es its cool freshness; while
the young leaves of a chestnut close to another window add to this
effect. The koster coming at last, I was shown the ancient chained
library in the chapter house, and he enlarged upon the beauties of a
metal font. Wandering out again into this city of silence I found in
the square by the church an exhibition of wax works which was to be
opened at four o'clock. Making a note to return to it at that hour,
I sought the river, where the timber is floated down from the German
forests, and lost myself among peat barges and other craft, and walked
some miles in and about Zutphen, and a little way down a trickling
stream whence the view of the city is very beautiful; and by-and-by
found myself by the church and the wax works again, in a town that
since my absence had quite filled with bustling people--four o'clock
having struck and the Princess of the Day Dream having (I suppose)
been kissed. The change was astonishing.

Wax works always make me uncomfortable, and these were no exception;
but the good folk of Zutphen found them absorbing. The murderers stood
alone, staring with that fixity which only a wax assassin can compass;
but for the most part the figures were arranged in groups with dramatic
intent. Here was a confessional; there a farewell between lovers;
here a wounded Boer meeting his death at the bayonet of an English
dastard; there a Queen Eleanor sucking poison from her husband's
arm. A series of illuminated scenes of rapine and disaster might be
studied through magnifying glasses. The presence of a wax bust of
Zola was due, I imagine, less to his illustrious career than to the
untoward circumstances of his death. The usual Sleeping Beauty heaved
her breast punctually in the centre of the tent.

In one point only did the exhibition differ from the wax works of
the French and Italian fairs--it was undeviatingly decent. There
were no jokes, and no physiological models. But the Dutch, I should
conjecture, are not morbid. They have their coarse fun, laugh,
and get back to business again. Judged by that new short-cut to
a nation's moral tone, the picture postcard, the Dutch are quite
sound. There is a shop in the high-spirited Nes Straat at Amsterdam
where a certain pictorial ebullience has play, but I saw none other
of the countless be-postcarded windows in all Holland that should
cause a serious blush on any cheek; while the Nes Straat specimens
were fundamentally sound, Rabelaisian rat