Charity, and the van Swieten School of Agriculture on De ronde Blesse, at the same place, are all very successful. There is a Veterinary School in Utrecht, and instruc- tion in horseshoeing is given at Assen, Winschoten, Haarlem, Wageningen, Venloo, Glyteren and Weesp. Further, there are State agricultural teachers ; and ** walking agriculturists," chief among them *'Ericus" (M. Baron), whose lectures are well attended. A word about the qualifications to teach in the elementary and the secondary schools. The certifi- cate of Teacher is fairly easily gained ; there is a wide range of subjects, but only the elements are professed, and no languages. To teach a language in the lower schools, a special examination in it must be passed ; as a matter of fact most Teachers hold a certificate for elementary French or English. The examination for a Head-Teacher is much more difficult; still, the diffi- The Farm. From a water-colour drawing by Anton Mauve. 26o HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS culty is due to the wide range of subjects, not to the high proficiency demanded in any one. With those who teach in the high-burgher schools {Leeraren), it is quite different. If the school is one with a five- years' course, they must hold a university degree, or the equivalent diploma granted by government. The women teachers (^Leeraressen) must all win the diploma. It is given for each subject, separately, and a very complete knowledge of the one subject professed is required. Generally, diplomas for two subjects are held. From this survey of secondary education in Hol- land, it will be seen that there is ample provision for technical training, and further that in the higher — the high-burgher — schools, no less than in the purely industrial schools, the instruction is strictly practical and "modern." Latin is not taught in them. It is not even taught in the high-burgher schools for girls. If girls are to learn Latin, they must attend the gym- nasia, and the result is that although many Dutch women are splendidly educated, comparatively few of them know any Latin. There is thus a change from an earlier condition of things in Holland when, trav- ellers tell us, men and women could be found in all ranks able to conduct a conversation in Latin fluently. Under the present system, there is a parting of the educational way at the end of the elementary course. The path through the secondary schools, we have seen, is designed to lead to a commercial and indus- trial life. We will now follow that through the gym- nasia to the universities. HOW HOLLAND IS EDUCATED 261 The gymnasium is the preparatory school for the university. An Act passed twenty years ago provided for a gymnasium, with a course of six years, in every town of over twenty thousand inhabitants. It per- mitted smaller towns to have a pro-gymnasium with a four-years' course, but these pro-gymnasia were abol- ished ten years later. Gymnasia are found in the following places : Prov- ince of Brabant: 's Hertogenbosch, Breda; Province of Gelderland : Arnhem, Nymegen, Zutphen, Doetin- chem, Tiel ; Province of Limburg: Maastricht; Prov- ince of Overysel : Deventer, Kampen, Zwolle ; Province of Utrecht : Utrecht, Amersfoort ; Province of Drente : Assen ; Province of Groningen : Groningen, Winscho- ten ; Province of Friesland : Leeuwarden, Sneek; Prov- ince of North-Holland : Amsterdam, Haarlem ; Province of South-Holland : Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Delft, Dordrecht, Gorcum, Gouda, Schiedam; Prov- ince of Zeeland : Middelburg. Each of these communes supports its own gymna- sium, but the State gives a grant to all except Amster- dam, The Hague, and (for a special reason) Kampen. Kampen, it so happens, is a town with many possessions, and the rates and the scale of living are very low, in consequence. In Kampen, therefore, the fee for the gymnasium is only 30 guilders (;^2, los.^ a year. Else- where, pupils at the gymnasium pay from 70 to 100 guilders. Pupils enter the gymnasium when twelve years of age, and the course over the six years includes Greek, Latin, Dutch, French, German, history, geog- 262 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS raphy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and natural history. The professors at the gymnasium must pos- sess a university degree, or they must have passed an equivalent examination fixed by government. At the end of the gymnasium course there is a passing ex- amination into the universities. There are four universities in Holland : Leiden, established in 1575; Groningen, in 1614; Utrecht, in 1634; and Amsterdam, which was an Athenaeum from 1630 until it was made a university in 1872-73. Two other universities, Franeker, in Friesland, dating from 1585, and Harderwijk, on the Veluwe, from 1648, were closed by Napoleon in 181 1. In each of the existing universities there are the five Faculties of Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine, Mathematics and Physics, and Philology. To obtain the doctor's degree, the student must pass a professional examination and a doctoral examination ; after that follows the public promotion. The degree of Doctor is given in : L Theology. n. The Sciences of Law or Politics. IIL Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics. IV. (a) Mathematics and