e we are to have bells, let us have
bells; not measured out, calculated, expensive, and prudent bells,
but careless bells, self-answering multitudinous bells; bells without
fear, bells excessive and bells innumerable; bells worthy of the
ecstacies that are best thrown out and published in the clashing of
bells. For bells are single, like real pleasures, and we will combine
such a great number that they may be like the happy and complex life
of a man. In a word, let us be noble and scatter our bells and reap
a harvest till our town is famous in its bells,' So now all the spire
is more than clothed with them; they are more than stuff or ornament:
they are an outer and yet sensitive armour, all of bells.

"Nor is the wealth of these bells in their number only, but also in
their use--for they are not reserved in any way, out ring tunes and
add harmonies at every half and a quarter and at all the hours both
by night and by day. Nor must you imagine that there is any obsession
of noise through this; they are far too high and melodious, and (what
is more) too thoroughly a part of all the spirit of Delft to be more
than a perpetual and half-forgotten impression of continual music;
they render its air sacred and fill it with something so akin to
an uplifted silence as to leave one--when one has passed from their
influence--asking what balm that was which soothed all the harshness
of sound about one."

Chapter V

The Hague

Dutch precision--Shaping hands--Nature under control--Willow
_v_. Neptune--The lost star--S'Gravenhage--The
Mauritshuis--Rembrandt--The "School of Anatomy"--Jan
Vermeer of Delft--The frontispiece--Other pictures--The
Municipal Museum--Baron Steengracht's collection--The Mesdag
treasures--French romantics at The Hague--The Binnenhof--John
van Olden Barneveldt--Man's cruelty to man--The churches--The
fish market and first taste of Scheveningen--A crowded
street--Holland's reading--The Bosch--The club--The House
in the Wood--Mr. "Secretary" Prior--Old marvels--Howell the
receptive and Coryate the credulous.

Although often akin to the English, the Dutch character differs from it
very noticeably in the matter of precision. The Englishman has little
precision; the Dutchman has too much. He bends everything to it. He has
at its dictates divided his whole country into parellelograms. Even the
rushes in his swamps are governed by the same law. The carelessness
of