CHAPTER X.
Amsterdam The Venice of the North--The beauty of gravity--No place for George Dyer--The Keizersgracht--Kalverstraat and Warmoes Straat--The Ghetto--Pile-driving--Erasmus's sarcasm--The new Bourse--Learning the city--Tramway perplexities--The unnecessary guide--The Royal Palace--The New Church--Stained glass--The Old Church--The five carpets--Wedding customs--Dutch wives to-day and in the past--The Begijnenhof--The new religion and the old--The Burgerweesmeisjes--The Eight Orange Blossoms--Dutch music halls--A Dutch Hamlet--The fish market--Rembrandt's grave--A nation of shopkeepers--_Max Havelaar_--Mr.Drystubble's device--Lothario and Betsy--The English in Holland and the Dutch in England--Athleticism--A people on skates--The chaperon's perplexity--Love on the level.
Amsterdam is notable for two possessions above others: its old canals and its old pictures.

Truly has it been called the Venice of the North; but very different is its sombre quietude from the sunny Italian city among the waters.

There is a beauty of gaiety and a beauty of gravity; and Amsterdam in its older parts--on the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht--has the beauty of gravity.

In Venice the canal is of course also the street: gondolas and barcas are continually gliding hither and thither; but in the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht the water is little used.

One day, however, I watched a costermonger steering a boat-load of flowers under a bridge, and no words of mine can describe the loveliness of their reflection.