I was astonished to see girls who appeared to be fully grown, who in our country would have had the airs and attire of women, still dressed like children, with short skirts and white pantalettes. In Holland, where life is easy and impatience an unknown experience, the girls are in no hurry to leave off the ways and appearance of childhood, and, on the other hand, they seem naturally to enter at a comparatively late age that period of life when, as Alessandro Manzoni says in his ever-admirable way, it seems as though a mysterious power enters the soul, which soothes, adorns, and invigorates all its inclinations and thoughts. Here a girl very rarely marries before her twentieth year. I need not speak of the children of the Deccan, who, it is said, are married at eight years of age, but in Holland the Italian and Spanish girls, who marry at fourteen or fifteen, are regarded as unaccountable persons. There, girls of fifteen years are going to school with their hair down their backs, and nobody thinks of looking at them. I heard a young man of the Hague spoken of with horror by his friends because he was enamoured of a maiden of this age, for to their minds she was considered as an infant. Another thing one notices instantly in every Dutch city, excepting Amsterdam, is the absence of that lower stratum of society known as the demi-monde. There is nothing in dress or manner to indicate the existence of such a class. "Beware," said some freethinking Dutchmen to me; "you are in a Protestant country, and there is a great deal of hypocrisy." This may be true, but the sore that can be hidden cannot be very large. Equivocal society does not exist among the Hollanders; there is no shadow of it in their life nor any hint of it in their literature; the very language rebels against translating any of those numberless expressions which constitute the dubious, flashy, easy speech of that class of society in the countries where it is found. On the other hand, neither fathers nor mothers close their eyes to the conduct of their unmarried sons, even if they be grown men; family discipline makes no exception of long beards; and this strict discipline is aided by their phlegmatic nature, their habits of economy, and their respect for public opinion. It would be a presumption more ridiculous than impertinent to speak of the character and life of Dutch women with an air of experience, when I have been only a few months in Holland; so I must content myself with letting my Dutch friends speak for themselves.