The Naarden of to-day sprang from the ruins.  Mendoza’s comment upon the siege ran thus:  “The sack of Naarden was a chastisement which must be believed to have taken place by express permission of a Divine Providence; a punishment for having been the first of the Holland towns in which heresy built its nest, whence it has taken flight to all the neighbouring cities”.  None the less, “the hearts of the Hollanders,” says Motley, “were rather steeled to resistance than awed into submission by the fate of Naarden”; as Don Frederic found when he passed on to besiege Haarlem and later Alkmaar.

To Muiderburg, between Naarden and Muiden, I have not been, and therefore with the more readiness quote my indispensable author:—­

In summer is Muiderberg by its situation at the Zuiderzee a favourite little spot and very recommendable for nervous people.  The number of those who sought cure and found it here is enormous.  It is the vacation-place by excellence.  There is a church with square tower and organ.  About the tower, the spire of which is failing, various opinions go round how this occured, by war, by shooting or storm.

The beautiful beech-grove in the center of the village, where a lot of forest-giants are rising in the sky in severe rows, is a favorite place, in the middle of which is a hill with fine pond.

A couple of years ago Geertruida Carelsen wrote in her Berlin letters that Muiderberg perhaps is the only bathing-place where sea and wood are united.  There are three well-known graveyards.

Of Muiden’s very picturesque moated castle—­the ideal castle of a romance—­Peter Cornellissen Hooft, the poet and historian, was once custodian.  It was built in the thirteenth century and restored by Florence V., who was subsequently incarcerated there.  As the Noord-Holland guide-book sardonically remarks, “He will never have thought that he built his own prison by it”.

Chapter XIII

Around Amsterdam:  North

To Marken—­An opera-bouffe island—­Cultivated and profitable simplicity—­Broek-in-Waterland—­Cow-damp—­The two doors—­Gingerbread and love—­Dead cities—­Monnickendam—­The overturned camera—­Dutch phlegm—­Brabant the quarrelsome—­Edam—­Holland’s great churches—­Edam’s roll of honour—­A beard of note—­A Dutch Daniel Lambert—­A virgin colossus—­A ship-owner indeed—­The mermaid—­Volendam—­Taciturnity and tobacco—­Purmerend—­The land of windmills—­Zaandam—­Green paint at its highest power—­A riverside inn—­Peter the Great.

An excursion which every one will say is indispensable takes one to Marken (pronounced Marriker); but I have my doubts.  The island may be reached from Amsterdam either by boat, going by way of canal and returning by sea, or one may take the steam-tram to Monnickendam or Edam, and then fall into the hands of a Marken mariner.  To escape his invitations to sail thither is a piece of good fortune that few visitors succeed in achieving.