Plate LVII, entitled _In Bruitlaen_, by Artz, in the Rijks Museum, shows the modern artist’s conception of a peasant room and furniture. First we notice a large _kas_ or _armoire_, with heavy ball feet and pieces of china arranged on the top. More china adorns the chimney-shelf, and the chimney-piece with its valance is characteristic. The heavy carved beams, the windows with small leaded panes decorated with coats-of-arms, the tiled floor spread with a carpet, give an air of comfort to the room. The chairs are of the four-backed variety, the table is square, the stool has turned legs and stretchers, and there is a Bible on a stand and a Friesland clock on the wall. The old farmhouse of which the modern traveller sees so many examples, with its red-tiled or thatched roof visible beneath its sentinel poplars, usually consists of a large living-room, a kitchen, a cheese-room, a dairy, two small bedrooms in the garret, a big cow-stable at the back, and an outside kitchen called the “baking-house.” A native writer says: “The ‘baking-house’ is often used as a living-room in summer, which is more cheerful than the solemn apartment into which the visitor is invariably ushered. A wide chimney lined with tiles stretches nearly across one side of this room; but the open fire on the hearth has long ago disappeared and given place to an ugly stove. Quaint brass fire-irons hang behind it, and on either side is an armchair, differing from its humbler brethren only in the possession of wooden arms. If there is a baby in the family, it is likely to be reposing in a cradle with green baize curtains as near as possible to the fireplace, in defiance of all laws of health. Two or three large cupboards, sometimes handsomely carved, always kept well polished, stand against the whitewashed walls. One of them generally has glass doors in the upper part; and on its shelves the family china—often of great value—is exposed to view. Unfortunately, these heirlooms in old families have been largely bought up by enterprising Jews. Sometimes, however, sentiment has proved stronger than the love of money, and the farmer has not parted with his family possessions. In a corner of the room a chintz curtain, or sometimes a double door, shows where the big press-bed is—an institution of pre-hygienic times which, to the peasant mind, has no inconveniences whatever. In the middle of the room a table stands on a carpet; and, as people take off their shoes at the door and go about in their thick woollen stockings, neither it nor the painted floor ever shows signs of mud. Another table stands near one of the windows, of which there are two or three. The linen blinds so closely meet the spotless muslin curtains, which are drawn stiffly across the lower panes on two horizontal sticks, that a stray sunbeam can hardly make its way into the room, even if it has been able to struggle through the thick branches of the clipt lime-trees that adorn the front of the house. On