e celestial law are unfolded by a very
tired young woman, whose attitude to the solar system is probably
similar to that of Miss Jellyby to Africa. After her lecture one
stumbles upstairs to see the clock-work which controls the spheres,
and is then free once more.

Franeker is proud also of her tombstones in the great church, but
it is, I fancy, Eisa Eisinga whom she most admires. She was once
the seat of an honourable University, which Napoleon suppressed in
1811. Her learning gone, she remains a very pleasant and clean little
town. By some happy arrangement all the painting seems to be done at
once--so different from London, where a fresh facade only serves to
emphasise a dingy one. But although the quality of the paint can be
commended, the painters of Franeker are undoubtedly allowed too much
liberty. They should not have been permitted to spread their colour
on the statues of the stadhuis.

The principal street has an avenue of elm trees down its midst,
in the place where a canal would be expected; but canals traverse
the town too. Upon the deck of a peat barge I watched a small grave
child taking steady and unsmiling exercise on a rocking horse.

I did not go to Dokkum, which lies at the extreme north of
Friesland. Mr. Doughty, the author of an interesting book of Dutch
travel, called _Friesland Meres_--he was the first that ever burst
into these silent canals in a Norfolk wherry--gives Dokkum a very
bad character, and so do other travellers. It seems indeed always to
have been an unruly and inhospitable town. As long ago as 853 it was
resisting the entry of strangers. The strangers were Saint Boniface
and his companion, whom Dokkum straightway massacred. King Pepin
was furious and sent an army on a punitive mission; while Heaven
supplemented Pepin's efforts by permanently stigmatising the people
of the town, all the men thenceforward being marked by a white tuft
of hair and all the women by a bald patch.

At Leeuwarden is a patriotic society known as the "Vereenigung tot
bevordering van vreemdelingenverkeer," whose ambition, as their
title suggests, is to draw strangers to the town; and as part of
their campaign they have issued a little guide to Leeuwarden and its
environs, in English. It is an excellent book. The preface begins
thus:--

The travelling-season, which causes thousands of people to leave
their homes and hearths, has come round again. Throughout Europe silk
strings are being prepared to catc