of the peddlers.  A cart goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues.  Roses, chrysanthemums, dahlias, daisies, tufts of unfamiliar species, leaves that are as transparent lace, blushing wild roses, and what not.  Ivy is used for practical purposes.  On the steam-yacht Carsjens at Leyden a wind screen is composed of ivy; you feel enclosed in a floating garden.  Along the Vivjer berg, fronting the house of Baron Steengracht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone.  It is full of ivy growing low.  Dutch landscape gardeners are fertile in invention.  They break the flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingenious surprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, elm-trees pared away to imitate the processional poplars of Belgium and France, sudden little leafy lanes—­what quips and quirks we have come across a few miles away from the town!  To see Haarlem and its environs in June when the bulb farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful spectacle.  In the fall of the year you are perforce content to read the names of the various farms as the train passes.  The many-coloured vegetable carts remind you that Snyders and Van Steen painted here.

The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a noble pile with a tall tower.  One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) by Christian Mueller; it was until a few years ago the largest in the world.  Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousand pipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilful organist produce adequate musical results.  We had the pleasure of hearing the town organist play Bach for an hour.  He began with a few Bach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by the A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue.  The general diapasonic quality is noble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassy squealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, so mellow is its thunder.  Modern organs do not thus sound.  Is the secret of the organ tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles and the blue of the old Delft china?  There are no fancy “barnyard stops,” as John Runciman has named the combinations often to be found in latter-day instruments.  You understood after hearing the Haarlem organ why Bach wrote his organ preludes and fugues.  Modern music, with its orchestral registration, its swiftness and staccato, would be a sacrilege on this key-board.

The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly excite us.  The Dutch claim him as the inventor of printing, but the Germans hang on to Gutenberg.  At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-aan-See; at Haarlem you may ride out to Zandvoort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Canal.  But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish mightily in the United States we did not feel curious enough to make the effort at either town.  Regrettable as was the burning of the old church at Katwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it out of numerous pictures painted in that