Part 3

An evening train, with an old lady, in a diamond tiara and gold pins, for our companion, took us to the Helder, and we awoke next morning at the pleasant little inn of Du Burg upon a view of boats and nets and the low-lying Island of Texel in the distance. The boats and the fishermen are extremely picturesque, but there is nothing else to see, after the visitor has examined the huge granite Helder Dyke, the artificial fortification of north Holland, which contends successfully to preserve the land against the sea. There is an admirably managed Naval Institute here. It was by an expedition from the Helder that Nova Zembla was discovered, and it was near this that Admirals Ruyter and Tromp repulsed the English fleet. Texel, which lies opposite the Helder, is the first of a chain of islands—Vlieland, Terschelling, and Ameland, which protect the entrance of the Zuider Zee.

The country near the Helder is bare and desolate in the extreme. It is all peat, and the rest of Holland uses it as a fuel mine. It was here that the genius of Ruysdael was often able to make a single tree, or even a bush rising out of the flat by a stagnant pool, both interesting and charming to the spectator. We crossed the levels to Alkmaar, which struck us as being altogether the prettiest place in the country and as possessing all those attributes of cleanliness which are usually given to Broek. The streets, formed of bricks fitted close together, are absolutely spotless, and every house front shines fresh from the mop or the syringe. Yet excessive cleanliness has not destroyed the picturesqueness of the place. The fifteenth-century church of S. Lawrence, of exquisitely graceful exterior, rises in the centre of the town, and, in spite of being hideously defaced inside, has a fine vaulted roof, a coloured screen, and, in the chancel, a curious tomb to Florens V., Count of Holland, 1296, though only his heart is buried there. Near the excellent Hôtel du Burg is a most bewitching almshouse, with an old tourelle and screen, and a lovely garden in a court surrounded by clipped lime-trees. And more charming still is an old weigh-house of 1582, for the cheese, the great manufacture of the district, for which there is a famous market every Friday, where capital costumes may be seen. The rich and gaily painted façade of the old building, reflected in a clear canal, is a perfect marvel of beauty and colour; and artists should stay here to paint—not the view given here, but another which we discovered too late—more in front, with gable-ended houses leading up to the principal building, and all its glowing colours repeated in the water.

It is three hours' drive from Alkmaar to Hoorn, a charming old town with bastions, gardens, and semi-ruined gates. On the West Poort a relief commemorates the filial devotion of a poor boy, who arrived here in 1579, laboriously dragging his old mother in a sledge, when all were flying from the Spaniards. Opposite the weighing-house for the cheeses is the State College, which bears a shield with the arms of England, sustained by two negroes. It commemorates the fact that when Van Tromp defeated the English squadron, his ships came from Hoorn and on board were two negroes, who took from the English flagship the shield which it was then the custom to fix to the stern of a vessel, and brought it back here as a trophy. Hoorn was one of the first places in Holland to embrace the reformed religion, which spread from hence all over the country, but now not above half the inhabitants are Calvinists.

In returning from Alkmaar we stopped to see Zaandam, quite in the centre of the land of windmills, of which we counted eighty as visible from the station alone. They are of every shade of colour, and are mounted on poles, on towers, on farm buildings, and made picturesque by every conceivable variety of prop, balcony, gallery, and insertion. Zaandam is a very pretty village on the Zaan which flows into the Y, with gaily painted houses, and gay little gardens, and perpetual movement to and from its landing-stage. Turning south from thence, a little entry on the right leads down some steps and over a bridge to some cottages on the bank of a ditch, and inside the last of these is the tiny venerable hovel where Peter the Great stayed in 1697 as Peter Michaeloff. It retains its tiled roof and contains some old chairs and a box-bed, but unfortunately Peter was only here a week.

