in itself—­and an organ.  Zwolle also has an ancient church which retains its original religion—­the church of Notre Dame, with a crucifix curiously protected by iron bars.  I looked into the stadhuis to see a Gothic council room; and smoked meditatively among the stalls of a little flower market, wondering why some of the costumes of Holland are so charming and others so unpleasing.  A few dear old women in lace caps were present, but there were also younger women who had made their pretty heads ugly with their decorations.

At Zwolle M. Havard was disappointed to find no wax figure of the famous wild girl found in the Cranenburg Forest in 1718.  She roamed its recesses almost naked for some time, eluding all capture, but was at last taken with nets and conveyed to Zwolle.  As she could not be understood, an account of her was circulated widely, and at length a woman in Antwerp who had lost a daughter in 1702 heard of her, and on reaching Zwolle immediately recognised her as her child.  The magistrates, accepting the story, handed the girl to her affectionate parent, who at once set about exhibiting her throughout the country at a great profit.  The story illustrates either the credulity of magistrates or the practical character of some varieties of maternal love.

Kampen, nearer the mouth of the Yssel, close to Zwolle, is exceedingly well worth visiting.  The two towns are very different:  Zwolle is patrician, Kampen plebeian; Zwolle suggests wealth and light-heartedness; at Kampen there is a large fishing population and no one seems to be wealthy.  Indeed, being without municipal rates, it is, I am told, a refuge of the needy.  Any old town that is on a river, and that river a mouth of the Rhine, is good enough for me; but when it is also a treasure house of mediaeval architecture one’s cup is full.  And Kampen has many treasures:  beautiful fourteenth-century gateways, narrow quaint streets, a cheerful isolated campanile, a fine church, and the greater portion of an odd but wholly delightful stadhuis in red brick and white stone, with a gay little crooked bell-tower and statues of great men and great qualities on its facade.

For one possession alone, among many, the stadhuis must be visited—­its halls of justice, veritable paradises of old oak, with a very wonderful fireplace.  The halls are really one, divided by a screen; in one half, the council room, sat the judges, in the other the advocates, and, I suppose, the public.  The advocates addressed the screen, on the other side of which sat Fate, in the persons of the municipal fathers, enthroned in oak seats of unsurpassed gravity and dignity, amid all the sombre insignia of their office.  The chimney-piece is an imposing monument of abstract Justice—­no more elaborate one can exist.  Solomon is there, directing the distribution of the baby; Faith and Truth, Law, Religion and Charity are there also.  Never can a tribunal have had a more appropriate setting than at Kampen.  The Rennes judiciaries should have sat there, to lend further ironical point to their decision.