MA ^TFR NEGA TIVE NO. 92-80571 MICROFILMED 1992 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the ^^ "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States -- Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other •eproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: BARROW, SIR JOHN TITLE: A FAMILY TOUR THROUGH SOUTH PLA CE : LONDON DA TE : 1831 Restrictions on Use: Master Negative # COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record r »rtia ■ aoi** ^a«^>j* *■** — ■*** 34-3.^ ^^STTOW, Sir John, Lsrl:. 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V.*i»,' ■ /. -^ - .*■ ' ^ ^ M led Li" ■ i> tPl^A '^/•i-:^^ iSfet ^^\ ifij^ *%--•,' ^"'^■T^ . ■%■ i- ' '5 ii^^" jf v^ f- ma - : mm^ /- .'- ■r^iy' J ^wwt sr >» ••* •% f'"* *" "y Ci>' •-■1 ;t->'-i4^^»: c i.v ..■ ., ,_; *^^.,.'#';,^- -t , 4« -^r=v S A^ JCJ»>£' <'b.: ^^V V-i:r •il^. ,1^ -^ ^5»! :C*^^ ^^it^'^' ^'n ,*.5J <^ -*■* ^nf-^ s,*- <•> > •*- .-> ^¥^ ' ''^ ^ t ■ ^« •*,-' - 'Hj '->*•.;•- '«^« Columbia (Hnitiers^itp mtljcCitpafitm^ork THE LIBRARIES FAMILY TOUR THROUGH SOUTH HOLLAND. I { T -h I Jf f f . ' » I • ** f • .« « ' FAMILY TOUR • * THROUGH SOUTH HOLLAND; UP THE RHINE; AND ACROSS THE NETHERLANDS, TO OS TEND. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. MDCCCXXXX. .-% • • • • • • • • • • •• • ••• ••" • • • • • ■ • • * • •• •••,•• • • • •••••• • , •• • • • • • •,; • • ••• .••• • ••• . PREFACE. LONDON; Printed by William Clowes, Stamford Street. 3A3,& BS'l In the Autumn of 1S28, a family party of six per- sons, with a male servant, set out from London, with the intention of making the tour of the Southern Provinces of Holland, — of ascending- the Rhine as far as Mayence, — thence paying a visit to Franckfort, — returning by the Rhine to Cologne, — from thence crossing the Netherlands by Liege, AVaterloo, Brussels, and Ostend, to London. Tliey gave themselves, or circumstances rather ol>liged them to dedicate, just one month to the performance of this tour, which they accomplished in twenty-eight days, travelling very much at their case in the carriages of the different countries {not diligences), — in treckschuyts and steam-ves- sels, — saw whatever they considered to be interest- ing, — put up at the first hotels, — dined sometimes at tables-d'hote, and at others in their private apartments, and were finally set down from the Ostend steam-vesssl on the Tower-hill, having expended on the whole journey just one hundred and thirty-eight pounds. Every one of the party 2S0268 VI PREFACE. returned with the pleasing recollections of what they had seen, and with invigorated health. Those who may wish to spend a month in visit- in «■ that most extraordinary and interesting comitry, Holland, — to enjoy the magnificent scenery of the Rhine, to admire the splendid decorations of the churches, and to be gratified with the beautiful state of agricultural industry in the then apparently happy Belgium, — cannot do better, (because they probably cannot derive so much gratification in so yhort a time, and at so small an expense,) than to follow the track which is laid down in the fol« lowing pages, drawn up from notes taken on the spot by one of the party, and now published in the hope that they may prove of some use to future travellers. The prints which illustrate and embellish this little volume are the production of that ingenious officer, Lieut.-Colonel Batty, etched by him (being his first attempts on sfeel) from drawings made by himself on the spot ; they may therefore be con- sidered as faithful representations of what they profess to be. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. LONDON TO ANTWERP . . . , Page i :itf CHAPTER II, ANTWERP TO ROTTERDAM . . . • • • . 42 CHAPTER 111. ROTTERDAM TO AMSTERDAM 67 CHAPTER IV. AMSTERDAM 92 CHAPTER V. AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN 134 CHAPTER VI. NIMEGUEN TO COLOGNE 159 CHAPTER VII. COLOGNE TO COBLENTZ 179 CHAPTER Via. COBLENTZ TO FRANCKFORT, AND BACK TO AL\-LA-CHAPELLE . 193 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. AIX-LA-CHAPELLE Page 225 CHAPTER X. BELGIUM 23d LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. 1. Hotel deVille of Brussels .... Frontispiece. 2. Cathedral of Antwerp, from the Canal au Beurre . 27 3. St. Lawrence of Rotterdam, from the Levive Haven 67 4. The Hotel de Ville of the Hague 72 5. St. Pancras Church of Leyden 77 6. The fVaaf/ or weighing-house of Amsterdam . . 95 7. View on the Amstel, Amsterdam 121 8. Bingen, with bridge over the Nahe .... 209 9. St. Nicholas' Church, Ghent 267 iO. Hotel de Ville of Bruges 279 JXi U.iiiyr >• r^MitkM *^Jt*m Mtmtxfr .Ohmtm*' .ifntt Lamlatt .fmf'M ii A TOl;])!. - » t •- r " » TIIROUOH ' SOUTH HOLLAND, 8fC. Chapter I. LONDON TO AN'nVERP. 0\ the 6tli of August, 1828, we embarked at Deptford, in a sailing-yacht, with our little family party, bound for the Scheldt, and from thence wherever chance might direct us, under a pledge, liowcver, not to^ceed the time of one month from the day of ^ibarkation. We dropped down the river with Ahe tide, the wind at east, the weather beautifjl ; but night coming on before we could get over the flats, as they are called, we anchored in Whitstable Bay. In advancing to this s])ot, the younger part of the family in par- kicular were greatly amused by the huninous |aj)pearance of the sea, which happened to be more than usually brilliant in this clhnate. They com})ared the train of light, which flashed from the sounding-line, to the tail of a comet. Every body began to philosophize on this phenomenon, and we young ones in particular were naturally inc^ui- B • • • • • sitive' as tp .tjie .cau.se. af such an appearance, •• • \t1i5c1v *-ii '.4-5re Jtct^i-ii not of very common *: occiitp^nce -m Xh' ferfipVrate climate ; and that. The subject of this light, we were well aware, has frequently been discussed by philosophers and voyage writers, and we believe the majority are in- clined to the opinion that this phosphorescent light is occasioned by the spawn of fish, and the myriads of animalculi that are floating in the waters of the ocean: but there is some difficulty in adoptmg this conclusion, as the light is seen only in i)ar- ticular places, at the same time, and at particular times only in certain spots ; whereas the existence of the spawn and minute animals may be supposed to possess the qualities of ubiquity and perpetuity. If this light, which, at the same spot, ceased on Monday, where it had illuminated the whole surface of the sea on the preceding Sunday, was occasioned by these viviparous marine animals, what had be- come of these animals on the succeeding day? This, we were told, is a very common case ; that, in the tropical regions, the sea would one day ex- hibit one vast sheet of fire, and the next day, on the same spot, not a vestige of phosphorescent light could be seen. This remark gave occasion to us young philosophers, who had imbibed a smat- tering from that excellent lecturer, Mr. Faraday, to speculate on the cause; and the conclusion we arrived at was this — that the luminous appear- ance of the sea might be the eff"ect of an elec- trical influence on these minute floating bodies ; LONDON TO ANTWERP. 3 and this suggestion arose from the circumstance that the phenomenon was the most brilliant just at the time when flashes of lightning were playing round the horizon. It naturally occurred to ask whether fresh-water lakes have at any time exhi- bited this same luminous phenomenon ; for if the existence of animalculi be the cause, it ought equally to prevail in fresh as in salt water, where they are not less abundant, as the solar micro- scope of Mr. Car])enler, in Regent-street, abun- dantly testifies, by the numerous horrible monsters which it exhibits. If fresh-water lakes are not subject to illumination, the only inference to be drawn from its absence would be, that the salt lield in solution in sea- water is the probable cause of the phenomenon, but exhibited only under par- ticular states of the atmosphere ; and here ends our philoso])hy. On the 7th, with a fine south-westerly breeze, we got under weigh at about six in the morning, reached the North Foreland at eight, and were at anchor in Flushing Roads, directly before the town, at seven in the evening, having run about one hundred miles in thirteen hours. It was our intention to have landed the follow- ing morning at Flushing, our object being prin- cipally to inspect the dockyard, besides which, we were given to understand, there is not much to attract the notice of strangers in this town ; and, indeed, the only objects in the naval arsenal, that we expected to derive much gratification from viewing, were some large roofs under which ships are constructed, and which towered high above the mud banks that defend the town from the in- B 2 * LOXDON TO ANTWERP. cursions of the sea, and far above all other roofs, that of the church alone excepted. Of these cover- hig for ships we could see three, which appeared, wiien viewed from without, to be similar to the same kind of buildings in all our dockyards. The morning, however, was so windy, and the sea be- fore the town so rough, from the exposure of the roadstead to the North Sea, tliat we did not think it worth a wetting to attempt the shore. It was, besides, desirable not to lose the advantage of a young tide up the Scheldt, which had turned at six o'clock this morning. AVe therefore weighed anchor a little before seven, and proceeded at tlie rate of twelve miles an hour up this magnificent river. Flusliing exhibited no external appearance of commercial bustle. A Dutch eighteen gun sloop, and some half-dozen ships of a small class, were lying in the road, and about as many a little higher up, opposite the fort called the Rammakins. Be- tween this fort and Flushing we observed two or three new martello towers, that are supposed to give a more complete command of the entrance of the Scheldt, which is here at least three miles in width. We observed some artillerymen firing at a mark, on a floating buoy, from one of the forts of the town, the only symptom that displayed itself of military existence along the banks of this beautiful river, each side of which, and without in- terruption, exhibited the more gratifying efl'ects of peaceful and laborious industry. It was not without reason, perhaps, that tlie Dutcli had been strengthening the works at Flusliing, considering the lesson they received, in I i LONDON TO ANTWERP. 5 the course of the last war, of the total inefliciency of tliose that then existed, assisted as they were by the opposite batteries of Cadsand, to prevent the passage of the Sciieldt by a vigorous and deter- mined enemy. The distance across a])pears to be barely two miles and a half, though called three ; yet on the occasion of our memorable expedition under Lord Chatliam, which, by a strange misad- venture, took refuge in the eastern instead of the western Scheldt, and got into what Sir Home Po})ham called the Roompot (literally Creampot), Lord AVilliam Stuart, in the Lavinia, with nine other frigates, forced this passage through a cross- fire of the enemy from the two sides, with the loss only of two or three men in the whole. The wind was light, and the tide against him, and the whole of the frigates were under the fire of the batteries from the two sides nearly two hours, yet they passed almost wholly untouched by the enemy's shot. That side of the island of Walchercn, which f:ices the sea, is defended against the encroach- ments of that element by one continued v/all or ridge of high sand-hills, interrupted only at West Capel, where an artificial dyke has been raised to the height, it is said, of thirty feet, and defended in a very ingenious and extraordinary manner. This artificial barrier is of so much importance, that, on its stability, the safety of the whole island may be said to tlepend. At the point of the island where Flushing is situated, a strong wall of masonry protects the town against the sea ; and the side facing the Scheldt is embanked with great care, and its re- 6 LONDON TO ANTW'ERP. pair evidently kept up at an enormous expense. Embankments or dykes of the same kind are carried along both banks of the river ; and at the base of each is thrown out a barrier of stones and stakes to protect the higher ramparts of earth ; and these again are covered with great care and mgenuity with a kind of thatch, consisting of bean-stubble or straw. The stones at the base are sometimes thrown into a kind of wicker or basket-work of withy twigs, and the whole kept together by ropes made of the same material, and interwoven with rushes ; and where the current or the tide sets strongest, rows of stakes or poles are driven into the sand, to act as breakwaters for the protection of the base of the sloping bank, which receives a further consistence by being grown over with grass, on the gently sloping sides of which very fine cattle may be seen grazing, many of which are handsomely spotted. These dykes, and their supporting embankments, are seen in great perfection along the shores of South Beveland, the island next to Walcheren, and one of the most beautiful and fertile territories of Holland ; that is to say, beautiful for its cultiva- tion and its fertility in all kinds of grain, madder, pulse, hemp, rape, and flax ; in its abundance of orchards of apples, pears, cherries, and plums ; in the number of its villages, situated in the midst of trees, but, to the navigator of the river, known only to exist from the frequent spires of churches that are seen to rise in every direction out of the woods. Even in those villages that are close to the banks, seldom is any part of the