Whatever Coster’s claim to priority may be, he certainly was a printer, and it is only fitting that Haarlem should possess so fine a library of early books and MSS. as it does.

Another monument to Coster is to be seen in the Hout, a wood of which Haarlem is very proud.  It has a fine avenue called the Spanjaards Laan, and is a very pleasant shady place in summer, hardly inferior to the Bosch at The Hague.  “The delightful walks of the Hout,” says the author of Through Noord-Holland, “and the caressing song of the nightingale and other birds, do not only invite the Haarlemmers to it, but the citizens of the neighbouring towns as well.”

On the border of the wood is a pavilion which holds the collections of Colonial curiosities.  In front of the pavilion (I quote again from Through Noord-Holland, which is invaluable), “stands a casting of Laskson and his sons to a knot, which has been manufactured in the last centuries before Christ.  The original has been digged up at Rome in 1500.”  Shade of Lessing!

The cannon-ball embedded in the wall of the church, which the sacristan shows with so much interest, recalls Haarlem’s great siege in 1572—­a siege notable in the history of warfare for the courage and endurance of the townspeople against terrible odds.  The story is worth telling in full, but I have not space and Motley is very accessible.  But I sketch, with his assistance, its salient features.

The attack began in mid-winter, when Haarlem Mere, a great lake in the east which has since been drained and poldered, was frozen over.  For some time a dense fog covered it, enabling loads of provisions and arms to be safely conveyed into the city.

Don Frederic, the son of the Duke of Alva, who commanded the Spanish, began with a success that augured well, a force of 4,000 men which marched from Leyden under De la Marck being completely routed.  Among the captives taken by the Spaniards, says Motley, was “a gallant officer, Baptist Van Trier, for whom De la Marck in vain offered two thousand crowns and nineteen Spanish prisoners.  The proposition was refused with contempt.  Van Trier was hanged upon the gallows by one leg until he was dead, in return for which barbarity the nineteen Spaniards were immediately gibbeted by De la Marck.  With this interchange of cruelties the siege may be said to have opened.

“Don Frederic had stationed himself in a position opposite to the gate of the Cross, which was not very strong, but fortified by a ravelin.  Intending to make a very short siege of it, he established his batteries immediately, and on the 18th, 19th, and 20th December directed a furious cannonade against the Cross-gate, the St. John’s gate, and the curtain between the two.  Six hundred and eighty shots were discharged on the first, and nearly as many on each of the two succeeding days.  The walls were much shattered, but men, women, and children worked night and day within the city, repairing the breaches