of entering which I was not asked to pay. I have an uneasy feeling
that it was an oversight, and that if by any chance this statement
meets an authoritative eye some one may be removed to one of the
penal establishments and steps be taken to collect my debt. But so
it was. And yet it is possible that the free right of entrance is
intentional; since to charge for a building so unpardonably disfigured
would be a hardy action. The Gothic arches have great beauty, but it is
impossible from any point to get more than a broken view on account of
the high painted wooden walls with which the pews have been enclosed.

The cathedral is only a fragment; the nave fell in, isolating the
bell tower, during a tempest in 1674, and by that time all interest
in churches as beautiful and sacred buildings having died out of
Holland, never to return, no effort was made to restore it. But it
must, before the storm, have been superb, and of a vastness superior
to any in the country.

I find a very pleasant passage upon Holland's great churches, and
indeed upon its best architecture in general, in an essay on Utrecht
Cathedral by Mr. L.A. Corbeille. "Gothic churches on a grand scale
are as abundant in the Netherlands as they are at home, but to find
one of them drawn or described in any of the otherwise comprehensive
architectural works, which appear from time to time, is the rarest of
experiences. The Hollanders are accused of mere apishness in employing
the Gothic style, and of downright dulness in apprehending its import
and beauty. Yet a man who has found that bit of Rotterdam which beats
Venice; who has seen, from under Delft's lindens on a summer evening,
the image of the Oude Kerk's leaning tower in the still canal,
and has gone to bed, perchance to awake in the moonlight while the
Nieuwe Kerk's many bells are rippling a silver tune over the old