icitlt the Characicr of its Inhabitants. 361 



more mindless set of women it is difficult to find. Their virtues consist 

 in docility, evenness of temper, and domesticity, — Athenceum, No. 770, 

 p. 848. 



II. Holland. 



Holland, the land of cheese and butter, is, to my eye, no unpicturesquc, 

 uninteresting country. Flat it is ; but it is so geometrically only, and in 

 no other sense. ^Spires, church-towers ; bright farm-liouscs, their windows 

 glancing in the sun ; long rows of willow-trees, their bluish foliage ruffling 

 up white in the breeze; grassy embankments of a tender vivid green, partly 

 hiding the meadows behind, and crowded with glittering gaudily-painted 

 gigs and stool waggons, loaded with rosy-cheeked laughing countryigirls, 

 decked out in ribbons of many more colours than the rainbow, all a-stream- 

 ing in the wind ; these are objects which strike the eye of the traveller 

 from seaward, and form a gay front view of Holland, as he sails, or steams 

 along its coasts, and up its rivers. On the shore, the long continuity of 

 horizontal lines of country in the background, each line rising behind the 

 other to a distant, level, unbroken horizon, gives the impression of vast- 

 ness and of novelty. Holland can boast of nothing sublime; but for 

 picturesque grounds, for close, compact, snug home scenery, with every 

 thing in harmony, and stamped with one peculiar character, Holland is 

 a cabinet picture, in which nature and art join to produce one impression, 

 one homogeneous effect. The Dutch cottage, with its glistening brick- 

 walls, white painted wood- work and rails, and its massive roof of thatch, 

 with the stork clappering to her young on her old-established nest on the 

 top of the gable, is admirably in place and keeping, just where it is, at 

 the turn of the canal, shut in by a screen of willow-trees, or tall reeds, 

 from seeing or being seen, beyond the sunny height of the still calm water, 

 in which its every tint and part is brightly repeated. Then the peculiar 

 character of every article of the household furniture, which the Dutch- 

 built house-mother is scouring on the green before the door so indus- 

 triously ; the Dutch character is impressed on every thing Dutch, and 

 intuitively recognised, like the Jewish or Gipsey countenance, wherever 

 it is met with ; the people, their dwellings, and all iu or about them, 

 their very movements in accordance with this style or character, and all 

 bearing its impress strongly — make this Holland, to my eye, no dull un- 

 impressive land. There is a soul in all you see ; the strongly marked 

 character about every thing Dutch pleases intellectually, as much as 

 beauty of form itself, — what else is the charm so universally felt, requiring 

 so little to be acquired, of the paintings of the Dutch school .'' The objects 

 or scenes painted arc neither graceful, nor beautiful, nor sublime ; but 

 they are Dutch. They have a strongly marked mind and character im- 

 pressed on thonv, and expressed by them, and every accompaniment in 

 tiic picture has the same, and harnionizi s with all around it. The Hol- 

 lander has a decided taste for the roniaulic ; great amateurs are Uic Myn- 



