top only, and so led about the town, as
a penance". I did not see this; but the punishment was not peculiar
to Delft. At Nymwegen these wooden petticoats were famous too.

Nor did I visit the porcelain factory, having very little interest in
its modern products. But the old Delft ware no one can admire more than
I do. A history of Delft written by Dirk van Bleyswijck and published
in 1667, tells us that the rise of the porcelain industry followed the
decline of brewing. The author gives with tears a list of scores of
breweries that ceased to exist between 1600 and 1640. All had signs,
among them being:--

The Popinjay.
The Great Bell.
The White Lily.
The Three Herrings.
The Double Battle-axe.
The Three Acorns.
The Black Unicorn.
The Three Lilies.
The Curry-Comb.
The Three Hammers.
The Double Halberd.

I would rather have explored any of those breweries than the modern
Delft factory.

Ireland, by the way, mentions a whimsical sign-board which he saw
somewhere in Holland, but which I regret to say I did not find. "It
was a tree bearing fruit, and the branches filled with little, naked
urchins, seemingly just ripened into life, and crying for succour:
beneath, a woman holds up her apron, looking wistfully at the children,
as if intreating them to jump into her lap. On inquiry, I found it to
be the house of a sworn midwife, with this Dutch inscription prefixed
to her name:--

'Vang my, ik zal zoet zyn,'

that is, 'Catch me, I'll be a sweet boy'. This new mode of procreation,
so truly whimsical, pleased me," Ireland adds, "not a little."

Let me close this chapter by quoting from an essay by my friend,
Mr. Belloc, a lyrical description of the Old Church's wonderful wealth
of bells: "Thirdly, the very structure of the thing is bells. Here
the bells are more even than the soul of a Christian spire; they are
its body, too, its whole self. An army of them fills up all the space
between the delicate supports and framework of the upper parts. For
I know not how many feet, in order, diminishing in actual size and
in the perspective also of that triumphant elevation, stand ranks
on ranks of bells from the solemn to the wild, from the large to
the small, a hundred, or two hundred or a thousand. There is here
the prodigality of Brabant and Hainaut and the Batavian blood,
a generosity and a productivity in bells without stint, the man
who designed it saying: 'Sinc