Was it still to deserve the name? At that particular moment the mass of
the population was comparatively indifferent to the terrible questions
pending. It was the kermis or annual fair, and all the world was keeping
holiday in Utrecht. The pedlars and itinerant merchants from all the
cities and provinces had brought their wares jewellery and crockery,
ribbons and laces, ploughs and harrows, carriages and horses, cows and
sheep, cheeses and butter firkins, doublets and petticoats, guns and
pistols, everything that could serve the city and country-side for months
to come--and displayed them in temporary booths or on the ground, in
every street and along every canal. The town was one vast bazaar. The
peasant-women from the country, with their gold and silver tiaras and the
year's rent of a comfortable farm in their earrings and necklaces, and
the sturdy Frisian peasants, many of whom had borne their matchlocks in
the great wars which had lasted through their own and their fathers'
lifetime, trudged through the city, enjoying the blessings of peace.
Bands of music and merry-go-rounds in all the open places and squares;
open-air bakeries of pancakes and waffles; theatrical exhibitions, raree-
shows, jugglers, and mountebanks at every corner--all these phenomena
which had been at every kermis for centuries, and were to repeat
themselves for centuries afterwards, now enlivened the atmosphere of the
grey, episcopal city. Pasted against the walls of public edifices were
the most recent placards and counter-placards of the States-General and
the States of Utrecht on the great subject of religious schisms and
popular tumults. In the shop-windows and on the bookstalls of Contra-
Remonstrant tradesmen, now becoming more and more defiant as the last
allies of Holland, the States of Utrecht, were gradually losing courage,
were seen the freshest ballads and caricatures against the Advocate.
Here an engraving represented him seated at table with Grotius,
Hoogerbeets, and others, discussing the National Synod, while a flap of