houses visible, except the chimneys and the tiled roofs ; LONDON TO ANTWERP, 7 but a church- spire in the midst of trees, and a windmill erected on the bank or some artificial mount, the better to catch the breeze, are sure in- dications of the CO- existence of a little hamlet with those conspicuous objects In various parts of the shores of tlie river, in addition to the regular embankments, are small breakwaters of stonework, thrown out at right angles into the stream, intended to guard the dykes against the shock of floating timber or vessels, but more particularly against the masses of ice which float down in the winter season. These stones are all brought hither, bv water con- veyance, from the neighbourhood of Brussels, as not a j)ebble of any description is to be found in any of the Zealand Islands, nor in the northern provinces of Belgium. The general surface, in fact, on both sides the river, is below the level of the high-water mark, so that a vast extent of fer- tile country has actually been rescued from the sea bv human labour and inuenuitv. It is evi- dent, therefore, that unless due precautions were taken against the breaking in of the sea, which not unfreiiuently hajipens, the whole country would be subject to inundation, and revert to its ancient state of useless sterility — alternately a sandy marsh and a sheet of water. This is, in fact, what has actually happened to the eastern side of this very Island of South Beveland, where, at low water, there is a vast extent of sand, which the Dutch have named * Verdrunken land,' or land swallowed up bv the sea. To obviate a disaster of such fatal import, innumerable inland dykes are constructed in every 8 LONDON TO ANTWERP. LONDON TO ANTWERP. direction, not only to mark, as tliey sometimes do, the division of property, but also to atforil ad- ditional barriers to the waters, so that if the first barrier or sea-dyke should give way, a second and a third may be found to resist the further ravages of the flood. At the connnencement of the })re- sent century, however, Walcheren was inundated by a breach of the sea at West Capel, and the water is said to have stood as high as the roofs of the houses of Middelburg, which fine city was saved from utter destruction only by the strength of its walls. This event is commemorated by an inscription on a stone. The sea had once before washed away the sandy downs, which form a barrier along the western coast, and submerged the ancient lown of West Capel, which was afterwards rebuilt further in- land. It is here that, in order to prevent future accidents of the same kind, an enormous dyke, thirty feet high, has been raised to fill up' the breach. The ex])ense must have been enormous, but the salvation of the whole island of Walcheren may be said to depend on its stability. In all these banks several sluices are con- structed, by means of which the inhabitants have not only the power of letting out the water from the sands, but also of letting in that of the river or the sea, in the event of an enemy invading the country ; and by this desperate measure to make it impossible for him to remain ; but this is an ad- vantage gained only at the expense of an infliction of general misery and distress, amounting very nearly to complete ruin. The master of our vessel was well acquainted with every part of the river, but we were compelled to take a Dutch pilot, for the sake, of course, of paying him his fee. AV^e were desirous, in pro- ceeding, to keep close to the northern channel on the Dutch side, along the shores of Beveland, but the pilot made several objections, which our master knew to be perfectly frivolous ; his only avowed reason, on being pressed, was, that the king did not like it — and as in such cases, when stat pro ratione voluntas^ and when we are told that le roi le vcut^ it would be folly to resist, we stood over to Terneuse, on the southern side. From this place a fine canal has recently been opened the whole way to Ghent, of the depth of sixteen feet, which, while it admits ships of very considerable burthen, acts as a drain to the surroundin": country, throu<>h which It passes. At Terneuse it communicates with the Scheldt, by two separate sluices or locks. This water communication is of the greatest im- portance, both to Brabant and Holland, by open- ing a direct intercourse between Antwerp and other principal towns of Belgium, and to the latter country, through various channels of communi- cation, with Dort and Rotterdam. h\ proceeding up the Scheldt, it is impossible not to be struck with the simple means by which the Dutch have succeeded in producing the same efiect, though, perhaps, in a smaller degree, for which in England we launch out into the most extravagant expense. Nothing can exceed the economy practised in the construction of their flood-gates, and the wooden piers in which their sluices are placed ; a species of hydraulics, that with us are generally formed of the most costly 10 LONDON TO ANTWERP. workmanship in masonry. Having no stone in this country, but what must come to them from the banks of the Meuse or the Rhine, necessity has driven them to the use of other materials, and its place is efficiently supplied by the less costly, though less durable, article of wood. On the muddy sliores and the sand-banks of the. Scheldt, left bare at low water, whole shoals of seals may generally be seen in different atti- tudes, some playing about and wallowing in tlie mud, while others are standing upright, as if watching to give notice to their companions of any danger that may be approaching. These creatures are possessed of a high degree of cun- ning, and not easily to be caught napping ; the usual mode of taking tliem is by setting a long range of nets below the surface of the high-water line, so as to admit them freely at that time of tide to the shores or banks of the river ; over which nets, as the water falls, they are unable to pass, and are thus caught. In the same manner the inhabitants place rows of twigs, with nets between them, the more readily to catch various kinds of fish, which by first encountering the difficulty of passing through the twigs, generally fall into the nets between them. The distance from Flushing to Antwerp is reckoned, by the bending of the river, to be sixty- two miles, which our little yacht effected in five hours and a half, and would with ease have done it in five hours, had the wind not failed us in the narrow part of the river, just above Lillo. The appearance of the ancient city of Antwerp becomes here an interesting object, and the ijiore imposing 1 LONDON TO ANTWERP. n the nearer we approach it along the last reach of the Scheldt ; nor will the traveller feel any dis- a])})ointment on his arrival before this great com- mercial port of the Netherlands. At the same time it must be confessed there was nothing on this noble river, either in our progress up it, or before the city, that conveyed any impression of an active or extensive com- merce. In sailing up or down the Thames, or in a])proaching London within four or five miles — in the first case, the multitude of shipping, of all descriptions, from the largest Indiaman to the deep laden barge, scarcely emerging from the water, crossing and recrossing each other in every possible direction — in the second, those lying in close contact, tier after tier, for several miles be- low the first bridge of the metropolis, afford indi- cations not to be mistaken of the commercial wealth and prosperity of London. But the Scheldt, \yhen we ascended it, was a vacant river; we neither met nor overtook a single sail, and with the ex- ception of some ten or twelve small vessels, mostly brigs, except two or three American ships, there was little appearance of trade along the common quay of Antwerp. But a great number of vessels were lying in the small harbours that branch out from the river, and in the two large basins. Antwerp, however, is a fine old city. It is impossible to enter through an ancient gate- way into its narrow streets, bounded by lofty houses, with their high gable ends or pediments of several stories of windows, and ascending by steps on each side to a point, without being 12 ANTWERP. attracted by tlieir grotesque but, at the same time, picturesque appearance. Indeed their novel and fanciful shapes are much more attractive than the more recent and wider streets, with their more spacious houses, many of which are not inferior to any that are met with in London. The Rue de la Mcr, which had formerly a canal down the middle, like those which are generally met with in a Dutch town, but is now fdled up, appears to be as wide as Portland Place, and from the variety in the architecture of its houses is in- finitely more picturesque and striking. In this street is the commodious hotel of Le Grand Lahoureur^ in which we took up our quarters ; and in it also is the palace of A\ illiam 1., a handsome building enough, but nothing remarkable, being little Ibettcr than a common sized house of the first class, the apartments sur- rounding a quadrangle. In fact it belonged to one of the merchants of the town, hut was purchased an which means ' Hands thrown away,' and that this is the origin of the name of Antwerp, and that Brabant took its name from Brabon. Pudi- culous as this, like most legends, may ai)i)ear, the arms of the city, which are two hands and a tri- angular fort, seem to give countenance to the sto'ry ; and we observe on the arched gateway which leads from the quay into the city, the figure of a huge giant ; but whether it be St. Christo- pher, or the Scheldt personified, is neither material nor certain. ^, , i , • On the left of the nave of the Cathedral, in proceeding towards the choir, and as a companion to the ' Descent,' is another celebrated picture by Rubens, of the ' Elevation of the Cross.' This we did not see, a ladder being placed against the doors that concealed it, for the purpose of clean- ing the frames, and varnishing the outside pictures, ANTWERP. 33 against the grand f^te that was to be held at Ant- werj) tlie following month, preparatory to which all the churches of this city were undergoino- the process of painting and cleaning ; but the picture in question is represented by Sir Joshua Reynolds as one of this artist's ' best and most animated conipositions.' On the outside of the wings are j)ainted, ' St. Catherine with a sword, and St.Eloi attended by a female Saint and Angels.' The ceiling of the cupola represents the 'Virgin surrounded by Angels.' The paintino- wants grandeur of design, but is light and pleasing Ihe grand altar is exceedingly fine, and decorated with some good specimens of sculpture in bas- rchef, and in the midst is the grand picture of the 'Ascension of the Virgin,' by Rubens—a paintino- that has been copied a hundred times, and may be seen m almost every Catholic churcli on the Con- tinent. It is not considered as among the best pamtmgs of the great artist. The church of St. James, even if it were not for the splendid pictures of Rubens, would be of si!])erior interest in every respect to the Catliedral. Jl IS filled in every part with well-executed sculp- ture and paintings of great merit, though not of Ihe highest class. There is, however, one which we all agreed to place among the first in rank of the master. It is the ])icture of the * Family ot Rubens,' painted by himself, and adorns the cuapel called after liis name, and in whicli liis ashes repose. It is called, of course, a holy family; and a woman, with a child on her knee, IS the infant Jesus on the knee of his mother. •M. Jerome and St. George, standing near her, 34 ANTWERP. are the portraits of the artist and his father; and the Marv lAIagdalen, and the other female Saint, are his two wives. There are severa other figures, among which are his Mistress and Dau-hter ; tlie latter yomig female is exquisitely beautiful, and the whole family are grouped m the most tasteful manner. This picture shows the great skill of the artist, and the pains that have been bestowed on its execu, tion. 