ect this temperament. They are clean and
strong and bare--no huddling or niggling architecture. Everything also
is bright, the effect largely of paint, but there must be something
very antiseptic in this Frisian atmosphere.

The young women of Leeuwarden--the fair Frisians--are tall and strong
and fresh looking; not exactly beautiful but very pleasant. "There
go good wives and good mothers," one says. Their Amazonian air is
accentuated by the casque of gold or silver which fits tightly over
their heads and gleams through its lace covering: perhaps the most
curious head-dress in this country of elaborate head-dresses, and never
so curious as when, on Sundays, an ordinary black bonnet, bristling
with feathers and jet, is mounted on the top of it. That, however,
is a refinement practised only by the middle-aged and elderly women:
the young women wear either the casque or a hat, never both. If one
climbs the Oldehof and looks down on the city on a sunny day--as I
did--the glint of a metal casque continually catches the eye. These
head-dresses are of some value, and are handed on from mother to
daughter for generations. No Dutch woman is ever too poor to lay by
a little jewellery; and many a domestic servant carries, I am told,
twenty pounds worth of goldsmith's work upon her.

Once Leeuwarden was famous for its goldsmiths and silversmiths,
but the interest in precious metal work is not what it was. Many of
the little silver ornaments--the windmills, and houses, and wagons,
and boats--which once decorated Dutch sitting-rooms as a matter of
course, and are now prized by collectors, were made in Leeuwarden.

The city's architectural jewel is the Chancellerie, a very ornate
but quite successful building dating from the sixteenth century:
first the residence of the Chancellors, recently a prison, and now
the Record Office of Friesland. Not until the Middelburg stadhuis
shall we see anything more cheerfully gay and decorative. The little
Weigh House is in its own way very charming. But for gravity one must
go to the Oldehof, a sombre tower on the ramparts of the city. Once
the sea washed its very walls.

To the ordinary traveller the most interesting things in the Leeuwarden
museum, which is opposite the Chancellerie, are the Hindeloopen rooms
which I have described in the last chapter; but to the antiquary it
offers great entertainment. Among ancient relics which the spade
has revealed are some very early Frisian tobacco pip