Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/385

 of the church of Marken; then the pretty villages perched upon slight eminences; lastly, the entire island, which looks like an immense green raft, adrift upon a grey sea. The houses become more distinct, their deep colour stands out strongly against the light blue of the sky; black, red, and green are the prevailing tones, and they lend strength, indeed almost violence, to the picture. What delight to the artist is this marvellous colouring of nature! In beholding such spectacles, we readily understand how it is that Holland has produced such great colourists.

The island of Marken, where the men are never at home except on Sundays, where nobody is rich and nobody is poor, where everybody is healthy and all the children are handsome, where people habitually live to eighty years, where no foreign admixture of blood has ever taken place, and which has not for many years been invaded from the mainland except by the doctor, the preacher, and the schoolmaster, must be a strange place to see. The description of it, and indeed that of the other dead cities, remind the reader constantly of Mr. Morris's lines: —

There is nothing but the wonderful contrasts and contradictions which time has worked out to remind the traveller of the Dutch and of Mr. Motley. The study of those picturesque histories of his would be impressive here, where there is no trace of the historic past in the life of the people, except it be found in the unexpected stores of ancient objects of art, carefully kept indeed, but hardly comprehended, — Japanese porcelain and Delft vases, richly embroidered house-linen, of great age, and chests and wardrobes rich with the priceless carving of the artists of the grand old days. The present is very quaint and peaceful, secluded and unknown. Of the Markmaars, who even at Amsterdam are held to be a kind of savages, M. Havard gives an attractive account. He dwells particularly upon the respective costumes of the men and women, which are precisely similar to those worn three centuries ago, and are specially remarkable for their brilliant colouring. The people have simple, cordial manners, not lacking dignity. Here is a characteristic anecdote: —


 * One day Van Heemskerck was sketching the little church of Marken and the adjacent houses. An old man drew near, and gazed long upon my friend's work. At length he said, "You are painting my house: I was born there, and my father before me, there also my children came into the world, and a little while ago my grandson. I think the house is beautiful, because it is full of remembrances, but I never should have thought that another person would think it beautiful and worthy of being painted. You do it honour."

The somnolence of Monnikendam equals its picturesqueness. The town is an assemblage of great trees and small houses, of red and green; the pavement is of yellow bricks, the façades, centuries old, look as if the sculptor had desisted from his task but yesterday. Only the once splendid but now deserted church is older than the year 1515, when the ancient city was destroyed by fire; its vacant vastness would be a world too wide for the dwellers in the present city, where the arrival of the two strangers was a great event. The streets are deserted and the canals devoid of traffic. "The trees and the houses, alike bending forward, are reflected in the slumbering water, and seem to share its slumber. The demeanour of the inhabitants is marked by a majestic calm. Young and old, men and women, all seem half asleep, as though they were economizing life by taking it slowly. Looking upon this quietude, so nearly death, it is difficult to believe that Monnikendam was one of the twenty-nine cities of Holland when the Hague was only a burgh, and that it enjoyed in that capacity privileges which were denied to the seat of the government." Of Vollendam and Edam we have similar pictures, but in both instances cheeses intrude, and lend at least some commercial vivacity to the sketch; of Hoorn, and its grand monumental Eastern Gate, and beautiful old houses, rich in carving and colour, a charming description, of its historic glories a vivid résumé, and of its actual condition some comical illustrations. Enkhuysen (Paul Potter's native place) is a spectacle of desolation, and its inhabitants forced the strangers to depart, because M. Havard was a Frenchman, and a fisherman from the town had once been imprisoned for six months at Havre for a proven offence! The once famous Medemblik is a mouldering tomb for the half-dead inhabitants, surrounded by monotonous, endless grasslands. The municipal council has recently sold the splendid wood-