'It is as clear and bright,' to use bir Joshua Revnolds's words, * as if the sun shone on it ; and he says, moreover, that, ' To a painter who wishes « to become a colourist, or learn the art ot pro- « ducing a brilliant effect, this picture is as well * worth studying as any in Antwerp. There are several good pictures by Jordaens, Van Dyk, Van Heemsen, Otto \^nius, bchut, and Diepenbeck; but next to the Family of Ru- bens, the sculpture will be most admired. On entering the great door, against a pil ar on the left is an Alto-relievo, cut out of a single stone, ot the ' Taking down from the Cross,' which is a most elaborate and masterly piece of sculpture, the action of all the figures being expressed with great spirit, and the detail of every object inost Siinutely attended to. It was said to be by Mi- chael Vervoort, who studied at Roiiie There are also two Statues of St. Paul and St. John, both very fine productions of the same artist Tl.is church, indeed, is filled with the finest specimens both in marble and wood by the most celebrated sculptors, Du Quesnoy, Quellyn, VVil- lemsens, and Verbruggen. Among the marble bas-reliefs, is one very small, m Rubens s Chapel, ANTWERP, 35 of the ' Crucifixion,' which is exquisitely beautiful, and in which the figure of Mary is quite enchant- ing. In the specimens of wood-carving, the pulpit and the confessionals will amply repay any atten- tion that may be given to them. Tliey are chiefly by the two great artists in that line, and to whom most of the churches in the Netherlands are in- debted, Willemsens and Verbruggen. Speaking of confessionals, a plain Protestant would be apt to consider it as a symptom of laxity in tlie conduct of the inhabitants of Antwerp, when he observes the side aisles of tliis and other churches to be filled almost from end to end with these little sentry-boxes, to which the female part of society almost exclusively resort. To a rational being it is quite revolting to see young females, anxious, as it were, to whisper their little failinirsand weak- nesses, and their very thoughts, into the ear of a priest, at whose mercy they at once place their fortunes, and, perhaps, the welfare or misery of a whole family. While examining a beautiful specimen of carv- ing, which decorated one of these confessionals, a well-dressed young female stood as if wishincr to enter the box, but hesitated on observing, \vhat she justly considered us to be, a party of heretics. We turned a little on one side, and presently a strapping, athletic young priest, six feet hiirh, after giving us a scowl due to heretics like ourselves, darted into his seat, and remained for a consi- derable time to listen, as he was observed eagerly to do, to the story of the young woman. The exterior of St. James's Church is by no means undeserving of notice. The tower is finely D 2 36 ANTWERP. marked by bold projections; and, tbougb not belonging to any particular class of architecture, will deservedly attract tlie traveller's admiration. The only other church, worthy of notice, is that of St. Paul, formerly belonging to the Dominicans. In some respects,' the ornamental part of this church is not inferior to the preceding. Against the columns of the nave are i)laced the statues of the twelve Apostles ; six on each side, rather of a colossal size, but very well executed. The mag- nificent altar-piece in the choir, with its marble columns and various sculpture, is the work of Verbruggcn, as is also the marble statue of St. Paul which faces it. The picture of the * Descent from the Cross,' which decorates this splendid altar, is the production of a Belgian of the name of Cels, who studied at Rome. It is considered as a work creditable to his talents. This church is loaded with pictures by Teniers, De Grayer, Quellvn, De Vos, Jordaens, and other Belgian artists. There are no less than fifteen of them ranged in a row along the wall of the left aisle, on entering ; and in the midst of them is a picture by Eubens, which, perhaps, in point of colouring and drawing, is not inferior to any of his works, but at the same time is one of the most disagree- able, — the ' Flagellation of Christ.' In the number of these fifteen pictures is ' Christ carrying his Cross,' by Van Dyk, and a Crucifixion, by Jor- daens — both good pictures; but they, as well as tiie Kubens, are lost among the group in whicli they are ranged, and in the position in which they are placed: the light is so faint as scarcely to admit of their being seen. ANTWERP. 37 We happened to visit St. Paul's at the time of high mass, and the effect was very remarkable. The choir is separated from the nave and the side aisles by a screen, and the high altar is visible only through a great arch between it and the nave. A high flight of steps leads up to the altar. The efi'ect was quite theatrical. The platform before the altar at tiie top of the steps ; the mag- nificent candelabra, with lights burning in them ; the splendid dresses of the ofl^ciating priests; their activity and rapid movement up and down the steps ; the ringing of the beli, and the elevation of the host, seen, as it appeared, at an immense distance through the centre arch, and huge ole- ander shrubs in full flower ranged on each side, had really the effect of a scenic representation, which was not diminished by the pealing organ the band of music, and the vocal accompaniment, which tended to keep up to admiration the jeu de theatre. ^ The mass being ended, the congregation, con- sisting chiefly of women and, by far the greater number, women of a certain age, were entertained with a concert of vocal and instrumental music in aid of the organ, which is considered by the people of Antwerp the very first instrument of the kind in all Brabant, and is, at all events, unquestionably a very fine and powerful organ ; yet a regular band of wind and stringed instruments was stationed in the organ-loft to assist in the performance. Tliey played, as we were told, an overture of Mozart, after v. hicli some light pieces, which did not appear to be exactly suited to the solemnity of the place ; but the object evidently was to please the 38 ANTWERP. ANTWERP. 39 audience, while the elderly ladies, m parlicular, were crowding round one of the inferior priests to kiss some relic, which he held in one hand, and wiped with a cloth carried in the other every kiss that this precious article, whatever it might be, received, before it was presented to tlie next. But this process went on in rapid succession, while, in the mean time, the tin boxes were passmg round to collect the ^rossen, cents, or stvyvers from the poor people who had thus been favoured with a holy kiss. On hearing the lively music, and the effect it produced, one could not help thinking that Whitfield was not far wrong when he answered some of his flock, who objected to the introduction of lively tunes into his chapel, that he did not see why the devil should be allowed to run away with all the good ones. Without intending to speak slightingly of any religion, which has for its object the adoration o the Deity, or being fastidious as to the forms and ceremonies which may be thought necessary to impress the public mind with the duty and neces- sity of assembling together, for the purpose ot joining in public worship ; and fully agreeing witii the poet that, < For modes of faith let zealous bigots fig^* J ^ His can't be wrong whose life is in the right, we Still thought that the exhibition at St. Paul's appeared to outstep the bounds of decorum, by converting into a display of levity, not to say mockery, what was intended to be an act ot so- lemnity. There is also, on the outside ot this church, a piece of mummery infinitely more repre- hensible than the levity we had witnessed withm. In a small spot of ground, which may be called the churchyard, are stuck upon pedestals at least forty or fifty statues, as large as life, of prophets, saints, priests, and patrons, some of them exceed- ingly well executed, particularly the first two, which represent two of the Dominican padres, who are said to have travelled to Jerusalem, and brought back with them a model of the Holy Sepulchre, from which the one in this churchyard has been copied. This piece of imposition stands at the head of the group of statues. A mass of rock work rises up to a considerable height, meant as a representation of Mount Calvary, out of which here and there appear the figures of saints and angels. At the foot of this rock is the tomb of our Saviour, wherein he is seen through a glass window, lying on a couch, covered with a fine muslin sheet. On each side of the tomb are grottoes, wherein the horrors of purgatory are meant to be represented by a multitude of figures carved in wood, men and wo- men huddled together, with faces expressive of the greatest agony, while flames of fire are bursting forth and raging in the midst of them. One of our party stumbled upon a living subject in the person of an old woman, who was on her knees before this agonized group, and retreated with no slow step, imagining that one of the broiled souls had eff"ectcd its escape from this fiery furnace. This exhibition is, in truth, a most contemptible trick to extort money from the poor ignorant wretches who frequent the place, and who are told that they may purchase exemption from this dun- geon of torment, or at least njay shorten its dura* 40 ANTWERP. tion, in proportion to their contributions; and boxes to receive their donations are carefully placed in different parts of tlie churchyard. This contemptible exhibition, so humiliating to the people and disgraceful to the priests, is in such request in Antwerp, that the question is frequently asked of a stranger, ' Have you seen Calvarv ? ' When education, which is spreading fast over every nation of Europe, except perhaps in Spain and Portugal, whicli persist in remaining in a state of the most abject and brutal ignorance, shall have enlightened men's minds, tliese fooleries will have an end, and not till then. This is not an age in which such wretched impositions, not sanctioned by revealed religion, and not consistent with reason or common sense, can long maintain their ground. Evelyn speaks with rapture of ' delicious shades ' and walks of stately trees, which render the forti- * fied works of Antwerp one of the sweetest places * in Europe.' Since his time, too, we have heard of shady walks, and the groves and pleasure-houses within and without the walls ; but they have all vanished ; and it will require some years longer before the traveller can speak with delight on things of this kind. The inflexible Carnot, who was intrusted with the defence of the place, laid all around it bare ; and the young trees, that have since been planted, are something about the size of those which are intended to form the grand mall in the Regent's Park. The trees, however, have been replanted, and even the rising generation may perhaps enjoy tlie benefit of their shade. The Quay, at present, ANTWERP. 41 seems to be the best promenade ; and when these trees have attained ten or twelve years' growth, it will then form a handsome walk by the side of the Scheldt. Chapter II. FROM ANTWERP TO ROTTERDAM. The most convenient, as well as tlie most expe- ditious, mode of proceeding from Antwerp to Rotterdam is by the steam -boat, which, during the summer months, starts daily, at a certain hour, from either port, regulated by the state of the tide. The somewhat circuitous route among the islands, cannot make the distance much less than eighty miles, which, in our case, were performed in ten hours ; having left Antwerp at nine in the morning, and landed on the Quay of Rotterdam at seven in the evening. Our fellow-passengers were not far short of a hundred, English, Dutch, Germans, Norwegians, and Americans ; the ladies nearlv as numerous as the gentlemen. A good substantial dinner was provided at a price reasonable enough ; we had delightful weather, the water smooth, every body in good humour ; and the navigation among the islands was not only pleasant, but full of interest ; the ingenious and laborious works of the indus- trious Hollanders meeting the eye, in every possible contrivance, to save their lands and habitations from tlie inroads of the sea. Among the various peo})le of European nations assembled in the steamer, every person, with the exception of two French ladies, spoke intelligible ANTWERP TO ROTTERDAM. 43 i English. The steward had been a prisoner of war in England, and entered into the British army ; was sent to the Cape of Good Hope, where he was wounded in a skirmish with the Kaffers ; and, though young and healthy, had the good fortune to enjoy a pension for life from Chelsea Hospital. He was one of the many thousand foreigners, who, perfectly able to maintain them- selves, are mainly supported by the bounty of Great Britain ; and it would seem but reasonable, when certain gentlemen in the House of Com- mons are grudging the pittance of half-pay to officers of the British army, those of the German Legion, many of whom are serving in the armies of their respective states, should be the first to midergo a reduction, more especially when it is considered that ten shillings on the continent is equivalent to twenty in England. Tlie course pursued from Antwerp is down the Scheldt, in the first instance, as far as Batz ; then through the narrow channel close to the edge of the extensive sand, along the eastern side of South Beveland, which is the Verdronken, or sunken land ; the channel of deepest water, which is shallow enough, is here marked off by tall branches of trees, continuing for a long way, and until the fortress of Bergen-op-zoom is passed at a considerable distance to the right. We next enter the Ipng and narrow channel of Tholen ; through the Volk Rak into the Flakk^ and Hol- land's Diep. After this the steamer enters another narrow channel, more resembling an artificial canal than an arm of the sea, and it continues nearly of an equal width as far as Dordrecht or 44 ANTWERP TO ROTTERDAM. Dort, being seldom more tlian from fifty to sixty- yards wide. It has no visible artificial embank- ments, but both its sides, apparently on a level with the water, are thickly clothed with tall reeds. Yet in this narrow channel were lying at anchor a long range of square-rigged vessels, Dutch, Americans, and Norwegians, at least from two to four hundred tons burthen, but not a single En 60 ROTTERDAM. we know but little of the real liistory of migra- tory animals, or of the cause for their migration. Fortunately for the stork, it is held as a sacred bird, not only by the Dutch and Danes, but also in Asia and Africa ; for different reasons, perhaps, in these different regions. In Holland, not so much for any service it may be supposed to ren- der, in cleaning their dykes and ditches, — for the Dutch have no dishke whatever to frogs, — but on account of the alleged filial affection of the young birds for their parents. This trait was so well known to the ancients, that the stork became an emblem of filial piety ; its English name, indeed, is taken from the Greek word ^ropyrj, which signifies natural affection. A Danish author says that when the storks first make their appearance in early spring, nothing is more