Astronomy, (b) Mathe- matics and Physics, (c) Chemistry, (d) Miner- alogy and Geology, (e) Botany and Zoology, (f) Pharmacy. V. (a) Classical Literature, (b) Semitical Litera- ture, (c) Dutch Literature, (d) Language and Literature of the Indian Archipelago, (e) Philosophy. HOW HOLLAND IS EDUCATED 263 All students at the universities, however, do not aim at a doctor's degree : most theological students, for example, after passing the candidate's examination, go before a commission of clergymen and are admitted as " Proponents." Then they are eligible to be called to a Protestant Church. Many medical students, again, are content to pass the State examination, the essen- tial scientific examination which gives one the title of Physician {Arts), without writing and defending the thesis which wins the ornamental title '' doctor." In- deed, most medical students are not eligible for the doctor's degree, for they come from the high-burgher school, and the doctor's degree can only be obtained by students who have passed through the gymnasia, or have passed an equivalent examination. Amster- dam is the great medical university. Utrecht, the centre of orthodox opinion, sends out the greatest number of theological students, whereas Leiden, which teaches a more liberal theology, is strongest in law. At Utrecht and Leiden, there are observatories, and there astronomy is studied chiefly. The nominal course at the universities is four years for Law, six or seven for Literature, five for Theology, and six or seven for Philosophy, and seven or eight for Medicine. Most students in Law, however, remain longer than four years. All students pay £16, 13^. 4^. (200 guilders) each year for four years; thereafter they attend classes free. The Free University of Amsterdam is only a Cal- vinistic institution for the study of Theology, Law, 264 HOLLAND AND THE HOLLANDERS Philosophy, and Letters. The Polytechnic School at Delft ranks as half a university, half a school; and the Institution for instruction about the languages and peoples of the Indian Archipelago, in the same town, and the State School in Leiden on similar lines, have a somewhat similar standing. The principal Roman Catholic seminaries are at St. Michielsgestel, Kuilenburg, Driebergen, Voorhout, Warmond, Roermond, and Rolduc. At Amsterdam there are seminaries of the Evangelical Lutherans, Confessional Lutherans, and the Baptists ; the chief training college of the Remonstrants is at Leiden, and that of the Reformed Christians is at Kampen. 'S HERTOGENBOSCH AND THE SOUTHERN PROVINCES S HERTOGENBOSCH is the northern gate of the southern provinces. As has been seen, the Dutch geographers cite it as the typical town in Hol- land of the Franks. It is, at any rate, the typical town of the Roman Catholics, and the fitting capital there- fore of North-Brabant. Like almost all Dutch towns, it is prettily situate. Set flat upon the plain, the towns in Holland originally were fortified : a ring canal or river — a singel — sur- rounded them, with ramparts on the inner bank. Now the fortifications have been demolished, and the ram- parts converted into walks and gardens, shad}^ and delightful, by the waterside. As a rule, the railway only skirts the towns, and the traveller, descending at ^-^he station, enters them by bridge and plantsoen, — an engaging approach. If the town is extending or has extended in recent years, the new part outside the singel is ugly and raw, and at best it is Suburbia; inside the canal, you are certain to find everything quaint and most things beautiful. That is true of all the towns of Holland, and therefore of Den Bosch. It is not so beautiful, nor has it so beautiful an ap- proach, as Groningen, Utrecht, Zwolle, and many 266 *S HERTOGENBOSCH others that might be mentioned. But though it is not specially handsome within, it is not so distressingly- shabby without as Utrecht, or, to take an example nearer it, Breda. That means, no doubt, that it is not such a flourishing town as either. As the Dutch say. it is in verval, or in decline. Such is the impression left upon me by everything I have seen and heard in Den Bosch except the declarations of the inhabitants. I remember it as composed of uninteresting, straggling streets; a very monotonous city, not at all distin- guished. The large irregular market-place may be picturesque, as most Dutch market-places are, when crowded with peasants and their farm-stock, at the Wednesday's cattle-mart; but certainly it is not so when huddled on other mornings with stalls of cheap clothing and confections and ware, and old rusty iron, or when, after mid-day, it is deserted by all its mean traffickers. The buildings that surround it are not striking. The Town Hall, for example, is not, and it contains the most depressing collection of antiquities (if the coins be excepted), that ever a concierge had to make a story about. The Town Hall ought to be visited, nevertheless, on account of the decorative panels it contains by the young artist Derkinderen, who is a native of the town. Other examples of this designer's work are to be seen in a stained-glass window in the staircase of the new university building in Utrecht, and in a panel, " The Procession of the Miracle in Amsterdam," in the Municipal Museum of Amsterdam. The Den Bosch c o o < % >> K ,Q O P k4 O n