Then Charles V, Count of Holland, Emperor of Germany, King of Jerusalem, Sicily, and Spain, Duke of Milan, dominator of much in Asia and Africa and “autocrat of half the world,” established his predatorial authority, and “this little country, whose statutes proclaimed her to be ‘free as the wind as long as it blew,’ whose institutions Charlemagne had honored and left unmolested, who had freed herself with ready poniard from Norman tyranny, who had never bowed her neck to feudal chieftain, nor to the papal yoke,” finally forfeited her independent existence. Her peoples are the only Germanic tribe that have preserved an unaltered nomenclature since the time of the Romans; they will be Frisians to-morrow, as they were the day before yesterday. The most prominent and characteristic feature of the Frisian costume is the headdress of its women--in fact, it is the only one extant worthy of any notice whatever, for the remainder of the make-up, not only of the men but of the women also, is commonplace and unattractive. This headdress consists of a kind of metal skullcap, as often made of gold as of silver, fitting closely at the temples and embellished at these points with a pair of spiral ornaments. Over this is worn a cap of white or light blue lace, having a so-called “tail piece” dangling down the back of the neck like the scoop of a fireman’s helmet. On top of all this, many of the women--as if their violent efforts to adapt the modern were wrestling with a series of sturdy determinations to retain the antique--will crown the sublime with the ridiculous by wearing an old-fashioned black “poke bonnet,” with the strings tied in a bow under the chin. These gold and silver head-pieces are handed down from one generation to another, and the gold ones, especially, are expensive; but that item does not curb the desire and ambition of every mother’s daughter in Friesland to own one, where the usual heirloom has not been forthcoming. An admirable collection showing the evolution of the Frisian metal skull plate is on view in the Frisian Museum in Leeuwarden. Adapted first as a kind of hair ornament of two coin-sized flat pieces connected simply by a thin wire, its size developed gradually until the two small termini became consolidated into a single large one that covered the entire head of the wearer. The latest specimen in the Museum is decorated in front with a diamond-studded brooch, the whole costing in the neighborhood of $1,200. [Illustration: Leeuwarden’s structural curiosity is the Olde-Hove, an unfinished church tower of brick, leaning with all the abandon of Pisa’s Tower]