The Dutchman has always been famous for his clinging to cleanliness, order and symmetry. Cleanliness in the house and order in the garden, with its clipped trees and hedges of formal designs and stiff flower beds, still persist. The Dutch house of the present day is described by the Rev. J. Ballingal _In the North Holland Polders_ as follows: “Their houses are as often furnished in very modern style, though the furniture is sure to be solid and good. They have the utmost contempt for anything sham and flimsy. In their jewellery, of which a great deal is worn, they would never think of buying false diamonds or imitation coral. Their houses are models of neatness and cleanliness, but there is no trace of aesthetic feeling. Symmetry is admired above everything. Trees planted round the house at equal distances, trimmed to an exact height, and whitewashed to a certain height of the trunk, windows and doors to correspond, gates freshly painted, and gravel walks without a foot-print—that is the country ideal. There is a story of a Boer who fancied a piano would be a handsome addition to his best room, and having bought one and got it placed, he returned a few weeks after to the piano warehouse. ‘Did the instrument give satisfaction?’ the dealer anxiously inquired. Oh, yes! yes! I’ve no complaint to make, for nobody has even touched it. What annoys us is we don’t like the look of it in the room. It is not _symmetrisch_, so I’ve come to buy another, exactly the same, to stand in the opposite corner.’ Such a story is credible enough when one sees the exactly similar way in which, through a large district, houses are built, and trees planted round them, as if every detail were compulsory. The love of cleanliness, too, has its extravagances, as, for instance, in the neighbourhood we speak of we once enjoyed the comic spectacle of a man sitting astride on the ridge of his house, with a pail slung round his neck, scrubbing away at the tiles.” Holland has not escaped the present taste for the collection of antiquities; but in that country where there is so deep a love of home, and where the peasants guard their possessions with the same tenacity and affection as the rich do their heirlooms, the collector is only rewarded after long years of patient search. However, many of the wealthy merchants and travellers, who are spending the well-earned afternoon and evening of their lives in their country seats near Arnhem, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Leyden, Dordrecht, Middelburg, Maestricht and other large cities and small towns, are able to show rare and interesting relics of the past. A house of a rich traveller will reflect naturally enough the wanderings as well as the taste of its owner. The spoils of Java, Dutch Guiana, the West Indies and other colonies, not to mention those of Egypt, Spain and Italy, adorn his rooms and render his cabinets highly interesting.