The stadhuis has other possessions interesting to anti-quaries:  valuable documents, gold and silver work, the metal and leather squirts through which boiling oil was projected at the enemies of the town; while an iron cage for criminals, similar, I imagine, to that in which Jan of Leyden was exhibited, hangs outside.

Travellers visit Kampen pre-eminently to see the stadhuis chimney-piece and oak, but the whole town is a museum.  I wish now that I had arranged to be longer there; but unaware of Kampen’s charms I allowed but a short time both for Zwolle and itself.  On my next visit to Holland Kampen shall be my headquarters for some days.  Amid the restfulness of mediaevalism, the friendliness of the fishing folk and the breezes of the Zuyder Zee, one should do well.  A boat from Amsterdam to Kampen sails every morning.

Despite its Judgment Hall and its other merits Kampen is the Dutch Gotham.  Any foolishly naive speech or action is attributed to Kampen’s wise men.  In one story the fathers of the town place the municipal sundial under cover to protect it from the rays of the sun.  In another they meet together to deliberate on the failure of the water pipes and fire engines during a fire, and pass a rule that “on the evening preceding a fire” all hydrants and engines must be overhauled.  M. Havard gives also the following instance of Kampen sagacity.  A public functionary was explaining the financial state of the town.  He asserted that one of the principal profits arose from the tolls exacted on the entrance of goods into the town.  “Each gate,” said the ingenious advocate, “has brought in ten million florins this year; that is to say, with seven gates we have gained seventy million florins.  This is a most important fact.  I therefore propose that the council double the number of gates, and in this way we shall in future considerably augment our funds.”  The Irishman who, when asked to buy a stove that would save half his fuel, replied that he would have two and save it all, was of the same school of logic.

From Kampen the island of Urk may be visited:  but I have not been there.  In 1787, I have read somewhere, the inhabitants of Urk decided to form a club in which to practise military exercises and the use of arms.  When the club was formed it had but one member.  Hence a Dutch saying—­“It is the Urk club”.

Nor did I stay at Deventer, but hastened on to Zutphen with my thoughts straying all the time to the grey walls of Penshurst castle in Kent and its long galleries filled with memories of Sir Philip Sidney—­the gentle knight who was a boy there, and who died at Arnheim of a wound which he received in the siege of Zutphen three and a quarter centuries ago.