es and gardens. The tower they
call Julius Caesar's has the same situation with Nottingham Castle;
and I cannot help fancying I see from it the Trent-field, Adboulton,
&c., places so well known to us. 'Tis true, the fortifications make
a considerable difference...."

Nymwegen reminded me of nothing but itself. It is in reality two towns:
a spacious residential town near the station, with green squares,
and statues, and modern houses (one of them so modern as to be
employing a vacuum cleaner, which throbbed and panted in the garden
as I passed); and the old mediaeval Nymwegen, gathered about one of
the most charming market places in all Holland--a scene for comic
opera. The Dutch way of chequering the shutters in blue and yellow
(as at Middelburg) or in red and black, or red and white, is here
practised to perfection. The very beautiful weigh-house has red and
black shutters; the gateway which leads to the church has them too.

Never have I seen a church so hemmed in by surrounding buildings. The
little houses beset it as the pigmies beset Antaeus. After some
difficulty I found my way in, and wandered for a while among its white
immensities. It is practically a church within a church, the region
of services being isolated in the midst, in the unlovely Dutch way,
within hideous wooden walls. It is very well worth while to climb the
tower and see the great waterways of this country beneath you. The
prospect is mingled wood and polder: to the east and south-east,
shaggy hills; to the west, the moors of Brabant; to the north,
Arnheim's dark heights.

Nymwegen has many lions, chief of which perhaps is the Valkhof,
in the grounds above the river--the remains of a palace of the
Carlovingians. It is of immense age, being at once the oldest building
in Holland and the richest in historic memories. For here lived
Charlemagne and Charles the Bald, Charles the Bold and Maximilian
of Austria. The palace might still be standing were it not for the
destructiveness of the French at the end of the eighteenth century. A
picture by Jan van Goyen in the stadhuis gives an idea of the Valkhof
in his day, before vandalism had set in.

As some evidence of the town's pride in her association with these
great names the curfew, which is tolled every evening at eight o'clock,
but which I did not hear, is called Charlemagne's Prayer. The facade
of the stadhuis is further evidence, for it carries the statues of
some of the ancient monarchs who m