To return to Arnheim:  of the Groote Kerk I remember only the very delicate colouring of the ceiling, and the monument of Charles van Egmont, Duke of Guelders.  I had grown tired of architecture:  it seemed goodlier to watch the shipping on the river, which at Arnheim may be called the Rhine without hesitation.  All the traffic to Cologne must pass the town.  Hitherto one had had qualms about the use of the word, having seen the Rhine under various aliases in so many places.  The Maas at Rotterdam is a mouth of the Rhine; but before it can become the Rhine proper it becomes the Lek, What is called the true mouth of the Rhine is at Katwyk.  At Dordrecht again is another of the Rhine’s mouths, the Waal, which runs into the old Maas and then into the sea.  The Yssel, still another mouth of the Rhine, which I saw at Kampen on its way into the Zuyder Zee, breaks away from the parent river just below Arnheim.  As a matter of fact all Holland is on the Rhine, but the word must be used with care.

If one would study Dutch romantic scenery I think Nymwegen on the whole a better town to stay in than Arnheim.  It is simpler in itself, richer in historic associations, and the country in the immediate east is very well worth exploring—­hill and valley and pine woods, with quaint villages here and there; and, for the comfortable, a favourite hotel at Berg en Daal from which great stretches of the Rhine may be seen.

To see Nymwegen itself to greater advantage, with its massed houses and towers presenting a solid front, one must go over the iron bridge to Lent and then look back across the river.  At all times the old town wears from this point of view an interesting and romantic air, but never so much as at evening.

Some versions of “Lohengrin” set the story at Nymwegen; but the Lohengrin monument is at Kleef, a few miles above the confluence of the Rhine and the Waal, the river on which Nymwegen stands.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was at Nymwegen in 1716, drew an odd comparison between that town and the English town of Nottingham.  If Edinburgh is the modern Athens there is no reason why Nottingham should not be the English Nymwegen.  Lady Mary writes to her friend Sarah Chiswell:  “If you were with me in this town, you would be ready to expect to receive visits from your Nottingham friends.  No two places were ever more resembling; one has but to give the Maese the name of the Trent, and there is no distinguishing the prospects—­the houses, like those of Nottingham, built one above another, and are intermixed in the same manner with trees and gardens.  The tower they call Julius Caesar’s has the same situation with Nottingham Castle; and I cannot help fancying I see from it the Trent-field, Adboulton, &c., places so well known to us.  ’Tis true, the fortifications make a considerable difference....”