The evening of leaving Zaandam we spent at Utrecht, of which the name is so well known from the peace which terminated the war of the Spanish succession, April 11, 1715. The town, long the seat of an ecclesiastical court, was also the great centre of the Jansenists, dissenters from Roman Catholicism under Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, condemned by Alexander VII. in 1656, at the instigation of the Jesuits. The doctrines of Jansenius still linger in its gloomy houses. Every appointment of a bishop is still announced to the Sovereign Pontiff, who as regularly responds by a bull of excommunication, which is read aloud in the cathedral, and then immediately put away and forgotten. Solemn and sad, but pre-eminently respectable, Utrecht has more the aspect of a decayed German city than a Dutch town, and so has its Cathedral of S. Martin (1254-67), which, though the finest Gothic building in Holland, is only a magnificent fragment, with a detached tower (1321-82) 338 feet high. The interior as usual is ruined by Calvinism and yellow paint. It contains the tomb of Admiral van Gent, who fell in the battle of Solbay. The nave, which fell in 1674, has never been rebuilt. The S. Pieterskerk (1039) and S. Janskerk offer nothing remarkable, but on a neighbouring canal is the quaint Paushuizen, or Pope's house, which was built by Pope Adrian VI. (Adrian Floriszoom) in 1517. Near this is the pretty little Archiepiscopal Museum, full of mediæval relics.

The interesting Moravian establishment of Zeist may be visited from Utrecht.

From Utrecht we travelled over sandy flats to Kampen, near the mouth of the wide river Yssel, with three picturesque gates—Haghen Poort, Cellebroeders Poort, and Broeders Poort; and a town hall of the sixteenth century. Here, as frequently elsewhere in Holland, we suffered from arriving famished at midday. All the inns were equally inhospitable: 'The table d'hôte is at 4 P.M.: we _cannot_ and _will not_ be bothered with cooking before that, and there is nothing cold in the house.' 'But you have surely bread and cheese?' 'Certainly not—_nothing_.'

At Zwolle, however, we found the Kroon an excellent hotel with an obliging landlord; and Zwolle, the native place of Terburg (1608), is a charming old town with a girdle of gardens, a fine church (externally), and a noble brick gateway called the Sassenpoort.

It was more the desire of seeing something of the whole country than anything else, and a certain degree of misplaced confidence in the pleasant volumes of Harvard, which took us up from Zwolle, through Friesland, the cow-paradise, to Leeuwarden, its ancient capital. Sad and gloomy as most other towns of Holland are, Leeuwarden is sadder and gloomier still. Its streets are wide and not otherwise than handsome, but they are almost deserted, and there are no objects of interest to see unless a leaning tower can be called so, with a top, like that at Pisa, inclined the other way, to keep it from toppling over. An hour's walk from the town there is said to be a fine still-inhabited castle, and, if time had allowed, respect for S. Boniface would have taken us to Murmerwoude, where he was martyred (June 8, 853), with his fifty-three companions. King Pepin raised a hermitage on the spot, and an ancient brick chapel still exists there.

Here and elsewhere in Friesland nothing is so worthy of notice as the helmets—the golden helmets of the women—costing something equivalent to 25_l._ or 30_l._, handed down as heirlooms, fitting close to the head, and not allowing a particle of hair to be visible.

In the late evening we went on to Groningen, a university town with a good hotel (Seven Provincen), an enormous square, and a noble tall Gothic tower of 1627, whence the watchman still sounds his bugle. Not far off is Midwolde, where the village church has fine tombs of Charles Jerome, Baron d'Inhausen and his wife, Anna von Ewsum.

As late as the sixteenth century this province was for the most part uninhabited—savage and sandy, and overrun by wolves. But three hundred years of hard work has transformed it into a fertile country, watered by canals, and sprinkled with country houses. Agriculturally it is one of the richest provinces of the kingdom. This is mostly due to its possessing a race of peasant-farmers who never shrink from personal hard work, and who will continue to direct the plough whilst they send their sons to the university to study as lawyers, doctors, or churchmen. These peasant farmers or boers possess the _beklemregt_, or right of hiring land on an annual rent, which the landlord can never increase. A peasant can bequeath his right to his heirs, whether direct or collateral. To the land, this system is an indescribable advantage, the cultivators doing their utmost to bring their lands to perfection, because they are certain that no one can take away the advantage from themselves or their descendants.

