of many of us, did not it give the quiet rest and did not it whisper
to you; here ... here is it good? And for this our country we want
to be a reliable guide by the directions of which we can savely start.

With Zaandvoort we may associate Dirck van Santvoort who painted the
portrait of the curious girl--No. 2133 at the Ryks Museum--reproduced
opposite page 236. Of the painter very little is known. He belongs
to the great period, flourishing in the middle of the seventeenth
century--and that is all. But he had a very cunning hand and an
interesting mind, as the few pictures to his name attest. In the same
room at the Ryks Museum where the portrait hangs is a large group of
ladies and gentlemen, all wearing some of the lace which he dearly
loved to paint. And in one of the recesses of the Gallery of Honour
is a quaint little lady from his delicate brush--No. 2131--well
worth study.

Haarlem's great church, which is dedicated to St. Bavo, is one
of the finest in Holland. All that is needed to make it perfect
is an infusion of that warmth and colour which once it possessed
but of which so few traces have been allowed to remain. The Dutch
Protestants, as I remarked at Utrecht, have shown singular efficiency
in denuding religion of its external graces and charm. There is
no church so beautiful but they would reduce it to bleak and arid
cheerlessness. Place even the cathedral of Chartres in a Dutch
market-place, and it would be a whitewashed desert in a week, while
little shops and houses would be built against its sacred walls. There
is hardly a great church in Holland but has some secular domicile
clinging like a barnacle to its sides.

The attitude of the Dutch to their churches is in fact very much that