Chapter X

Amsterdam

The Venice of the North--The beauty of gravity--No place for
George Dyer--The Keizersgracht--Kalverstraat and Warmoes
Straat--The Ghetto--Pile-driving--Erasmus's sarcasm--The
new Bourse--Learning the city--Tramway perplexities--The
unnecessary guide--The Royal Palace--The New Church--Stained
glass--The Old Church--The five carpets--Wedding customs--Dutch
wives to-day and in the past--The Begijnenhof--The new
religion and the old--The Burgerweesmeisjes--The Eight
Orange Blossoms--Dutch music halls--A Dutch Hamlet--The fish
market--Rembrandt's grave--A nation of shopkeepers--_Max
Havelaar_--Mr. Drystubble's device--Lothario and Betsy--The
English in Holland and the Dutch in England--Athleticism--A
people on skates--The chaperon's perplexity--Love on the level.

Amsterdam is notable for two possessions above others: its old
canals and its old pictures. Truly has it been called the Venice
of the North; but very different is its sombre quietude from the
sunny Italian city among the waters. There is a beauty of gaiety
and a beauty of gravity; and Amsterdam in its older parts--on the
Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht--has the beauty of gravity. In
Venice the canal is of course also the street: gondolas and barcas
are continually gliding hither and thither; but in the Keizersgracht
and the Heerengracht the water is little used. One day, however,
I watched a costermonger steering a boat-load of flowers under a
bridge, and no words of mine can describe the loveliness of their
reflection. I remember the incident particularly because flowers are