and burden of the towing.

[Illustration: A Canal in Dordrecht.]

But even for the canal population of Holland the halcyon days are past.
The spirit of reform is in the air. It may not be long before the tjalk,
with its doll's house and its residential population, will finally
disappear, and leave the canals of Holland as dull and colourless as the
inland waters of any other country. The reform seems likely to come about
in this way. There are at least 30,000 children resident on the
canal-boats. How are they to be properly educated and brought up as useful
citizens if they are to continue to lead a migratory existence which never
leaves them for a fortnight in a single place? Formerly, nobody cared
whether they were educated or not. They were left undisturbed to live
their lives in their own simple and primitive way. As De Amicis wrote:
'The children are born and grow up on the water; the boat carries all
their small belongings, their domestic affections, their past, their
present, and their future. They labour and save, and after many years they
buy a larger boat, selling the old one to a family poorer than themselves,
or handing it over to the eldest son, who in his turn instals his wife,
taken from another boat, and seen for the first time in a chance meeting
on the canal.' But now the State has begun to interest itself in the
children, and its intervention threatens to put a rude and summary ending
to the system of heredity and exclusion which has kept the canal
population a class apart.

For some time past schools have been in existence, especially devoted to
the education of the barge children, and whenever the barges are moored in
harbour the children are expected to attend them. But these periods of
halting are very brief and uncertain. The stationary barge earns no money,