From the station of Dombaas (where there is a telegraph station and a shop of old silver), we turned aside down the Romsdal, which soon became beautiful, as the road wound above a chrysoprase river, broken by many rocky islets and swirling into many waterfalls, but always equally radiant, equally transparent, till its colour is washed out by the melting snow in a ghastly narrow valley, which we called the Valley of Death.

The little inn at Aak, in Rosmdal, with a large garden stretching along the hillside, disappointed us at first, as the clouds hid the mountain tops, but morning revealed how perfectly glorious they are-pur ple pinnacles of rock or pathless fields of snow embossed upon a sky which is delicately blue above, but melts into the clearest opal. Grander, we thought, than any single peak in Switzerland is the tremendous peak of the Ramsdalhorn, and the walks in all directions are most exquisite-into deep_glades filled with columbines and the giant larkspurs, which are such a feature of Norway into tremendous mountain gorges or to Waeblungsnaes, along the banks of the lovely fyord, with its marvellously quaint forms of mountain distance. Aak is a place where a month may be spent most delightfully, as well as most comfortably and economically.

We had heard a great deal before we went to Norway about the difficulty of getting proper food, but our own experience is that we were never fed more luxuriously. Perhaps very late in the season the provisions at the country "stations" may be somewhat used up, but when we were there in July, only those who could not live without a great deal of meat could have any cause for complaint, and once a week we generally had reindeer for a treat. When we arrived in the evenings we always found an excellent meal prepared-the most delicious coffee, tea, and cream; baskets of bread, rusks, cakes and biscuits of various descriptions; fresh salmon and trout; cloudberries, bilberries, raspberries, mountain strawberries and cream; and for all this about a franc and a half is the payment required.

My companions lingered at Kristiania whilst I paid a visit, which is one of the most delightful recollections of my tour, to a native family near Moss, at the mouth of the fyord; then we came back to Denmark, travelling in the same train with the beloved Prince Imperial, who was in the height of health and happiness, and received at every station with the enthusiastic "Hochs!” which in Scandinavia supply the place of the English hurrah. ·

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE, in Good Words.

DOWN AMONG THE DUTCHMEN.

FEW peoples have ever exhibited in their national character such direct results from their local habitation as the Dutch. Settled on sandy islets in the North Sea, exposed to great dangers with the rise of every tide and the raging of every tempest, they developed, already in the earliest times, habits of industry foreign to the more favoured inhabitants of sunnier climates. Their very existence depended, and does still depend, upon artificial bulwarks erected against the en croachments of the sea. They had to contend with the elements, and to protect themselves, during many centuries against their more powerful neighbours. Thus industry and valour became the natural instinct of the Dutch, and from the practice of these qualities flowed wealth and honour to such an extent as to make that nation at one time the arbiter of peace or war in Europe. We can safely refer those who wish to know more about this to the bulky though seductive history of that competent historian, Mr. Motley.

During the past two centuries the progress made by the Dutch has been very remarkable, and this, as a rule, has not been recognised by the English. It was the fashion to laugh at the old-world habits that lingered, until recently, amongst them. Much of this feeling was caused, no doubt, by former maritime rivalry, a feeling which was fostered by poets and statesmen. Even that quaint and homely Puritan, Andrew Marvell, did not disdain to dip his pen into gall and to speak of Holland as a country that "scarce deserves the name of land, as but th' off-scouring of the British sand." Can this be the reason that at the present time only a comparatively small number of Englishmen visit Holland, or, at least, remain there no longer than a few days to recruit their strength and to fill their pocket-flasks before entering Germany?

