By leaving Groningen very early in the morning I gained another proof of the impossibility of rising before the Dutch.  In England one can easily be the first down in any hotel—­save for a sleepy boots or waiter.  Not so in Holland.  It was so early that I am able to say nothing of the country between Groningen and Meppel, the capital of the peat trade, save that it was peaty:  heather and fir trees, shallow lakes and men cutting peat, as far as eye could reach on either side.

Here in the peat country I might quote a very pretty Dutch proverb:  “There is no fuel more entertaining than wet wood and frozen peat:  the wood sings and the peat listens”.  The Dutch have no lack of folk lore, but the casual visitor has not the opportunity of collecting very much.  When there is too much salt in the dish they say that the cook is in love.  When a three-cornered piece of peat is observed in the fire, a visitor is coming.  When bread has large holes in it, the baker is said to have pursued his wife through the loaf.  When a wedding morning is rainy, it is because the bride has forgotten to feed the cat.

I tarried awhile at Zwolle on the Yssel (a branch of the Rhine), because at Zwolle was born in 1617 Gerard Terburg, one of the greatest of Dutch painters, of whom I have spoken in the chapter on Amsterdam’s pictures.  Of his life we know very little; but he travelled to Spain (where he was knighted and where he learned not a little of use in his art), and also certainly to France, and possibly to England.  At Haarlem, where he lived for a while, he worked in Frans Hals’ studio, and then he settled down at Deventer, a few miles south of Zwolle, married, and became in time Burgomaster of the town.  He died at Deventer in 1681.  Zwolle has none of his pictures, and does not appear to value his memory.  Nor does Deventer.  How Terburg looked as Burgomaster of Deventer is seen in his portrait of himself in the Mauritshuis at The Hague.  It was not often that the great Dutch painters rose to civic eminence.  Rembrandt became a bankrupt, Frans Hals was on the rates, Jan Steen drank all his earnings.  Of all Terburg’s great contemporaries Gerard Dou seems to have had most sense of prosperity and position; but his interests were wholly in his art.

Terburg is not the only famous name at Zwolle.  It was at the monastery on the Agneteberg, three miles away, that the author of The Imitation of Christ lived for more than sixty years and wrote his deathless book.

I roamed through Zwolle’s streets for some time.  It is a bright town, with a more European air than many in Holland, agreeable drives and gardens, where (as at Groningen) were once fortifications, and a very fine old gateway called the Saxenpoort, with four towers and five spires and very pretty window shutters in white and blue.  The Groote Kerk is of unusual interest.  It is five hundred years old and famous for its very elaborate pulpit—­a little cathedral