On leaving Groningen we traversed the grey, monotonous, desolate district of the Drenthe, sprinkled over at intervals by the curious ancient groups of stones called Hunnebedden, or beds of death (Hun meaning death), beneath which urns of clay containing human ashes have been found. From Deventer (where there is an old weigh-house, and a cathedral of S. Lievin with a crypt and nave of 1334), time did not allow us to make an excursion to the great royal palace of Het Loo, the favourite residence of the sovereigns. The descriptions in Harvard rather made us linger unnecessarily at Zutphen, a dull town, with a brick Groote Kerk (S. Walpurgis) which has little remaining of its original twelfth-century date, and a rather picturesque 'bit' on the walls, where the 'Waterpoort' crosses the river like a bridge.

At Arnhem, the Roman Arenacum, once the residence of the Dukes of Gueldres, and still the capital of Guelderland, we seemed to have left all the characteristics of Holland behind. Numerous modern villas, which might have been built for Cheltenham or Leamington, cover the wooded hills above the Rhine. In the Groote Kerk (1452) is a curious monument of Charles van Egmont, Duc de Gueldres, 1538, but there is nothing else to remark upon. We intended to have made an excursion hence to Cleves, but desperately wet weather set in, and, as Dutch rain often lasts for weeks together when it once begins, we were glad to hurry England-wards, only regretting that we could not halt at Nymegen, a most picturesque place, where Charlemagne lived in the old palace of the Valckhof (or Waalhof, residence on the Waal), of which a fragment still exists, with an old baptistery, a Stadhuis of 1534, and a Groote Kerk containing a noble monument to Catherine de Bourbon (1469), wife of Duke Adolph of Gueldres.

We left Holland feeling that we should urge our friends by all means to see the pictures at Rotterdam, the Hague, and Amsterdam, but to look for all other characteristics of the Netherlands in such places as Breda, Dortrecht, Haarlem, Alkmaar, and Zwolle.

_IN DENMARK._

Formerly the terrors of a sea-voyage from Kiel deterred many travellers from thinking of a tour in Denmark or Sweden, but now a succession of railways makes everything easy, and while nothing can be imagined more invigorating or pleasant, there is probably no pleasure more economical than a summer in Scandinavia. Those who are worn with a London season will feel as if every breath in the crystal air of Denmark endued them with fresh health and strength, and then, after they have seen its old palaces and its beech woods and its Thorwaldsen sculptures, a voyage of ten minutes will carry them over the narrow Sound to the soft beauties of genial Sweden and the wild splendours of Norway.

Either Hamburg or Lübeck must be the starting-point for the overland route to Denmark, and the old free city of Lübeck, though quite a small place, is one of the most remarkable towns in Germany. We arrived there one hot summer afternoon, after a weary journey over the arid sandy plains which separate it from Berlin, and suddenly seemed to be transported into a land of verdure. Lilacs and roses bloomed everywhere; a wood lined the bank of the limpid river Trave, and in its waters—beyond the old wooden bridge—were reflected all the tallest steeples, often strangely out of the perpendicular, of many-towered Lübeck. A wonderful gate of red brick and golden-hued terra-cotta is the entrance from the station, and in the market-place are the quaintest turrets, towers, tourelles, but all ending in spires. The lofty houses, so full of rich colour, throw cool shade on the streets on the hottest summer day; and we enjoyed a Sunday in the excellent hotel, with wooden galleries opening towards a splashing fountain in a quiet square, where a fat constable busied himself in keeping everybody from fulfilling any avocation whatever whilst service was being performed in the churches, but let them do exactly as they pleased as soon as it was over.

