nothing. One good story at any rate may be recalled
there. When Radbod, King of the Frisians, was driven out of Western
Frisia in 689 by Pepin of Heristal, Duke and Prince of the Franks
(father of Charles Martel and great grandfather of Charlemagne, who
completed the conquest of Frisia), the defeated king was considered
a convert to Christianity, and the preparations for his baptism were
made on a grand scale. Never a whole-hearted convert, Radbod, even as
one foot was in the water, had a visitation of doubt. Where, he made
bold to ask, were the noble kings his ancestors, who had not, like
himself, been offered this inestimable privilege of baptism--in heaven
or in hell? The officiating Bishop replied that they were doubtless
in hell. "Then," said Radbod, withdrawing his foot, "I think it would
be better did I join them there, rather than go alone to Paradise."

Enkhuisen, where one embarks for Friesland, is a Dead City of the
Zuyder Zee, with more signs of dissolution than most of them. Once she
had a population of sixty thousand; that number must now be divided
by ten.

"Above all things," says M. Havard, the discoverer of Dead Cities,
"avoid a promenade in this deserted town with an inhabitant familiar
with its history, otherwise you will constantly hear the refrain;
'Here was formerly the richest quarter of commerce; there, where
the houses are falling into total ruin, was the quarter of our
aristocracy,' But more painful still, when we have arrived at what
appears the very end of the town, the very last house, we see at a
distance a gate of the city. A hundred years ago the houses joined
this gate. It took us a walk of twenty minutes across the meadows
to arrive at this deserted spot." I did not explore the town, and
therefore I cannot speak with any authority of its possessions;
but I saw enough to realise what a past it must have had.

At Enkhuisen was born Paul Potter, who painted the famous picture
of the bull in the Mauritshuis at The Hague. The year 1625 saw his
birth; and it was only twenty-nine years later that he died. While
admiring Potter's technical powers, I can imagine few nervous trials
more exacting than having to live with his bull intimately in one's
room. This only serves to show how temperamental a matter is art
criticism, for on each occasion that I have been to the Mauritshuis the
bull has had a ring of mute or throbbing worshippers, while Vermeer's
"View of Delft" was without a devotee. I