common than to see many of the old birds, tired and feeble with their long flight, supported occasionally on the backs of the young ones ; and the peasants have no doubt that they are laid care- fully in those very nests, in which the year before these young ones had been nurtured. Thus says the poet, — * The stork's an emblem of true piety ; Because when a^e has seized and made his dam Unfit for flight, the grateful young one takes His mother on his back, provides her food, Repaying thus her tender care of him, Ere he was fit to fly.' .The Dutch have the character of being a grave and sedate people, but they have also a great deal of dry humour and drollery about them, that is sometimes exceedingly amusing ; and no people in the world ROTTERDAM. &1 are more fond of social intercourse than they are. On every side of the city of Rotterdam are tea- gardens, and houses of entertainment, where the citizens meet to enjoy themselves with various kinds of games, drinking their wine, tea, or coffee, and smoking their pipes. They have also their Vauxhalls and Almacks in the suburbs, and what is still better, besides the societies already mentioned, ihey have a very flourishing one for the encourage- ment of literature and the fine arts. There is also a Botanical garden, which we regretted not having time to visit. The kermes, or annual fair, to whicli people of all descriptions resort from different parts of the country, was held at this time in various parts of the city ; and the wider streets were filled with booths for the sale of trinkets and children's toys, cakes, and gingerbread, with all manner of eating and drinking, tossing of pancakes, and the same kind of exhibitions and amusements as are seen in one of our own country fairs of the better kind. This annual festival had just commenced as we arrived, and was to continue a fortnight. All was cheerfulness and bustle ; but neither noise, nor tumult, nor drunkenness incommoded the inha- bitants in their houses, or the ])assengers in the streets. It was decent mirth, quiet humour, and composed drollery. We found some difficulty in getting admittance to the dock-yard. It was necessary, we were told at the gate, to have an order or a recommen- dation from some respectable inhabitant ; but as the dock-yard was situated at the extremity of the town, and our time was pressing, we desired the ^'ft n ! i 62 ROTTERDAM. ROTTERDAM. 63 porter to take our cards to tlie Scluiyl by Naght, or rear-admiral, who was acting as the commis- sioner, and whose name was De Reus. He imme- diately gave an order that we should see every thing ; on which the officer who attended us seemed to lay great stress, as a special mark of favour ; but we soon found that this ' seeing every thing' was in fact to see very little worth seeing. It consisted chieflv of three objects, which seemed to be considered as the only ' lions' that could be interesting to a landsman, and the only ones shewn to strangers, though it is more than probable there was nothing more to be seen than the naked- ness of the land. First, there was the armoury, in which the mus- kets, pikes, swords, pistols, and all the offensive weapons, except the great guns, used in ships of war, are kept, in bright order, and tastefully enough arranged. They are contained in two smalf rooms, and could not, at the most, be more than sufficient for tlie supply of five or six sail of the line. The second object of exhibition was a new steam-boat lying afloat in a canal, that was housed over, built expressly for the use of his majesty, and intended to convey himself and family between the Hague and Brussels, or any other part of his dominions, traversed by rivers or canals ; though it is probable they will soon give up the navigation of the latter by steam on experiencing the havoc and destruction which the waves, raised by the paddle- wheels, will occasion to the earthen banks. The length of this vessel measured 135 feet ; it had two engines of 35 horse power each. The chimney or funnel, and the rigging that supports it, the railing that runs along the sides, and every thing on deck that is metal, were of copper, kept bright by constant scouring and rubbing, which, in tiiis damp climate, and not the best of all pos- sible atmospheres, must be a daily drudgery to several persons. The sides are painted green, and the upper works green and gold, highly orna- mented with emblematic sculpture, covered with gilding. Even the rudder is gilt down to the water's edge. Tlie cabins are neatly fitted up, and lined with mahogany. The king and queen have each a bed-room. There are bed places for eight gentlemen attendants, and for two maids of honour. The third ' lion ' was a twenty-oared barge, of a beautiful model, built also for the use of the king. This magnificent boat is sixty-four feet long, splendidly painted in blue and gold. On the prow, which projects considerably beyond the cut-water,is the figure of Neptune, with his trident, sitting in a splendid car, drawn by four tritons, exceedingly well carved, and richly gilt ; the whole of the carved work on this barge, and the steam- boat, is indeed far superior to any of those gilt logger-heads, which we sometimes see stuck under the bowsprit of our ships of war. The builders of our dock-yards in fact admit that the art of carving wood in ship building has of late years been lost. AVith the Dutch it is kept as a separate branch, and in each of their yards is a carver's shop. We next visited some of their storehouses, which in this yard are not extensive, but they were nearly \\i' .^■'i ( t i 64 ROTTERDAM. empty. The timber was scanty, and mostly fa- shioned, in which state, we were told, it is brought into the yard. r ^ ^ i A seventy-four gun ship, not further advanced than her keel, had just been laid down, and her floor-timbers were all ready, but we did not ob- serve any of the other timbers for her frame. The roof under which she was to be built very much resembled those in our dock-yards ; but we saw nothing of those galleries within it, which have been commended as an improvement on our own. Under a second roof was a fifty- gun frigate building, and under a third, one of the same class repairing. The new frigate had a round stern, similar to those which Sir Robert Seppings was ac- cused of having pilfered from the Dutch, but which, though perhaps superior for all naval purposes, he has reconverted almost to square ones, reserv- ing, however, the principle of upright timbers, which by giving strength constitutes its greatest merit. The Dutch frigate's stern was certainly round with a projection in the centre, like one of those sentry boxes sometimes seen in the angle of a bastion, and which serves in the ship as the sub- stitute for a quarter gallery. ^ . • r • . The opening between the timbers of this tngate were filled in, so as to make the hull one solid mass, and the builder took care to observe, as if it was something new, that if a plank should start, there would be no danger of the ship sinking. We did not go into the hold, but our conductor said that she was strengthened with diagonal braces, and that all her bohs below the water-line were of copper. They also made use of straight ROTTERDAM. 65 timbers, and the futtocks of the ribs had square heads and heels fastened by cogues. In short it appeared to us that the whole of Seppings inven- tions had been adopted in the dockyard of Rot- terdam ; and so satisfied were they of the utility of roofs, that all the small craft even were building under cover. The timber, made use of in the Dockyard of this place, is brought by water from various parts of the Netherlands, and is squared, and mostly fashioned in the forests, but being used without a proper degree of seasoning, the ships are not of long duration. This was particularly the case with those built under Buonaparte's reign, at Antwerp, one half of them being rotten without ever going to sea, and nearly useless at the end of five or six years. In fact all the German timber is light and porous, in comparison with our best Suffolk oak, and liable to that speedy species of decay which has been called, improperly enough, the dry-rot ; a dis- ease which was converted into one of the greatest bugbears that, for a long time, had infested our naval arsenals, but the ghost of which has, at last, been laid for ever in the Dead Sea. One would be led to conclude, that the Dutch must experience a considerable degree of incon- venience from the want of dry docks, though they seem not to feel it. In our dockyards, they are so common, that the bottom of a gun-brig or a cut- ter cannot be looked at, without their assistance. When the Dutch have occasion to exaniine the bottoms of their largest ships, the operation of heaving them down, while afloat, is resorted to, by means of careening pits, in wliich the necessary F W 66 ROTTERDAM. blocks and purchases for the purpose are placed. It is, however, but an awkward process, when performed on large ships of war, and not without considerable danger, but it is resorted to in pre- ference to the certainty of incurring a large ex- penditure for the construction of a dry dock, especially in a country where the foundations are bad, and no materials to be had except what must be imported from other countries at a great expense. Chapter III. FROM ROTTERDAM TO AMSTERDAM. There are two methods of making the journey from Rotterdam to Amsterdam, as there are, in- deed, between almost every two towns throughout Holland,— by land and by water. The latter is the most common, and most easy and convenient as well as by much the cheapest, but is somewhat slower than postmg ; the treckscuvt going barely at the rate of four miles an hour, while post horses or others hired for the journey, will make good a little more than five miles an hour. The dis- tance in eitlier way, in the present case, is nearly the same, as the straight line of road generally accompanies, in a parallel direction, the straight canal, and in most parts of it has a straight row of trees on each side; evervthinrr in Holland, where it can conveniently be done, "being laid out with a line. The trifling difference, however, in point of speed is not the only objection which a stranger, desirous of seeing the countrv, will make to the water conveyance. ^ The banks of the canal are sometimes so high that the view is intercepted by them, and confined to the line of the canal. We, therefore, hired a four-wheeled carriao-e known in Holland by the name of char-a-banc, which, with Its three cross seats, we found to be sufficiently roomy to hold, without inconvenience, F 2 68 ROTTERDAM TO AMSTERDAM. »1 I six persons and tlieir luggage, besides a servant on the dickev. In this vehicle the owner agreed to carry us to Amsterdam in two days ; and for the hire of tliis, with two horses, the owner feed- ing them, and paying the driver, we were charged forty-eight guilders or florins (four pounds ster- ling), tiie distance being about fifty miles, or a little more. On the 11th of August, about noon, we lett Botterdam. The road, as we afterwards found to be common throughout Holland, was paved with a particular kind of brick, called a clinker, set closely on edge, very neatly fitted together, and as level as a bowling green. After running for some distance along the side of the canal, the road branched ofi*, and here commenced a continued succession of neat, and sometimes very handsome villas on both sides, and at no great distance from it. Here and there an elegant chateau occurred, surrounded by an extensfve domain well planted with patches of trees, but generally in straight lines ; and for the most part the mansion was approached througli a grand avenue. The boundaries also of these large estates are frequently terminated by avenues of trees, each row belonging to separate proprietors ; but the division of property is mostly marked by a dyke and a ditch. Most of these country-houses, whether large or small, have a ditch of stagnant water dividing the little front garden from the road; and close to this ditch, generally in- deed rising out of it, and not unfrequently be- striding it, is sure to be found a small building, square or octagonal, csiWedsi lust- hu is, orpleasure- ROTTERDAM TO AMSTERDAM. 