It must, at best, be a weary journey across West Holstein, through a succession of arid flats varied by stagnant swamps. We spent the weary hours in studying Dunham's 'History of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway,' which cannot be sufficiently recommended to all Scandinavian travellers. The glowing accounts in the English guide books of a lake and an old castle beguiled us into spending a night at Sleswig, but it turned out that the lake had disappeared before the memory of man, and that the castle was a white modern barrack. The colourless town and its long sleepy suburb, moored as if upon a raft in the marshes, straggle along the edge of a waveless fiord. At the end is the rugged cathedral like a barn, with a belfry like a dovecot, and inside it a curious altarpiece by Hans Brüggemann, pupil of Albert Dürer, and the noble monument of Frederick I., the first Lutheran King of Denmark; while richly carved doors at the sides of the church admit one to see how the grandmother of the Princess of Wales and various other potentates lie—Danish fashion—in gorgeous exposed coffins without any tombs at all. Everywhere roses grow in the streets, trained upon the house walls; and, up the pavement, crowds of the children were hurrying in the early morning, carrying in their hands the shoes they were going to wear when they were in school. In the evenings these children will not venture outside the town, for over the marshes they say that the wild huntsman rides, followed by his demon hounds and blowing his magic horn. It is the spirit of Duke Abel the fratricide, who, in the fens, murdered his brother Eric VI. of Denmark, and who was afterwards lost there himself, falling from his horse, and being dragged down by the weight of his armour. To give rest to his wandering spirit, the clergy dug up his body and despatched it to Bremen, but there his vampire gave the canons no peace, so they sent the corpse back again, and now it lies once more in the marshes of Gottorp.

Most unutterably hideous is the country through which the railway now travels, wearisome levels only broken here and there by mounds, probably sepulchral. A straight line with tiny hillocks at intervals would do for a sketch of the whole of Sleswig and the greater part of Funen and Zealand. In times of early Danish history it was a frequent punishment to bury criminals alive in these dismal peat mosses. Twelve hours of changelessly flat scenery bring travellers from Hamburg to Frederikshaven, where we embark upon the Little Belt, the luggage-vans of the train being shunted on board the steamer. Immediately opposite lie the sandy shores of Funen, and in a few minutes we are there. Then four hours of ugly scenery take us across the island. It is only necessary to look out at the little town of Odense, called after the old hero-god, which was the birth-place of Hans Christian Andersen in 1805. The cathedral of Odense contains the shrine of the sainted King Canute IV. (1080-86), who was murdered while kneeling before the altar, owing to indignation at the severe taxation to which the love of Church endowment had incited him.

Nyborg, where we meet the sea again, will recall to lovers of old ballads the story of the innocent young knight Folker Lowmanson, and his cruel death here in a barrel of spikes, from the jealousy of Waldemar IV. for his beautiful queen Helwig, and how, to know his fate—

With anxious heart did Denmark's Queen To Nyborg urge her horse, And at the gate his bier she met, And on it Folker's corse.

Such honour shown to son of knight I never yet could hear; The Queen of Denmark walked on foot Herself before his bier.

In tears then Helwig mounted horse And silent homeward rode, For in her heart a life-long grief Had taken its abode.

At Nyborg we embark on a miserable steamer for the passage of the Great Belt. It lasts an hour and a half, and is often most wretched. On landing at Korsor travellers are hurried into the train which is waiting for the vessel.

