I cannot describe it: the building is too
complicated, too ornate; I can only say that it is wholly captivating
and thoroughly out of keeping with the Dutch genius--Spanish influence
again apparent. Beneath the eaves are four and twenty statues of the
Counts of Holland and Zeeland, and the roof is like a mass-meeting
of dormer windows.
In addition to the stadhuis museum, which is dedicated to the history
of Middelburg and Zeeland, the town has also a municipal museum, too
largely given over to shells and stuffed birds, but containing also
such human relics as the wheel on which Admiral de Ruyter as a boy
helped his father to make rope, and also the first microscope and
the first telescope, both the work of Zacharias Jansen, a Zeeland
mathematician. More interesting perhaps are the rooms in the old
Zeeland manner, corresponding to the Hindeloopen rooms which we
have seen at Leeuwarden, but lacking their cheerful richness of
ornamentation. It is certainly a museum that should be visited,
albeit the stuffed birds weigh heavily on the brow.
After all, Middelburg's best museum is itself. Its streets and
houses are a never-ending pleasure. Something gladdens the eye at
every turn--a blue and yellow shutter, a red and black shutter,
a turret, a daring gable, a knot of country people, a fat Zeeland
baby, a milk-can rivalling the sun, an old woman's lace cap, a young
woman's merry mouth.
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