69 house, with a window in each side, commanding a complete view of the road. These little build- ings or pleasure-houses are so very numerous as to form a characteristic feature of this part of the country. They occur, indeed, as we afterwards found, by the sides of the roads throughout South Holland. In the summer and autumn evenings they are the common resort of families, where the men enjoy their pipes with beer or wine, and the females sip their tea ; and both derive amusement in observing and conversing with the passengers on the road. In any other country, these would be considered as just the seasons of the year, and the time of the day, when these ditch-bestriding pleasure-houses would be shunned, the effluvia from the stagnant water being then strongest, and the frogs, which are everywhere seen skipping about, most lively and noisy. But the same vitiated taste, which has selected the ditch for the site of the pleasure-house, may deem the croaking of the frog, when in full song, just as melodious to their ears, as the note of the nightingale is to their more southern neighbours. As there is no want of water in any part of Holland, the flower-gardens attached to these villas have generally a fish-pond in some part of them, and when they happen to face the road, the pleasure-house is frequently placed on a hil- lock in the middle of the garden, and is acces- sible only by a bridge or a flight of steps. Each villa has its name, or some motto inscribed over the gateway, the choice of which is generally meant to bespeak content and comfort on the part of the owner, and they afford a source of amuse- ii! n 70 ROTTERDAM TO AMSTERDAM. nient to the stranger as he passes alonfr. Thus, among others, we read, ' Lust en rust/ Pleasure and ease ; ' Wei to vrede,' Weil contented ; ' Myn geneaentheid is voldoen/ My desire is satisfied ; • Myn lust en leven,' My pleasure and life ; ' Niet zoo guaalvk,' Not so bad ; ' Gerustelyk en wel to vrede,' Tranquil and content ; ' Vreindschap en gezelschap,' Friendship and sociability ; * Het vermaak is in't hovenieren.' There is pleasure in gardening. And over the entrance to one of the tea-gardens, near Rotterdam, was inscribed, * Het vleesch potten van Egypte.' Some of the larger gardens abound with 'fruits and vegetables, and beds and borders of flowering shrubs and plants are laid out in all the grotesque shapes that can be imagined. It must be confessed, however, that an air of comfort presides over these villas. Most of the dwelling-houses are gaily painted in lively colours, all the offices and outhouses are kept in neat order, while the verdant meadows are covered with the finest cattle, mostly speckled brown and white. At the distance of about eight miles from Rot- terdam is the ancient town of Delft, once famous for its woollen manufactures, and more especially its pottery ware, which employed many thousands of its inhabitants, and which was known under the name of Delft-ware all over Europe; but the superior and cheaper article, manufactured by Wedgwood, gave a death-blow to the potteries of DeltC which can scarcely now be said to exist. The traveller will observe, in passing through this town, a fine old Gothic church, and also one of a more recent date, with a lofty spire ; but as they THE HAGUE. n were said to contain only monuments of the Family of the House of Orange, of Grotius and Van Tromp, and that there was little worth seeing in the town, we did not stop ; but in passing through a spacious market-place, we could observe a copious supply of fine vegetables and the common fruits of the country. The streets and houses appeared to be kept in neat and clean order, but the town wore a dull aspect, the more so, perhaps, after just leaving the bustle of Rotterdam. The whole country around Delft, with the exception of some contiguous gardens and potatoe beds, con- sisted of rich pasturage, and a great number of very fine cattle were grazing in the meadows. No appearance of tillage, except small patches of stubble here and there, and a few enclosures of clover. The same kind of villas, parks, and gardens, as those we had passed continue from Delft to the Hague, which is not above five or six miles. Two or three villages occur on the road, one of which is Ryswick, of no other note than being the place where a treaty of peace was concluded in 1697. THE HAGUE. The Hague is a well-built, handsome, and clean town, said to contain thirty- five thousand inha- bitants. In passing through the streets there is neither crowd nor bustle ; but one sees an evident appearance of fashion among the inhabitants, which is not to be observed in the commercial and manufacturing towns of Holland. This, indeed, was the case even under the old regime, when the *.■} 72 THE HAGUE. Stadth older used to pass many montlis of tlie year at the Hague ; and it has become a still more fashionable residence since the Restoration, and the conversion of the republic into a monarchy, the presence of the royal family always drawing after it a multitude of employes, foreign and do- mestic. It is now the residence, in alternate years, of the King of the Netherlands ; and the States- general hold their meetings during that residence in the halls appended to the old palace, near the Vyver-berg, .or Fish-pond Hill, at the upper or northern end of the town, which, of course, is the fashionable quarter. Here, too, is the Hotel de Ville, or Town- hall. In this neighbourhood the houses are generally elegant, and the adjoining country as beautiful as a flat and even country can be made. Close to this quarter is the deer park, a small meadow, with a wood behind it. Through this wood is the public road which leads to Lcyden, and passes close to the * House in the Wood,' which belonged to the Princess Amelia de Solms, and is now the occasional residence of the King of the Netherlands, or some part of his family. It is a neat pavilion, but not deserving the name of a palace. It once contained some good pictures ; but little is now left within it worthy of attention except the ceiling of the saloon, part of which was painted by Rubens. It is pretended that in tliis wood are oak trees of five hundred years' growth ; but we saw none that, in England, would not attain the size of the largest at most in one hundred and twenty years. Some of these, however, and the beeches and lin- I H ti LEYDEN. 73 • r I I t ' A • ^ •* * (lens, are of a respectable size and healtliy foliage. Our time would not permit us to visit the public library nor the museum, which we regretted the less, having understood that the best pictures had been removed to Amsterdam, and that tliose that remained were mostly the work of Dutch artists^ and by no means of the first class. But the cele- brated ' Ox' of Potter still remains at the Hague. We therefore pushed on for Leyden, the distance being about eight miles. ' Beyond the Hague the estates of the nobility and gentry are on a larger scale than any we had yet met with ; and of course the smaller villas and the lust-houses were less frequent. Many parts of the road reminded us of England, the grounds being broken by coppice- wood, in which, when cut down, the young standard trees were left growing ; and there was in places some little ine- quahty of surface — something that might be said to approach the size of a hill. The mansions generally stood at the head of one of the long avenues which run through the domains; and those avenues which led to no house, from their length and level surface, were interminable to the eye. LEYDEN. Leyden is a very fine town, situated on that branch of the Rhine, which alone carries with it its name to the sea, and which surrounds the town,, supplying its numerous canals with water. The Rhinland through which it flows is esteemed the garden of Holland. There is no doubt of the t-1 74 LEYDEN. Romans having had a station on the spot where Leyden stands, as several Roman antiquities have been found ; and the remains of an old castle still exist on a mound in the middle of the town, sup- posed to be of Roman structure, though the pre- vailing opinion seems to be that this burg^ as it is called, was built by Hengist, after his return from his conquest in Britain. Leyden made a glorious stand in opposing the Spaniards under Baldis, when he laid siege to it in 1 574, on which occasion six thousand of its in- habitants are said to have perished by famine, disease, and tlie sword. The devotion of the citi- zens, on the above occasion, procured from Prince William of Holland, who relieved the place, the highest praise, and, what was of more importance, funds for the establishment of an University, which is deservedly esteemed among the best disciplined and the best regulated school for the classics, law, medicine, and divinity, on the whole continent. They were just now employed in adding con- siderably to the buildings of the University, the number of students, which generally amounted to about three hundred, having increased to five hundred within the last three years. Attached to the University is a Museum of Natural History and Comparative Anatomy, beautifully and scien- tifically arranged, and a library of fifty thousand volumes. To the Museum has recently been added the splendid collection of birds belonging to Mr. Temmink of Amsterdam, the produce chiefly of Java and the other oriental possessions of the Dutch ; and Professor Lesson is probably the first ornithologist in Europe. LEYDEN. 75 The Botanical Garden does credit to all who belong to it, being kept iw the highest possible order. The walks are beautiful, and without a pebble : they are covered with a mixture of peat earth and the spent dust of tanners' oak-bark. Tlie garden is tastefully laid out in clumps of shrubbery in various forms, round which, on bor- ders, are the various plants, named and numbered according to the system of Jussieu. The whole extent is seven acres, four of which have been added only a few years ago, and laid out in good taste by the late Professor Brugman as a garden for the reception of medicinal plants, and for the use of the medical students. Among the hot-house plants we saw a date palm with fruit upon it, wliich the gardener said had been there two hundred years. It may be questioned whether the Botanical Garden of Leyden and the Museum are not supe- rior to the Jardin des Plants and its Museum in Paris. Taken altogether, we were of opinion that they had a decided preference, though they wanted the attraction of living animals, of the influence of which we have had experience in the multitudes that flock to the Zoological Gardens of London. Near the University a large open space, planted with trees, serves as a promenade for the inha- bitants. It seems that this place was once covered with good houses, which were destroyed in 1807 by the explosion of a vessel laden with gun* powder, when more than one hundred and fifty persons, and, among others, the two professors, Luzac and Kluit, perished under their ruins. No stronger proof is wanting of the decay of the trade and manufactures of Leyden than that of convert m a I • 'e 9 76 LEYDEN. ing the ground, where some of the best houses stood when the accident happened, and which is the most agreeable part of the town, into a mere promenade, instead of replacing them by others. In all our walks we did not observe a single new house building ; and, in fact, we were given to understand that the population had decreased a full fourth part of what it was in the days of its prosperity. It is a common observation that the High-street of Oxford may be reckoned among the finest in Europe ; but striking as it is, those who hold this opinion can know very little of Europe. Without going farther, we may observe that the Breede- street or Broad-street of Leyden, though far from being one of the finest in Europe, is superior, in some respects, to that of Oxford. In the first place, it is much wider, and at least three times the length ; and, contrary to the usual practice of laying out streets by the Dutch, it has the same gently-winding turn, but wants the gradual ascent, which contributes so much to the beauty of the High-street of Oxford. The liouses in that of Ley- den are generally superior and more picturesque ; and though the number of colleges of ancient architecture, with their turrets, towers, and spires, in Oxford, exceed the number of pubhc buildings in the Broad-street of Leyden, there is one at least that will bear comparison with the most picturesque college in High-street. This is the old Hotel de Ville, built, as appears by an inscription in front, in the year 1574. It has a tall spire, somewhat remarkable in its architecture, and not inelegant. It is built with a dark blue stone, which has the alSf '^a!};r-?r/. ' wW^//^ ^-(^i^i' // h df n LEYDEN. ^1 appearance of black marble, and its prominent parts are tipped with gilding. The body of the building lias nearly thirty windows on a line in front, three pediments or gables highly orna- mented, a handsome balustrade, surmounted by a ridge of stone globes, and the whole front of this remarkable j)iece of architecture may be said to be ' "With glist'ning spires and pinnacles adorn' d.' The ground-floor of this town-house is appropriated as a market for butchers*-meat, but no appearance of it is visible from the street. This is also the case, as we afterwards found, under the old Hotel de Ville at Bruges. Nothing can exceed the cleanliness of Leyden in all its streets, whether those with or those without canals. The former, with their quays, are particularly neat ; and as there is little trade, and, of course, i^^i shipping that carry masts, the bridges are mostly of stone, of which they pretend to say there are not fewer than one hundred and fifty. We paid a visit to the ancient church of St. Peter, which was built in 1321. It is not only the largest in the town, but by far the best speci- men in the style of Gothic architecture, perhaps, in all Holland ; and the inhabitants persuade themselves it is also the first in point of decora- tions and magnificence. As in all the reformed churches, so in this, the Iconoclasts have left nothing of ornamental sculpture remaining that formerly belonged to it, and have substituted only a few monuments in its place. One of these, erected to the memory of the celebrated Boerhave, 78 LEYDEN. LKYDEN. 