However, I resolved to visit the country of my ancestors, if ever I had any and started in the middle of August from Queenborough to Flushing. In former times, when you wished to go to Holland, you had first to drive to St. Katharine's Wharf, try to satisfy a cabman, who never would be satisfied, by giving him double his fare, then fee a porter to carry your luggage on board, make your way amongst a crowd of very queer, heavy-looking, beetle browed, darkbearded men, arrayed in the most careless manner possible, and finally have a last tussel with the steward for a berth. But now all this is changed, and the present age may well boast of having made knowledge and travelling easy. If you wish to go to Holland you have only to drive to any station of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, take your ticket, and in less than two hours you will find yourself at Queenborough, and will be quietly put on board one of the largest steamers which cross the Northern Ocean, and that without any fuss or confusion, Your passage may be more or less stormy,

your feelings more or less disturbed but it is wise in travelling to make the best of everything At last we catch a glimpse of the Dutch coast, so the captain says, but no coast is to be seen Sea and land seem to be all one, and the low sedgy banks hardly pop out of the water, whilst the sea walls o. Flushing are barely visible, and appear to be on a level with the red tiled roofs of the houses, broken here and there by a church steeple I saw several of the natives on landing, the women with prodigiously long golden pendants which hang from a pin fixed in a cap above the eyebrows, and descend on the neck, whilst on the forehead is an ornament of diamonds, called a needle, the men with their dress and figures something like modern stage Dutchmen in England, very primitive and very quaint The railway rests on embankments raised round many islands to keep out the sea, and those on the south west coast of Walcheren are the most massive in Holland. I just caught a glimpse of the statue of the great Admiral de Ruyter, who was born here, it seemed to me to render pretty fairly the idea of a very broad built Dutchman, who was trusted by his tailor with any amount of nether garments

I caught from the train a quick view of the Town Hall of Middel burg, built by Charles the Bold whirled down Breda. where Charles II. resided when in exile, and which appears not to have grown more lively since then had to wait more than an hour at the station of Boxtel, where the lunch, though wretched, was charged for exorbi tantly; and arrived at last at the great railway junction of the Nether lands, Utrecht, where I had again to remain for more than an hour before my train started for Arnhem, the capital of Gelderland, and the place of my destination I took a rapid walk through Utrecht. and was chiefly struck by the great number of churches, which brought to my mind Marvell's lines.

"How could the Dutch but be converted, when

Th' Apostles were so many fishermen?"

The continuous number of glasses of Schiedam and bitters quaffed in the refreshment room of the station by the patiently waiting and thirsty Netherlanders reminded me that Dutchmen are rather fond of taking a drain; that they had drained the inland lake of Haarlem, which covered an area of 60,000 acres, and were even going to drain the rolling Zuiderzee. The reason travellers have to wait so long at some Dutch stations is because the railways in Netherland belong to different companies, which are all antagonistic to one another, and en deavour to produce as much discomfort to the travellers as possible. In my Dutch Bradshaw or Officieele Reisgids, as they call it, I found also the hours of departure and arrival of all the trains most accu rately given, but the prices of the different journeys and classes most carefully omitted.

I prefer to describe the higher lying parts of Holland, because they are seldom visited by strangers, are very picturesque, and, above all,

because I have a friend who lives in the neighbourhood of Arnhem, at whose house I had promised to stay His residence is very much like an English country seat in a wooded county It is surrounded by many magnificent specimens of splendid beech trees with their luxu rious dark brown foliage, by linden trees, the bright green leaves of which contrast with the darker shades of the others, and by oaks of which no finer and stouter examples are to be found even in old Eng land. The view over the Rhine from the drawing room windows of my friend's residence is simply grand A foreground of pollard willows sets off to great advantage the broad, calm, and limpid river, with its riplets and currents, flowing between pasture-lands, stretch ing as far as the eye can see, and intersected only by clumps of trees and the long arms of a few windmills, moving about frantically like the limbs of a country actor rehearsing a very tragic part Ships of every form and size glide along, vessels homeward-bound from for eign seas, steamers laden with holiday makers going to Germany, and gaily painted barges for inland traffic. Anglers are here, throw ing their lines with a patience worthy of all admiration, and staring anxiously at the bobbing floats, which even at this distance appear like so many life buoys The whole view is inexpressibly peaceful The low lying meadows bathed with sunlight; a few thatched roofs in which dyke menders and herdsmen live with their families; cattle grazing in the fields, trees of fantastic size and shape-these are the charac eristics of a landscape in which everything seems to be still and motionless. Only occasionally life is imparted to the view as a stork rises out of the meadow and flies to some distant farm-chimney or village fane where it has its nest

