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. The result is that Dutch churches are more
than chilling. In the simplest English village church one receives
some impression of the friendliness of religion; but in Holland--of
course I speak as a stranger and a foreigner--religion seems to be
a cold if not a repellent thing.
One result is that on looking back over one's travels through
Holland it is almost impossible to disentangle in the memory one
whitewashed church from another. They have a common monotony of
internal aridity: one distinguishes them, if at all, by some accidental
possession--Gouda, for example, by its stained glass; Haarlem by its
organ, and the swinging ships; Delft by the tomb of William the Silent;
Utrecht by the startling absence of an entrance fee.
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