79 is carefully pointed out to stranprers. It is an urn» supported on a pedestal of black marble, having on the front a medallion bearing the bust of the deceased, with this inscription : — * Simplex sigillum veri.' And below it is the following : — * Salutifero Boerhavii genio sacrum.' There are several other monuments of distin- guished professors of the University, but none that are calculated to attract much attention. The choir, as usyal, is skreened off by a railing of bronze, and stripped of all its former Romanist decorations. The environs of Leyden are extremely beautiful, and the whole country around is studded with villas, gardens, and pleasure-houses, standing, as usual, over ditches or in the middle of ponds. The most frequented and, indeed, the most delightful promenade, shaded by a double row of trees, is without the walls, and close by the side of that branch of the Rhine which waters and surrounds the town. This gently-moving stream — so gentle that its current is scarcely perceptible — may here be about from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet in width ; and the bank opposite to the walk, and between the river and the wall, partakes in some places of the picturesque, being high and well clothed with shrubbery-plants, and briars and tangling creepers. It would, perhaps, be difficult to point out in any part of the world a more en- chanting walk on a fine summer's evening than that which borders the Rhine where it skirts the walls of Leyden. A very mistaken notion seems to have been entertained that the insignificance of the Rhine, in this part of its course, is owing to its waters being lost in the sands. Nothing can be more incorrect than such an idea. That this Leyden branch is of comparative insignificance is very true, but instead of being absorbed, the waters of this noble river, on the contrary, pursue their course in full vigour, and with increased volumes, mutaio no- nime, into the sea. On its reaching the great Delta of Holland, at a place called Schanke, half- way between Emmerick and Arnheim, the stream of the Rhine is first divided : the larger portion, the great mass, indeed, of water, turning to the westward, takes the name o^ IFaal, (i\\e vallum of the Romans,) which, perhaps, may originally have been an artificial trench or canal. Passing Nimeguen it still retains the name of Waal, and being joined below Theil by the Meuse or Maas, and passing Gorcum, these united waters split into a multitude of branches, some of which empty themselves into an internal sea among the Zea- land Islands, called Holland's Diep ; but a large portion of the united streams of the Waal and Meuse, at the same time, continues its course, under the name of Merwede, to Dort, where it again divides itself into the Old Maas, and the true Maas, the latter of which flows by Rotterdam, and is rejoined by the Old Maas before it reaches the sea. All these waters, therefore, with the exception of the Meuse are literally and bond fide the waters of the Rhine ; but these are not the whole of its waters. If we return to Schanke, where the Rhine first -60 LEYDEN. aivides into two branches, the larger of which we have thus traced to the sea, we find the northern or smaller branch still retaining the name of Rhine ; but it is again divided just before reach- ing Arnheim, into two streams, the more easterly on° , under the name of Yssel, passing by Zutphen and Deventer, and falling into the Zuyder Zee, — while the other branch, passing by Arnheim and Rhenen, is once more divided into the Kromme River, which runs through Utrecht, and the Leek, which joins the Maas a little above Rotterdam. At Utrecht the Kromme branch is again divided, the larger and more westerly brancli continuing the name of the Old Rhine, but stript of all its grandeur, by the many divisions and subdivisions, flows on to Leyden, from whence it is carried by an artificial channel or canal into the sea at Katwyk : a part of it, however, branches ofT to the northward, and contributes to swell the large lake called the Haarlem Meer. The smaller and northerly branch, sent off at Utrecht, is called the Amstel,' which, after contributing a supply of water to the numerous canals of Amsterdam, passes into the south-west corner of the Zuyder Zee. By a decree of his Netherlands' Majesty, this noble river has been doomed to undergo a further change, which may be called a political degra- dation. In consequence of some commercial regulations with * Les Etats Rivcraines,' his majesty orders that the Leek shall be considered as the sole continuation of the Rhine, meaning thereby, it may be presumed, that the Helvetians, Germans, and Prussians bordering on the Rhine, shall have access to the sea only by the Maas, into which the Leek falls near Rotterdam. LEYDEN. 81 The province of Holland in general, however, and the district of Rhinland in particular, are most deeply concerned in the smallest or Leyden branch, as by the proper management of this stream only is that part of the country preserved from one sweeping inundation. The main works for this purpose are at Katwyk, where, bv very simple but effectual contrivances of flood-^gates, the waters of the Rhme are let out into the sea, and those of the sea shut out from the land. The distance from Leyden is about ten miles, through five of which nearest to the sea, a broad and deep canal lias been cut, across which a triple set of double gates have been thrown, the first having two pair, the second four pair, and the last seven pair, with stone piers of excellent masonry between them. Against these last gates the tide rises twelve feet* and to take off the pressure, an equal depth ii^u^''^^''"^^'^ ^" ^^'^ ^'■^''' ^^^ ^vi^J"» them. When the Rhine has accumulated behind the other gates to a certain height, the whole of the gates are thrown open at low water, the rush of which completely scours the passage of sand, which, be- fore the adoption of these gates, used constantly to choke up the channel of the Rliine ; and the waters, thus impeded, frequently inundated the country, and had more than once threatened Leyden with destruction. It has been calculated that these seven gates, when thrown open, are capable of discharging a volume of water not less than one hundred thousand cubic feet in a second of time. Still, however, we were given to understand that the commissioners for the management of the Rhin- o i 82 LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. land waters are not without tlieir apprehensions of the inefficacv of these sluices, on the breaking up of a long frost, or the conthuiance of heavy rains ; and it wa's rumoured, that an engineer was expected from England to examine and report his opmion whether anything more, and what, could be done for the better security of the country. If the danger arises from that part of the Rhine which lies ''between Ley den and the sea, why not turn the whole of the water into that channel which already exists between Leyden and the Haarlem Meer,'from whence it would be received into the Uke Y, and by it carried otf into the Zuyder Zee ? The surface of the country evidently declines to the northward ; and it is not improbable that, even before the building of Leyden, and before the water of this branch was diverted from its northern course in order to supply the various canals of the town, the channel whicli com- municates with the Haarlem Meer was the natural and only bed of the Rhine. But perhaps it might be feared that an increase of the body of°water in the Y might endanger the safety of Amsterdam, on whose shores that city stands. That tlie whole mass of the Rhine once continued its northerly course into the Zuyder Zee, appears very probable, and equally so that the Waal was a vallum or trench opened by the Romans, in con- sequence of which the great' stream of the Rhine was diverted from the original channel, given by the natural slope of the country, into a westerly direction. We observed, indeed, on our route from Utreclit towards Rheenen, evident marks of the ancient LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. 83 bed of the Rhine in the rounded pebbles on the bank by the roadside, now at a considerable dis- tance from the diminished stream. Supposing this to have been so, the Zuyder Zee was the great mouth by which this noble river discharged its waters into the Northern Ocean. The Texel, and the six or seven other islands to the northward of it, are evidently formed from the alluvion that the river in its ancient course carried down. It is, indeed, asserted and believed, but on what testi- mony the Dutch do not say, that the Zealand islands were once a part of the Continent; and we know that not three hundred years ago many thousand acres were swept away from the eastern side of South Beveland, which are now a vast expanse of sand. A great part of Friesland and of Rhinland is still a turbary, (or peatmoss,) and so are the shores of Zuyder Zee. One may easily imagine that when once this light and spungy kind of earth was lifted up by the water underneath, the recoil of the waves of the sea on one side, and the impeded current of the river acting upon it, would easily carry off whole masses into the ocean. The extraordinary shal- lowness of the Zuyder Zee, the numerous sand banks and flat islands in it, and the nature of its shores, give countenance to the supposition that it was once a great peatmoss, which has been broken up and swept away by the united waters of the sea and the Rhine, before the latter was diverted into tlie channel of the Waal. But it is time to resume our journey. On the 12th of August, about ten in the morn- ing, we continued our journey towards Haarlem, G 2 84 LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. I ' f I on a road which, for its goodness, smootli and beautiful as they are in any part of Holland, is not exceeded in the whole of this country. In travelling along it, the passenger is gratified by witnessing a constant succession of gentlemen's seats, the'' grounds of many of them laid out in exceeding good taste, and all of them kept in neat order ; and this continues for sixteen miles. On approaching Haarlem within a few miles, the meer or lake of that name, which is, in fact, a little sea, is seen to the eastward, between some of the sand hills which its waves have thrown up. By the inequalities of the surface which extend to the side of the road, and the mixture of sand and gravel of which they are composed, it would api)ear That this sea must at one time have been of much greater extent than at present. Most of these eminences or hills, if we may so call them, are generally planted with firs and other northern trees ; the parks or domains over which they are scattered are surrounded with our ordinary park paling ; cottages here and there are seen by the roadside with their little cabbage and potatoe gar- dens ; hawthorn-hedges are not unfrcquent ; and, in short, these and some other indications of the approach to Haarlem, wore so many appearances of what we every day see in England, that, with- out any great stretch of the imagination, one might suppose one's self to be travelling in some corner of the British isles. Immediately before the entrance into the town of Haarlem is a wood of considerable extent, in which is an excellent liouse, that once belonged to Mr. Hope of Amsterdam. It was purchased LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. 85 by Bonaparte, as a residence for his brother Louis, for five hundred thousand guilders ; about forty- two thousand pounds sterling. We did not remain long in Haarlem. It ap- peared to us very much like the other towns in Hol- land, very well built, very clean, and very dull. Its population was said to be greatly diminished, and its once flourishing manufactures of silks, velvets, and damasks, for which it was famed, have now nearly disappeared, and that little remained but the weaving of linen and woollen clothes and of lace. In fact, it was stated that the population, which was once reckoned to be forty-eight thousand, was reduced to about seventeen thousand. It still, however, lias its Academy of Sciences, and the Teylerian Society, founded by an individual from whose name it is derived. It has a library, with a collection of philosophical instruments, and of subjects of natural history ; and lectures are de- livered in all the different departments of science. The river Spaarn, issuing from the Haarlem Meer, traverses the city, and having supplied its canals, passes on and joins the lake or creek of the Zuvder Zee, on the southern shore of which the city of Amsterdam is built. The name of this narrow prolongation of the Zuyder Zee is written on the Dutch maps Het Y; a name that has somewhat puzzled strangers, particularly if you ask a Dutchman what it is called, as he is sure to say it is Tai. The fact is, the letter y in Dutch is pronounced the same as the i in English, or ai ; and by abbreviating the definite article het,, the^ it becomes in common parlance 7 ai. This will ex- plain how our map-makers have written it, some Tai^ 86 LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. some Tye, and others, still worse, the Ye, on their maps. A Frenchman in describing Amsterdam, calls it the E-grec. Any inquiry as to the origin or meaning of the name was useless. In fact, the letter y in^their alphabet has no particular mean- ing ; but as its pronunciation is precisely that of ai, and as this syllable, or something like it, sig- nifies water in many of the northern languages, and in North Holland there are other rivers or waters named the Au and the Ee (Ea), it is not, perhaps, an overstrained etymology to suppose that ' the JT is nothing more than ' the water. The Ee or the Ea is the provincial name of the water which flows out of Windermere and Conis- ton lakes down the Cartmel sands. There is little more to be seen at Haarlem than the church of St. Bavon, in which is the celebrated organ whose size and tones, and number of pipes, have been supposed to be without a parallel in this class of instruments ; but as we had seen and heard that of St. Lawrence, at Rotterdam, we did not deem it worth the loss of time that would have been occasioned by waiting for the organist and bellows-blowers, to give us a peal. We should, however, have been tempted to delay awhile, had the season of the year been that m which the tulip, the hvacinths, and the jonquils are in blossom, for which the adjoining gardens are celebrated, and with which they annually Bupplv our florists in England. The art of raising these" bulbous-rooted plaints so as to produce their flowers in perfection, simple as it may appear to be, is not yet domesticated with us ; we have Still our fresh importations annually from Holland. LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. 