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620 which has long been advertising its cheeses over great part of Europe. You may see its produce piled like cannon-shot at the doors of provision-dealers from the Shetlands to Sicily, and from the Irish Channel to the Baltic. "Edam" may not have the delicate creaminess of Stilton or Canrohert, or the full-flavoured richness of the Roquefort, that weds itself so naturally with the bouquet of Burgundy, when served up on vine-leaves; but it has a charm of its own coming into a Dutch picture, with the warm scarlet orange of its rind, and the bright golden-yellow of its interior; and as it can be indulged in to any extent by robust digestions, it has all honour paid it in its native country, where vigorous appetites are the rule. Mrs. Micawber remarked that the heel of a Dutch cheese was not adapted to the wants of an infant family; but we suspect if Mrs. Micawber had known more of Holland, she would have found "Edam" a common article of consumption amongst the Dutch children of tender years. At all events, adults devour it in season and out of season. One of your earliest impressions of Holland is the singularity of seeing great slices of cheese served up at breakfast as a matter of course. Considering that cheese-making has always been one of the staple industries of this part of the province of North Holland, and that the land, to say the least of it, supports as many animals as ever it did, it seems almost unaccountable that the population of Edam should have dwindled, in the course of a couple of centuries, to a fifth of its former twenty-five thousand.

It is easier to explain the decadence of Hoorn. Hoorn, like Edam, still lives by its cheese, and does even a larger business in that article, as M. Havard informs us. There is a market held every Thursday, when loaded waggons roll in under the ancient gateways and over the creaking drawbridges; when the farmers drive up the high street in primitive vehicles, covered with quaint carvings and flaunting in paint; and when each consignment of the dairies is duly carried to the town-scales and weighed by ofiicials in the medieval garb of coats of white and caps of colour. But whereas Edam has to be approached by canals, Hoorn lies actually on the sea, and had once a large commerce. It is true that nowadays its harbour is like a patent rat-trap, and it is much more easy to get in than to get out. The outer sluices can only be opened when the water is at a certain level, and the sluices may be sealed hermetically in the course of prolonged bad weather. But once its double harbour, such as it was, used to be filled with tiers of shipping; its hardy seamen were brimful of dash and patriotism, and took as kindly to fighting as to peaceful trade. It sent a formidable contingent to the flying squadrons with which De Ruyter used to sweep the Northern Sea in the scandalous days of the degenerate Stuarts. When he moored his fleet in the Medway, and the sound of his cannonade was heard in the city of London, many of his vessels hailed from Hoorn. One of its gates displays a memorial of these glorious days in the shape of an English coat of arms, in staring colours that are carefully renewed. The legend runs that a couple of negroes from Hoorn, on board one of the admiral's ships, carried off the original of the escutcheon from a vessel lying in the Thames. And the Hoorn people have another trophy to show, in remembrance of another honourable exploit. For they played so conspicuous a part on the day of the great sea-fight, when De Bossu's Spanish armada was shattered in the Zuyder Zee, that they had assigned to them in their share of the spoil the drinking-cup of the captured admiral. Enkhuizen treasures his sword, and Monnikendam his collar of the Golden Fleece. Nor was Hoorn less distinguished in the way of maritime discovery. Tasman sailed from there to discover New Zealand and Tasmania; so did Jan Pietersz Koen, who laid the foundation of his country's colonial prosperity in the South Seas; and Schouter, who was the first to double Tierra del Fuego, the southern extremity of the New World, and who gave the name of his native town to the terrible cape of clouds and storms. Though no longer rich or commercially prosperous, M. Havard found Hoorn still tolerably well-to-do, and, considering the circumstances of the climate, preserving a wonderful air of gaiety. To say nothing of its picturesque ancient gateways, which are somewhat melancholy reminders of departed greatness, the old houses get themselves up as freshly as ever. With scarcely an exception, they have all been maisons de luxe, with pointed roofs and staircase gables, with salient reliefs of grey granite, throwing out the warm colours of their brick façades, and richly decorated with carvings in stone as well as in wood. Hoorn, in short, although it stands among rain and fogs, is apparently one of the most coquettish little towns in the world. As M. Havard observes, it seems 