projected, the comic papers came to the defence of
outraged Nature; but they did not really mean it, as the aesthetic
minority in England would have meant it.

The steam-tram journeys are always interesting; and my advice to a
traveller in Holland is to make as much use of them as he can. This
is quite simple as their time-tables are included in the official
Reisgids. I like them at all times; but best perhaps when one has
to wait in the heart of some quiet village for the other tram to
come up. There is something very soothing and attractive in these
sudden cessations of noise and movement in the midst of a totally
strange community.

Leyden is a paradise of clean, quiet streets--a city of professors,
students and soldiers. It has, I think, the prettiest red roofs in
any considerable Dutch town: not prettier than Veere's, but Veere
is now only a village. Philosophers surely live here: book-worms to
whom yesterday, to-day and to-morrow are one. The sense of commercial
enterprise dies away: whatever they are at Amsterdam, the Dutch at
Leyden cease to be a nation of shopkeepers.

It was holiday time when I was there last, and the town was
comparatively empty. No songs floated through the windows of the
clubs. In talk with a stranger at one of the cafes, I learned that
the Dutch student works harder in the holidays than in term. In term
he is a social and imbibing creature; but when the vacation comes and
he returns to a home to which most of the allurements which an English
boy would value are wanting, he applies himself to his books. I give
the statement as I heard it.

One of the pleasantest buildings in Leyden is the Meermansburg--a
spreading almshouse in the Oude Vest, surrounding a square garden
with a massive pump in the midst. A few pictures are shown in the
Governors' room over the entrance, but greater interest attaches
to the little domiciles for the pensioners of the Meerman trust. A
friendly concierge with a wooden leg showed us one of these compact
houses--a sitting-room with a bed-cupboard in one wall, and below it
a little larder, like the cabin of a ship. At the back a tiny range,
and above, a garret. One could be very comfortable in such quarters.

Leyden has other _hofjes_, as these homes of rest are called, into
one of which, gay with geraniums, I peeped--a little court of clean
cottages seen through the doorway like a Peter de Hooch.

I did not, I fear, do my duty by Leyden's many museums. The s