87 J f The gaudy tulip was an object which at one time drove the grave, the prudent, and the cautious Dutchman, as wild as ever did the South Sea bubble, or the senseless speculations that took possession of our countrymen a few years ago, the gullible John Bull/ The enormous prices that were actually given for real tulip bulbs, of particular kinds, formed but a small fraction of the extent to which the mercantile transactions of this gaudy flower was carried. If we may give credit to Beckman, who states it on Dutch ' authorities, four hundred perifs in weight (some- thing less than a grain), of the bulb of a tulip named Admiral Leifkeii, cost four thousand four hundred florins; and two hundred of another, named Semper Aitgnstus, two thousand florins. Of this last, he tells us, it once happened there were only two roots to be had, the one at Am- sterdam, the other at Haarlem; and that for one of these were offered four thousand six hundred florins, a new carriage, two grey horses, and a complete set of harness ; and that an- other person offered twelve acres of land. It is almost impossible to give credence to such madness. The real truth of the story is, that these tulip roots were never bought or sold, but they became the medium of a systematised, species of gambling. The bulbs, and'their divisions into perils, became like tlie diff'erent stocks in our public funds, — the objects of the bulls and bears, — and were bought and sold at diff'erent prices from day to dav, the parties settling their account at fixed periods ; the innocent tulips, all the while, never once appearing in the transactions, nor even 88 LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. thought of. * Before the tulip season was over,' says Beckman, ' more roots were sold and pur- * chased, bespoke and promised to be delivered, than * in all probability were to be found in the gardens ' of Holland ; and when Semper Avgustits \yas not ' to be had any where, which happened twice, no * species, perbaps, was oftener purchased and ' sold.' This kind of sheer gambling reached at length to such a height, that the government found it necessary to interfere and put a stop to it. On the great Market-place of Haarlem is a statue of Lawrence Koster, who is supposed to have been the inventor of printing. He holds forth triumphantly, as it were, in his hands the letter A as a type' of his claim to the invention. It faces the house in which he lived, and in front of which is the following inscription : — * Memorl?D sacnim Tyj)Ograi»hia, ars artium omnium conservatrix, hie primum inveuta, circa amium 1440. It is asserted tliat the first book that was printed is Le Miroir de Noire Salut, which is preserved with great care in the Hotel de Ville,and another copy of which is said to be preserved in the public library of Hoorn. The prevailing opinion, however, is, that Faust was the inventor, who, with Guttenberg, printed the first book in Mayence. In op])osition to this, it is maintained by the people of Haarlem that Faust was a servant of Koster, who stole his types, and fled with them to Mayence. If the assertion be true that Faust was, about the time when the invention is said to have taken place, the servant of Koster, one of two things is pretty- clear, — either that Faust did carry off his master's f LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. 89 I invention, or that Koster received the first intima- tion of the art from Faust while in his service. So recently as 1822, a commission, composed of several learned professors, investigated these claims, and reported that it appeared from his- torical documents, that Koster's invention dates somewhere between 1420 and 1425. Haarlem is still famous for casting types, particularly those of Greek and Hebrew ; for printing the latter language, the Jews mostly derive their types from this city. From Haarlem to Amsterdam the face of the country has wholly changed its character. The road takes now an easterly direction, and nothing meets the eye but one continued meadow, inter- sected by ditches to drain off the water, without a tree, or almost a bush in any direction, and termi- nated, after a few miles travelling, by the Haar- lem Meer on the south, and the Lake or great water Ai, on the nortli. A fine broad paved causeway, of ten miles in length, conducts the traveller from Haarlem to Amsterdam ; for five miles it is laid out in a mathematical straight line, and is bordered by a noble canal parallel to it. The other side of the road is bordered by a ditch and a row of willows. These willows, and the causeway, and the canal, are so perfectly straight and parallel, that the eye placed at one end of the five miles, would see the other end, were it not hidden, as it were, below the surface, by the natu- ral convexity of the earth. At the end of the first five miles, the waters of the Haarlem Meer and the Ai communicate be- neath a narrow artificial isthmus, having a gentle ff^' so LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. swell resembling that of a bridge ; over tliis the causeway is continued. At this spot the relative heights of the two waters of the Ai and the Meer are nicely regulated, by means of sluices and gauge- posts, marked into very nice and minute divisions ; and the greatest attention is paid to the state of the waters at this particular spot, the safety of Amsterdam and the adjacent country from inun- dations depending much on the management of these two inland seas. The Dutch are said to have a plan for draining Haarlem Meer, and thereby gaining about sixty thousand acres of land ; the success must depend on its depth, but a few hundred pumps worked by windmills would easily and speedily empty its water (if moderately shallow) into the Ai. Close to the narrow isthmus, that divides them, is a neat inn, where carriages and horses are to be had ; and where also is an ancient chateau, named Swannenburgh, in front of which, and on the pil- lars of the gate, are sculptured several figures of swans. Having crossed the narrow neck, the canal and the road recommence with an angle, inclining more to an easterly direction, and continue for another five miles, close up to the gate of Amster- dam. The canal is supplied by the Ai^ through several inlets. In fact it forms in many places a part of the Ai^ and is only separated from it, and the navigation protected, by rows of strong posts, •called a boom, which, by breaking the waves, pre- serve the opposite bank of the canal or the cause- way, which would otlierwise be constantly exposed to tlie danger of being washed away. A steady and undeviating perseverance in uni- LEYDEN TO AMSTERDAM. 91 formity, order, and regularity, is discernible in all the public works of the Dutch. An instance of it struck us forcibly in proceeding along this causeway. By the side of the canal is a narrow tracking path for the horses which draw the treckschuyts and other craft. ^ To prevent them from encroaching on the carriage road, a series of hard blue-stone posts, about three feet high, all of the same form and dimensions, are firmly fixed in the ground at equal intervals of twenty yards, making the total number about eight hun- dred and eighty. These stones must all have been brought either from the banks of the Rhine or the Meuse, probably the latter, for nothing of the kind is to be found in all Holland. On arriving at Amsterdam, we put up at a very excellent hotel, on one of the Burghwaals, called the Waapenen van Amsterdam, which and the Doelen, are the best in this city. J Chapter IV. AMSTERDAM. Neither the approacli to Amsterdam, nor the entrance into it througii the Haarlem-gate, liolds out to the stranger any promise that he is about to be gratified vvitli the sight of a hirge and beau- tiful city. The environs on tliis side, far from wearing a tempting appearance, very much re- semble that low tract of marshy land, wliicli Stretches along the banks of the Thames between Greenwich and Woolwich ; an extensive flat of dark green meadow, intersected with dykes and ditches ; but somewhat enlivened by the constant vv^hirling motion of some two or three hundred windmills, some grinding corn and seeds, but most of them employed in pumping water from one ditch into another, till finally it is disposed of in the sea. On entering the city, the first object that catches the eye of the stranger is a row of tall houses, built without any regularity of design, along a <]uay facing the Zuyder Zee ; some leaning one way and some another, and all out of the per- pendicular, threatening momentarily to fall. We looked in vain for trees, which we had expected to find like those on the Boomtjies of Rotterdam. The first turning to the right, however, from this quay, afforded a more favourable prospect ; but \ \ i\ AMSTERDAM. 93 still this capital of Holland had a sort of Wap- ping or Thames-street appearance, and looked in- ferior in every respect to Rotterdam. A better acquaintance satisfied us of the error which the first impression had created. Amsterdam is situated on the south bank of the creek or lake Ai of which we have spoken, just where the river Amstel, after pervading the city, falls into it from the south. This extraordinary city — beyond all doubt the most extraordinary that Europe affords, not even Venice excepted, as to its situation, its rise, and rapid progress to the state in which it now is — dates back its origin to some part of the thirteenth century, it being then a mere assemblage of fishermen's huts, perched on the drier and more elevated patches of a swamp, but not high enough to secure them completely from being occasionally submerged by the sea. But the superabundant products which these poor industrious people were able to derive from the seas and the waters by which they were surrounded, met with a ready market from their northern and southern neighbours. The result was naturally a rapidly increasing intercourse between the Bata- vians, the Belgians, and the northern natives on the Baltic, with whom they exchanged their dried and salted fish for various kinds of grain and clothing ; and this commerce brought the mer- chants of these countries to their shores, some of whom found it to their advantage to reside occa- sionally among them, others to form connections, and domiciliate themselves entirely, in spite of their bogs and swamps ; to build store and dwel- ling houses, and to adopt means for the protection. 94 AMSTERDAM. of themselves and their property against the en- croachments of the Ai, rendered more formidable by the storms that swelled the Zuyder Zee. Amsterdam is in form of a crescent, its inward curving line and two horns stretchhig along the AU the length, by the plan, being about thirteen thousand five hundred Rhineland feet, and per- pendicular from the centre of this line, seven thousand five hundred feet, or as nine to five : the circumference on the land side twenty-five thousand five hundred Rhineland feet, surrounded by a wall of regular bastions, and a wet ditch, bordered by a row of trees. It is supposed that the first foundation of the city was laid along the borders of the Amstel, which is now the centre. All this part, down to the Ai, is irregularly built, and is surrounded by the Amstel and its branches, the Roken and the Damrack. The streets and canals in this quarter are named the Burgwals ; and this part of the city still retains the name of the ' Oude Zyde.' Per- haps the earliest building of a public nature is the old ff^aag, or Weighing-house. The more recent, regular, and well-buiit streets follow a direction round this cluster, and are parallel to each other, and each of them a crescent, contuiued from one angle of the city to the other. It could only have been when the city had attained a high degree of prosperity that these mao-nificent streets were laid out and built. ^ Their names are the Heeren Graght, the Keyser's Graght, and the Princen Graght; tliree streets that°are not easily to be matched in any other town or city of Europe for their length, width, I • • • '• t • i • » 1 1 1 1 1 • J • • • o • I'*'* fi"i P 4 « * » * 1 AMSTERDAM. 