n, as Alessandro Manzoni says in his
ever-admirable way, it seems as though a mysterious power enters the
soul, which soothes, adorns, and invigorates all its inclinations and
thoughts. Here a girl very rarely marries before her twentieth year. I
need not speak of the children of the Deccan, who, it is said, are
married at eight years of age, but in Holland the Italian and Spanish
girls, who marry at fourteen or fifteen, are regarded as unaccountable
persons. There, girls of fifteen years are going to school with their
hair down their backs, and nobody thinks of looking at them. I heard a
young man of the Hague spoken of with horror by his friends because he
was enamoured of a maiden of this age, for to their minds she was
considered as an infant.

Another thing one notices instantly in every Dutch city, excepting
Amsterdam, is the absence of that lower stratum of society known as
the demi-monde. There is nothing in dress or manner to indicate the
existence of such a class. "Beware," said some freethinking Dutchmen
to me; "you are in a Protestant country, and there is a great deal of
hypocrisy." This may be true, but the sore that can be hidden cannot
be very large. Equivocal society does not exist among the Hollanders;
there is no shadow of it in their life nor any hint of it in their
literature; the very language rebels against translating any of those
numberless expressions which constitute the dubious, flashy, easy
speech of that class of society in the countries where it is found. On
the other hand, neither fathers nor mothers close their eyes to the
conduct of their unmarried sons, even if they be grown men; family
discipline makes no exception of long beards; and this strict
discipline is aided by their phlegmatic nature, their habits of
economy, and their respect for public opinion.

It would be a presumption more ridiculous than impertinent to speak of
the character and life of Dutch women with an air of experience, when
I have been only a few months in Holland; so I must content myself
with letting my Dutch friends speak for themselves.

Many writers have treated Dutch women discourteously. One calls them
apathetic housekeepers; another, who shall be nameless, carried
impertinence so far as to say that, like the men, they are in the
habit of choosing their lovers from among the servant class, and that
their aspirations are necessarily low. But these are judgments
dictated by the rage of some rejected suitor