The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1915-09-25

little individuality to start with, the adventures
and p~atchings of time have endued it with a
p1cturesqueness of its own. The builders gave
1t practically no decoration, but such solid works
receive all they need from the hand of time,
which adds detail with unerring taste. The
palmer an edifce may have been to start with,
the better time adorns it, provided 1t has been
built with sound materials, good workmanship
and in good proportions. Most of Englapd's noblest
castles must have looked gaunt and even Ito
contemporary eyes) ugly. To the Saxon citizens
Of London the White doubtless whitewashed)
tower can hardly have conveyed esthetic pleas
ure. But time has even decorated Norman cas-
ties, so that not the baldest modern sky-scraper
need despair of future admiration If it can hold
itself end up long enough.
Amersfoort tower is anything rather than plain.
On the contrary, it is in the Gothic style tending
towards famboyant, while its general design is
of the type of the tower at Utrecht, which, indeed,
being only fourteen miles away, doubtless sug-
gested it. That was built during the middle half
of the fourteenth century; Amersfoort at the
very end of the fifteenth. Both have the open
o%ctagonal top story already described. Utrecht is
33S feet high, Amersfoort 312 feet. The latter is
considered to be the finest Gothic tower in Eol-
land. l suppose it to have been surmounted or
intended to be surmounted by a plain spire, but
the present dubious top and open-work crown
were put on in 1855. Where did Holland get it's
taste for these bulbs? She did not have a mo-
nopoly of them, for they are numerous enough in
Germany and even IN switzerland. An oriental
original probably suggested them. The Amers-
foort church was built in the fourteenth century,
and the tower may well have been projected from
the first. An explosion damaged the building, but
the damage was made good and the tower for
tunately escaped.
Few tourists stop at Amersfoort, but plenty of
them can see the tower from the train on their
way eastward from Amsterdam. The summit of
1t looks northward far away over the Zuyder Zee,
and in every other direction over a country as
fiat as water. There was some fun in building
high towers in Holland, they could be seen from
SO far away, Amersfoort can hail Utrecht on any
clear day, and both of them Rhenen q imagine),
which Rembrandt sketched.
Anyone who has landed at Flushing, and pro-
ceeded thence anywhither by train, has been
carried for the first few miles over the am
phibious region of the island of Walcheren. He
has passed Middelburg and presently, If he looked
away off to the left, he will have seen, at a dis
lance of two or three miles, the little town of
We're. Both are old towns and highly pictur-
esque- So indeed Durer recorded them to be
when he visited them in the cold December of
1890. "Middelburg," he said. is a good town, a
fine place for sketching. 1t has a beautiful town
hall with a fine tower. There is much art shown
In all things here" All he has to say about We're
is that 1T is a fine little town where lie ships
from all lands" The object Of Durer's unfor-
tunate winter journey to the islands of iceland
was not, however, to see towers and town halls,
but to satisfy his Unsuitable curiosity about
natural history. He wanted to make a drawing
of a whale that had been stranded in those
parts. Such curiosity in the case of men like
Durer and Leonardo is the first indication we
possess of the approach of the age of science
The whale had been washed away before Durer's