There happened to be this year an exhibition of national industry in Arnhem, and thousands of visitors from all parts of the country hastened thither I drove there often with my friend, along a road lined on both sides with very well built country seats and villas, sur rounded by lofty trees and fine parks and decorated in front with large numbers of those flowers for which the Dutch have been celebrated during several centuries And here let me say, once for all. that for natural beauty and wooded scenery, interspersed with small streams, the environs of the capital of Gelderland are unsurpassed, and are not at all what one imagines a view in Holland to be, but rather remind one of some of the finest landscapes in Germany, or of some of the best views in Kent or on the Wye

The exhibition in Arnhem resembles nearly all similar exhibitions. though this one is on a much smaller scale than those formerly held in the large capitals of Europe In the gardens are the usual kiosks, gaudily decorated, where one can buy everything, from very bad and damp cigars to very stale and uninviting looking buns In the dif ferent rooms of the exhibition are the steam engines hard at work, with their deafening noises, the usual pyramids of steel pens, of match boxes, of cakes, and of bobbins are also to be found there,

though I observed one pyramid of bog-turf, the ordinary fuel of the country, which I never saw before in any other show of nations. The Dutch distillers have also a most tantalising display of their various national liquors; and red and white curaçoa, double-distilled anisette, gold and silver waters, in which small leaves of metal float, and every kind of fluid which tempts thirsty souls, is shown here in bottles of all forms and sizes, and piled up in tremendous quantities. What most struck me was the variety of head-gear of the peasant women I saw in this exhibition. Some wore a kind of cap, much resembling flattened pancakes, surrounded by a frill of lace; others had large gold and silver plates on both sides of the heal; not a few showed curiously twisted ornaments sticking out from under their lace caps like metal antennæ or diminutive corkscrews. Well-to-do farmers' wives, from North Brabant, wore high-peaked embroidered caps, with large flaps falling on the shoulders, whilst market women from the neighbourhood of Rotterdam wandered about with a silver or golden band on their heads, called an “overyser," which is not seldom a family inheritance, descending from mother to daughter through several generations, and worth many pounds sterling.

There was another curiosity in the Arnhem Exhibition. His Royal Highness Ario Mangkoe Negoro, Prince of Solo, one of the semi-independent inland states of Java, had sent over his own orchestra, or gamelang, composed of fifteen performers and two dancing girls, or ronkings to play some Javanese music and to execute some Javanese gyrations during the exhibition. The musicians wore white waistcoats, blue jackets with little brass buttons, and a silk petticoat in the place of trousers; their long hair was bound up in a knot with a bandana and on the top of it was a small wideawake. The instruments were a kind of violoncello, called rebab, always played by the leader; a bonang, or wooden frame with strings, on which were placed fourteen hollow metal basins, with their concave sides downwards, and which were played with drumsticks; a similar metal basin, but much larger, called a kenong: two goodly-sized gongs; a very complicated instrument, made of hollow bamboos and hanging metal plates, named a gendes; a sort of harmonium, the gambang kajoe, made of straw, linen, and small pieces of wood, played on with little hammers; a similar instrument, the gambang kansa, but with small pieces of metal; a kind of harp lying down flat, called a tjalempoeng, and several other sorts of queer-looking metal instruments, as well as a drum played with the palms of the hands, a bamboo flute, and a diminutive kind of flageolet. The musicians sat cross-legged, and remained so during the whole of the performance.

The music begins; it sounds not unmelodious, but rather sad. All at once the measure becomes quicker and more shrill, the drum and the gongs are beaten louder, and the two Javanese dancing girls, Warsi and Réki, appear. They are both good-looking, of a cafe au lait colour, and with strange almond-shaped eyes, which dart at you glances