of Cats' Works (Amsterdam, 1655) which is held sacred in all rightly
constituted old-fashioned Dutch households. I have seen it at the
British Museum, and it seems to me to be one of the best picture-books
in the world.

As Mr. Dobson says, the life of old Holland is reproduced in it. "What
would one not give for such an illustrated copy of Shakespeare! In
these pages of Jacob Cats we have the authentic Holland of the
seventeenth century:--its vanes and spires and steep-roofed houses;
its gardens with their geometric tulip-beds, their formally-clipped
alleys and arches, their shining parallelograms of water. Here are
its old-fashioned interiors, with the deep fire-places and queer
andirons, the huge four-posters, the prim portraits on the wall, the
great brass-clamped coffers and carved _armories_ for the ruffs and
starched collars and stiff farthingales of the women. In one picture
you may see the careful housewife mournfully inspecting a moth-eaten
garment which she has just taken from a chest that Wardour Street
might envy; in another she is energetically cuffing the 'foolish
fat scullion,' who has let the spotted Dalmatian coach-dog overturn
the cauldron at the fire. Here an old crone, with her spectacles on,
is cautiously probing the contents of the said cauldron with a fork;
here the mistress of the house is peeling pears; here the plump and
soft-hearted cheese-wife is entertaining an admirer--outside there
are pictures as vivid. Here are the clumsy leather-topped coach with
its masked occupant and stumbling horses; the towed _trekschuit_,
with its merry freight, sliding swiftly through the low-lying
landscape; the windy mole, stretching seaward, with its blown and
flaring beacon-fire. Here again in the street is the toy-shop with
its open front and store of mimic drums and halberds for the martial
little burghers; here are the fruiteress with her stall of grapes