And what a cathedral this Gothic curiosity of Utrecht is! Erected in the eleventh century upon the site of a former ecclesiastical edifice founded in 720, in its day it must have easily outclassed anything of its ilk in all the Netherlands. Now its back is broken, so to speak, beyond repair, for in 1674 a violent hurricane that bowled a spare with the church towers in the district, tore out the nave of the cathedral and left the tower and the choir completely disconnected. The site of the demolished nave now forms the center of the Cathedral Square, and is as much a thoroughfare as any street in the city.
The interior of the church, like the interior of almost every church of any size in Holland, offers little of originality or interest. The walls are covered with many layers of unbecoming whitewash, and any pleasing effect that the columned interior might have originally had is lost, for a portion in the center is boarded up, like a bull ring with its barrier, segregating the inclosed space for the purpose of uninterrupted worship. The one redeeming feature of the whole place, aside from a few meritorious monuments, is a handsome oaken pulpit, elaborately carved by hand, so as to give the effect of a miniature cathedral in itself.
After being a city of disabled and decrepit churches, Utrecht is a university town, and the seven or eight hundred students in attendance do their best to emulate the early ecclesiastics by trying to keep the place in a state of perennial siege, for it is to be remembered that the drudgery and frugality of university life in Holland is not what it is cracked up to be. In a way, a Dutch college education is a good bit of a farce. The student is under very few obligations except to himself. He does not have to appear in chapel; he does not even have to attend classes, and there are a large number of students in each of Holland’s three universities—young men of private fortune who take up a course in law or what not, with no intention of ever practicing, in order to avail themselves of the gaiety and freedom of university life—who never enter a lecture room from one term’s end to the other. Consequently, there is much hilarity and much extravagance, all of which is more or less resented by the thrifty, peaceful townspeople, and which sometimes places the two factions under strained relations. When a student does complete a course, having seen fit to relegate himself to the hard, honest work necessary to the attainment of a doctor’s degree, he deems it of such momentous occurrence that he forthwith has his thesis published in book form de luxe, and, hiring a carriage, which is manned by student initiates into his Corps, he drives in state to the residences of his several professors and intimate friends, leaving with each a copy of his work.
In the above mentioning of the Students’ Corps, I have named a salient feature of student life in Holland, and one which none of her universities is without. Although of broader membership, it takes the place of our own fraternities. It includes, however, all the students who can afford to pay its dues and subscriptions. A senate, comprising a rector, a secretary, and three other functionaries, elected annually by the Corps from among its members of four or more years’ standing, dictates the policy of the Corps and administers its affairs. Any member of the Corps is eligible for membership in the Corps Club, the culminating distinction of Dutch university life, or for any of its various subdivisions of athletic or social societies. The initiates undergo most of the harmless little byplays, not to mention some new ones, that provide for such a halcyon period in the careers of our own fraternal neophytes.
Among its numerous idiosyncrasies Utrecht has a canal, called the Oude Gracht, that is unique in comparison with other canals in other cities in Holland. The water in this canal lies far below the level of the bordering streets. Between the street and the water there is a great stone step that forms the real canal bank. In the old days the “riser” above this step was made up of foundation arches of stone upon which were built the specious mansions that fronted the thoroughfares alongside the canal. To make use of spaces which would otherwise be wasted, these vaulted foundations served as cellars, with the street for a roof, and were in as constant use as any other part of the dwelling. Most of them are now occupied as shops, to the entrances of which you must descend a flight of steps from the roadway above; but here and there their windows display the lace curtain and the boxful of flowers that give evidence of domestic habitation.
Utrecht, too, has many verdant beauty spots, the most verdant being the Hoogeland Park, with its circumference bordered with attractive villas and reached through a wide lime avenue they call the Maliebaan. In the Antiquarian Museum, situated in the park, one may behold the two most interesting relics in the possession of Utrecht, if we exclude, perhaps, the seventy different kinds of lace on view in the Archiepiscopal Museum on the Nieuwe Gracht. These are: a table, handsomely and delicately carved, at which the signatories of the famous Peace of Utrecht were said to have sat in 1713; and the “Doll’s House,” an accurate reproduction in miniature of a patrician dwelling of the period, executed in 1680, and worked out in the minutest detail from cellar to chimney pot, from kitchen utensils to genuine oil paintings by celebrated masters on the walls of the drawing room.
Surrounding Utrecht and penetrating far to the east and the south are the great fortifications, of whose presence the casual observer is entirely unaware, belonging to the first line of national defense that might be used to protect the Dutch capital from invasion—a defense in which she seeks the assistance of her mortal enemy, and discovers him weighed in the balance and not found wanting. Upon a process of general inundation, by fresh water wherever possible so as not to impair the future productiveness of the fields, does Holland depend for her safety from invasion both by land and by sea. In the probability of the latter, her power of self-exclusion is augmented by a treaty with Belgium, signed in 1892, confirmed in 1905, and only recently made public, reserving for her the right to block the great estuary of the Scheldt in case of war or rumors of war. In times of peace Belgium shares with the Netherlands all rights of navigation of the Scheldt, and Holland may not displace or remove buoys, lights, or other aids to navigation, without Belgian consent.
The lower end of the Oude Gracht, Utrecht, a canal which in its upper part is at a level far below the street, giving space between the foundation walls for shops and even homes