' regulation beaver,' to which all polite Europe
subscribes. Yet the case happens to be, that if
there be a land in which perpetual wonderment
could make the traveller wry-necked, that
land is North Holland. Hong-Kong can
hardly be stranger, either in its composition
or its maintenance. So Sci herself (in Mr.
Sealy's capital Chinese tale) did not boast a
head-tire more ' express and surprising,' than
the gentlewomen of all ages, through whose
active decision and passive contempt the
Brown Hat had to run the gauntlet.

Let us see if we can sketch this—though by
no means catholically sure, that some stratum
of use or ornament, may not have been
overlooked in our specification. First, it is
conceived that the hair upon the head of the
Frieslander, must be cut as close as though
subject to the pumpkin-shell barbarity of the
pilgrim-fathers, when their scissors were
intent on shearing off love-locks. Upon this
closely cropped poll, comes first a knitted cap
(Mrs. London, perhaps, can tell whether there
be an aristocratic or established stitch
formula for its knitting), over that a silk scull
cap. These tightly put on, the serious business
of the head-gear begins. The victim is
next hooped, bound, lined, circled and otherwise
clasped up within gilt metal—various in
its cut, provided it only fits close, ' as some
one said,' for headaches, to throb against.
The mistress of Keetje, the maid, is fond of
having her kettle-cap made of gilt silver,
sometimes—if she be of old family—of pure gold;
and you will see her in the market-place,
wearing, in addition to this precious piece of
trepanning, a metal tiara, such as Grecian
Queens wear upon the stage, stuck over with
coarse jewels; nay, more, dangling at the
sides of her face, a pair of inconceivable gilt
pendants, at a distance looking like bunches
of queer keys, or that minikin household
furniture our English ladies now choose to
suspend from their girdles. But this is not
all. At the extreme angles of her forehead,
Keetje's mistress—if a person of high fashion
—must stick in two little square plots or tufts
of frizzled silk, to pass for curls. This done,
she may put on her cap of the finest lace, with
its deep border or flap behind, fashioned like
the brim of the dustman's hat, but from the
costly daintiness of its material, and the
creamy whiteness of the throat it lies against,
somewhat more picturesque. Finally, if
Keetje's mistress be a Friesland Miss
Flamborough of ' first water '—a lady who knows
the world, and has a spirit superior to old-
fashioned prejudices—she must have by way
of crown, all to her four caps (one of precious
metals), a straw bonnet, a huge, heavy, coal-
scuttle, festooned with loops and streamers of
gaudy ribbon, and thriftily guarded at the
edge with a hem or barrier of stout and gaudy
printed chintz. Thus canopied are the comely
wives and widows (maidens, possibly dispensing
with the bonnet), who shrieked,
clapped their hands, and, with every other
possible demonstration of offence, pursued the
wearer of the Brown Hat in Friesland.

On the habiliments of the male moiety of
society, tediousness forbids that we should
expatiate; the less, as something will thus be
left to be treated on a future day, when the
grave question of apparel may be more
solemnly entered upon. Enough for the
moment, to say that it suits the singularities
of this critical land: a land in which a
Swimming Lion is the ensign, and of which
His Majesty Topsy-Turvy might be sovereign;
a land in which there is hardly a crooked
horizontal line to be found, save among the
sand-hills; a land in which, with all its neatness'
care, scarce a building, be it church or
market-house, palace or exchange, can be
prevailed upon to stand perpendicular; a
land in which for air you breathe extract of
juniper, turf, tobacco, and stagnant waters,
mixed; a land in which people eat cheese
with their tea, and where a child that plucks
a nest runs great danger of being whipped as
an enemy to Church and State—guilty of
trying to let in the republican ocean; a land
where full-grown babies set up clockwork
gentlemen and papier mâche swans, by way
of animating their garden, and the weedy
ponds in the same; a land where full-grown
men undertake and complete some of the most
magnificent enterprises which science can
contrive for industry to carry out; a land of
teeming plenty and of high prices; a land of
bad digestions and beautiful complexions.
No, the men of this land—the shippers of
Dordrecht, the potters of Delft, the gardeners
of Broet, and the dairy farmers of Harlingen.
decked out for fair or frolic—must be to-day
left with all their uncouth and indescribable
finery, undescribable, it may be, for some
future parable.

But as if in the above there had not been
indicated enough of what yet new and strange
for Pilgrim to observe and to tolerate, and to
smile at, with English supercilious civility in
this country, the very names of places,
even (as a descendant of Dr. Dilworth
inadequately remarked), ' are neither Christian
nor becoming.' One might bring one's mind
to bear to be jeered at or stared at, in a land
resounding with pompous and euphonious
words- by the Wissihiccon, for instance, or
on the Mississippi, or at Canandaigna, or
among the Inscoraras, or when bound for
Passamaquoddy. Even the prize scold at
Billingsgate was silenced and rendered meek
by being called a Chrononhotonthologos.—
There's much in four syllables! But in
Friesland the traveller is handed over from
Workum to Higtum, and from Higtum to
Midlum; thence perhaps to Boxum, and from
Boxum to Hallum, Dokkum, Kollum, &c., &c.,
&c.; going through the whole alphabet of
these ' make-believe ' names, the very study of
which on the map is enough to make properly-
brought-up persons disdainful and critical!
Yet, so far from feeling any proper sense of