Now the country improves a little. Here and there we pass through great beech woods. Down the green glades of one of them a glimpse is caught of the college of Sorö. It occupies the site of a monastery founded by Asker Ryg, a chieftain who, when he departed on a journey of warfare, vowed that if the child to which his wife, Inge, was about to give birth proved to be a girl, he would give his new building a spire, but a tower if it were a boy. On his return he saw two towers rising in the distance. Inge had given birth to twin sons, who lived to become Asbiorn Snare, celebrated in the ballad of 'Fair Christal,' and Absalon, the warrior Bishop of Roeskilde—'first captain by sea and land.' Absalon is buried here in the church of Sorö, which contains the tomb of King Olaf, the shortlived son of the famous Queen Margaret; of her cruel father, Waldemar Atterdag, whose last words expressed regret that he had not suffocated his daughter in her cradle; and of her grandfather, Christopher II., with his wife, Euphemia of Pomerania. Soon we pass Ringsted, which is scarcely worth stopping at, though its church contains the fine brass of King Erik Menred (1319) and his queen, Ingeborga, and though twenty kings and queens were entombed there before Roeskilde became the royal place of sepulture. Amongst them lies the popular Queen Dagmar, first wife of Waldemar II., still celebrated in ballad literature, for there is scarcely a Dane who is ignorant of the touching story of 'Queen Dagmar's Death,' which begins

Queen Dagmar is lying at Ribé sick, At Ringsted is made her grave,

and which contains her last touching request to her husband, and her simple confession of the only 'sin' she could remember—

Had I on a Sunday not laced my sleeves, Or border upon them sewn, No pangs had I felt by day or night, Or torture of hell-fire known.

Tradition tells us that the dismal town of Ringsted was founded by King Ring, a warrior who, when he was seriously wounded in battle, placed the bodies of his slain heroes and that of his queen, Alpol, on board a ship laden with pitch, and going out to the open sea, set the vessel on fire, and then fell upon his sword.

In the twilight we pass Roeskilde, and at 10-1/2 P.M. long rows of street lamps reflected in canals show that we have reached Copenhagen.

To those whose travels have chiefly led them southwards there is a great pleasure in the first awaking in Copenhagen. Everything is new—the associations, the characteristics, the history; even the very names on the omnibuses are suggestive of the sagas and romances of the North; and though the summer sun is hot, the atmosphere is as clear as that of a tramontana day in an Italian winter, and the air is indescribably elastic. The comfortable Hôtel d'Angleterre stands in the Kongens Nytorv, a modern square, with trees surrounding a statue in the centre, but there are glimpses of picturesque shipping down the side streets, and hard by is a spire quite ideally Danish, formed by three marvellous dragons with their tails twisted together in the air. Tradition declares that it was moved bodily from Calmar, in the south of Sweden. It rises now from a beautiful building of brick erected in 1624 by Christian IV., brother-in-law of James I. of England, and used as the Exchange.

Not far off is the principal palace—Christiansborg Slot, often rebuilt, and very white and ugly. It was partially destroyed by fire in 1884. Besides the royal residence, its vast courts contain the Chambers of Parliament, the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery chiefly filled with the works of native artists, amongst which those of Marstrand and Bloch are very striking and well worthy of attention.

A queer building in the shadow of the palace, which attracts notice by its frescoed walls, is the Thorwaldsen Museum, the shrine where Denmark has reverentially collected all the works and memorials of her greatest artist—Bertel Thorwaldsen. Though his family is said to have descended from the Danish king Harold Stildetand, he was born (in 1770) the son of one Gottschalk, who, half workman, half artist, was employed in carving figures for the bows of vessels. From his earliest childhood little Bertel accompanied his father to the wharfs and assisted him in his work, in which he showed such intelligence that in his eleventh year he was allowed to enter the Free School of Art. Here he soon made wonderful progress in sculpture, but could so little be persuaded to attend to other studies that he reached the age of eighteen scarcely able to read. In his twenty-third year he obtained the great gold medal, to which a travelling stipend is attached, and thus he was enabled to go to Rome, where, encouraged at first by the patronage of Thomas Hope, the English banker, he soon reached the highest pitch of celebrity. Denmark became proud of her son, so that his visits to his native town in 1819 and 1837 were like triumphal progresses, all the city going forth to meet him, and lodging him splendidly at the public cost; but his heart always clung to the Eternal City, which continued to be the scene of his labours. Of his many works perhaps his noble lion at Lucerne is the best known. He never married, though he was long attached to a member of the old Scottish house of Mackenzie, and he died on a visit to Copenhagen in 1844.