The Dutch Protestants, as I remarked at Utrecht, have shown singular efficiency in denuding religion of its external graces and charm.

There is no church so beautiful but they would reduce it to bleak and arid cheerlessness.

Place even the cathedral of Chartres in a Dutch market-place, and it would be a whitewashed desert in a week, while little shops and houses would be built against its sacred walls.

There is hardly a great church in Holland but has some secular domicile clinging like a barnacle to its sides.
The attitude of the Dutch to their churches is in fact very much that of Quakers to their meeting-houses--even to the retention of hats.

But whereas it is reasonable for a Quaker, having made for himself as plain a rectangular building as he can, to attach no sanctity to it, there is an incongruity when the same attitude is maintained amid beautiful Gothic arches.