95 and the grandeur and elegance of their buildings. They are parallel, as we have said, to each other ; but take the general shape of the town, which is that of a polygonal crescent, having all the lines perfectly straight between the angular points. These streets are each about two miles in length, two hundred and twenty feet in width, bounded by large and elegant dweUing-houses, with a canal down the middle, crossed by numerous stone bridges, and bordered by rows of large trees of oak, elm, and linden, on each side, not inferior to those of the Boomtjies of Rotterdam. The numerous canals of Amsterdam, it is said,- divide the city into ninety different islands, com- municating by two hundred and eighty bridges, either of stone or of wood, the latter being draw- bridges, and many of the former having sluices to open in the centre for the passage of boats, and others for the purpose of regulating the level of the water in the canals. These sluices are so placed and so well attended to, that little danger or damage is now apprehended from high tides and storms on the Zuyder Zee, which, in former times, was but too frequently experienced. The mixture of the muddy water of the Amstel with the sea- water from the Ai, the filth from the sewers, from the houses, and the streets, and the offal from the multitude of vessels that are moored in the canals, most of them inhabited by whole families, must necessarily have the effect of creat- ing a smell at no time agreeable, and sometimes highly offensive. Nor is the unpleasant sensation at all diminished by casting a glance at the colour which the surface of the water invariably bears, I 96 AMSTERDAM. Si 1 i It being that of a rich olivaceous green. The smell, however, except in the lower and more husy parts of the city, is scarcely perceptible, unless, indeed, as the old proverb insinuates, the water be stirred up, which must happen whenever one of the vessels moves her berth along the canal. It is then garc Veau ; and the street passenger, if ite be to lee- ward, will do well to cross the first bridge he meets with, and get to windward as fast as he possibly can. This peculiar effluvia has been supposed by some to be injurious to the human constitution, and yet few cities can boast of a more robust and healthy set of inhabitants than those are of Am- sterdam. It is said to be a fact, however, that no cavalry regiment is ever kept at Amsterdam, as the horses all become ill, and many have died, from the badness, as is supposed, of the water. The town is served with fresh water from the river Vecht, five or six miles distant, and carried round in carts : most of the houses, however, have cis- terns to receive the rain water. It is not impos- sible, that if the water of the canals was not occa- sionally driven out into the AU by the admission of the pure fresh water of the Amstel, the air might become infected, and serious sickness ensue. Be that as it may, it does not appear that Amster- dam is more unhealthy than other towns of Hol- land, or subject to any particular endemic diseases. A humid atmosphere produces here, as it every- where else does, fevers and coughs ; but against the effects of such a chilling air the natives take care to supply themselves with thick and warm clothing ; in addition to which the women, who lead a very sedentary life, place the feet on a little wooden AMSTERDAM. 9r stool under their petticoats, in which is a small pan of burning charcoal ; and the men, in order to fortify themselves against the baneful effects of such an atmosphere, are said to drink plenty of gin, and smoke tobacco. This may be so; but it is fair to mention, that we never saw a Dutchman drunk in the streets, not even among the lower classes. Indeed so strict is the police of Amster- dam, that a beastly drunkard would not be tolerated in public. Whoever is desirous of seeing human ingenuity and human industry most successfully and most extensively exerted, for the purpose of counteract- ing the injurious effect of one of the most power- ful and destructive elements, and by means the most simple, must visit Holland, and more par- ticularly Amsterdam. He will there see and admire the simple and effectual means that have been adopted for the security of the town, by bringing the waters under complete control. The whole extent of the sea- front, with the quays and the shipping, is protected from injury by a double stockade of strong, square, wooden posts, known by the name of boomen or barriers, extend- ing at a distance from the quay along the whole line of the city, from the north-west to the south- cast corner, a distance of two miles and a half. These large beams of wood are firmly fixed in pairs, with openings between each tier, at certain distances, to allow ships to pass them to and from the quays. Of these openings or passages there are twenty-one, all of which are closed by night ; so that nothing can arrive at, or depart from, the quay till they are set open. By means of these 'h rj« 98 AMSTERDAM. barriers, the injurious effects of the waves on the wharf wall, by being divided and dispersed, as well as of masses of ice driven down from the north- ward, are completely obviated. All the quays, and, indeed, every house in Amsterdam, are built upon piles ; and as each of these is a large tree or baulk of timber, of forty or fifty feet in length, some idea may be formed of the expense of building in Amsterdam, as well as of the immense quantity of timber that must have been brought thither for this purpose alone. It is recorded that the number of piles on which the old Town House, now the Royal Palace, is built, amounts to upwards of thirteen thousand. Indeed the industry of the Dutch is not to be surpassed ; and it is exercised, not only with great skill and ingenuity, but also with indefatigable perseverance; otherwise they never could have succeeded in accomplishing such great under- takings with such small means. On no occasion, perhaps, is this ingenuity and perseverance more displayed than in the means employed in conquering the waters of the ocean, and in bringing under subjection the rivers, lakes, and canals with which they are surrounded on every side, by means of sluices, drains, ditches, and windmills, of the last of which, for this and other purposes, such as sawing wood, grinding corn, and crushing seeds for oil, the number in the vicinity of all their towns and cities is perfectly astonishing. These windmills are remarkable objects on the Boulevards of Amsterdam. There are no less than thirty bastions in the line of fortification on AMSTERDAM. 99 the land side, and on each bastion is a windmill, of a description larger than common, for grinding corn, and other purposes. It is whimsical enoul \ \ !i I 108 AMSTERDAM. ing a square court, in the middle of which is a fountain. There are at least ten or twelve churches of the established religion in Amsterdam, and churches and chapels of almost every other sort that can be named. At one time the Dutch were intolerant in the highest degree ; and Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, and Anabaptists, and every other sect, were prohibited from holding any public place of wor- ship, but were obliged to congregate in private houses. Now, however, they are allowed to as- semble, each in his own church or chapel, for the performance of divine service ; but even yet none of them are allowed the use of bells, and some are not permitted to raise a tower or spire, but only a simple turret or cupola. Not many, indeed, of the established churches have lofty towers or spires ; these are of no par- ticular class or order of architecture, but neverthe- less are of good proportions and pleasing designs. Perhaps they may be classed, in point of size and height, with the tower and spire of St. Martin's in the Fields, and in point of general appearance in the architecture, to St. Mary's, or the new church, in the Strand. The reformers, in taking possession of the Roman Catholic churches, took care to strip them of every ornament and decoration that could be removed or defaced, particularly pictures and statues ; they threw down the altars, and have shut out from public view the choir, at the head of which the grand altar used to stand ; they also demolished the chapels and their altars. Thus stripped, the traveller feels little curiosity in enter- ing a Dutch church. AMSTERDAM. 109 In the old church that was dedicated to St. Nicholas, it is said, was a statue of the saint as large as life, of solid silver, which the Calvinists pulled down and melted, together with the can- delabras and other pieces of plate belonging to the church. Here, as in the other churches we have seen, a balustrade of bronze separates the clioir from the body of the church, and on its cornice is an inscription in Dutch, containing the following piece of history : — ' The abuse intro- duced from time to time into the church of God was here exploded in the year 1578.* The altar, as usual, has totally disappeared, and a small plain pulpit supplies its place, from which catechumens are examined and confirmed, and marriages solemnized. In other parts of the church are several monuments, not very interest- ing, though generally in a better state of execu- tion than we find them in our own churches. There are, however, three large painted windows on the left transept as we go up the nave, which, though completely Catholic, the reforming icono- clasts have spared. We all agreed in considering them by much the best paintings on glass we had ever met with ; and there is a history attached to them, which is believed to be true, and which appears to be borne out by circumstances. Two of these windows were the gift of a wealthy bur- gomaster, of the name of Claas Van Hoppen. Claas was accused of heresy, and of favouring the new or reformed religion. The priests and his confessor threatened him with excommunication unless he recanted, and immediately undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, to obtain absolution from 110 AMSTERDAM. AMSTERDAM. Ill ft the pope, who had, no doubt, previously been made acquainted with his wealthy circumstances, and also that he was a bon vivant. Tlie penance imposed by his Holiness was, that he should make a present of two painted glass windows to the church of St. Nicholas, and that for one whole year he should drink nothing but water. The expense of the glass windows was but a trifle to a man of his great wealth ; but having never been a water-drinker, he felt convinced of his inability to fulfil that part of the punishment. He therefore solicited a second audience, at which he acquainted his Holiness that the water of Amsterdam was so unwholesome that nobody drank it plain ; and all he requested was to be permitted to add a few grains of com to correct its impurities, or he feared he should die before the windows were finished. The pope assented to this reasonable request, and Claas Van Hoppen took good care to malt his water well. The corner, in which these windows are, is called the Vrowen Koir, or women's choir, there being a great number of female figures painted in the act of prayer. The arms also of the Van Hoppen family are painted on the glass, and carved also on a tombstone. The subject of the painting on the first window is the ' Salutation of the Virgin Mary by the Angel Gabriel.' The second, the * Visit to the Vir- gin by her Cousin EHzabeth.' Beneath are the two apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul. On each side are a number of persons on their knees, and among the group on the right is a man clad in a grey frock, who is supposed to be Van Hoppen ; and this is the more probable, as near to him is represented a bishop with his crosier, on which are written these words : — * Nemo laeditur nisi a se ipso.' Beautiful as these two windows are, the third is still more so, and obviously painted by a different artist. It represents a person, supposed to be the Holy Virgin, on her death-bed. She is raised up by her attendants, and holds a lighted candle in her hand, the flame of which is so perfectly natural that the spectator can scarcely believe it not to be so. A numerous group surround the couch while she is apparently receiving the viaticum; and a host of angels hover above, ready to convey the soul of the dying saint to the regions of bliss. There is another window behind the choir covered with the painted arms of all the burgomasters, from the reformation of 1 578 down to the present time. This church has what may be called an elegant tower and spire, said to be two hundred and fifty feet high. In 1760 it was bodily lifted up by screws, to enable the workmen to repair the foun- dation. It is remarked for a fine set of carillons, which emit pleasing silvery tones. The new church, originally dedicated to St. Peter, now to St. Catherine, stands on the Dam, close to the palace j and new as it was, no doubt, at the time, it is now more than three hundred years old. It is said to be built on the model of the cathedral of Amiens. The dimensions are set down as three hundred and fifteen feet long, by two hundred and ten broad ; and it is lighted by no kss than seventy- five large windows. It con- tains some of the best modem monuments in Hoi- ¥ 112 AMSTERDAM. laud, particularly oue of Admiral de Ruyter, which has usurped the place of the grand altar. The pulpit is a good specimen of carved work in wood, supported by figures of the four Evangelists. Besides the steeples or spires of the churches, there are four or five lofty towers scattered in different parts of the city, most of which have their clocks and carillons. One of these, standing on the quay, is the Herring Tower, at which the company of mer- chants concerned in the herring-fishery hold their meetings and keep their accounts ; and this spot, on the return of the boats from the fishery, is said to exhibit one of the busiest scenes that occur in this great capital. There is another tower on the quay, named the Scrayershoek Toor, or the tower of the mourners, so called from its standing on the spot where the wives and children of seamen were accustomed to take leave of their husbands and fathers on embarking on foreign voyages. It is now converted into offices for those who are charged with the duties of the port. From the churches we proceeded to view the National Museum of Pictures in the Trippenhuis on the Kloveniersburgwal, which is open daily, except Sundays, to strangers. The name is taken from that of the original owner of the house, which was Trip. It is a good building containing, on two floors, seven or eight rooms, well filled with nearly five hundred pictures, chiefly of the Dutch and Flemish schools, and many of them among the finest specimens of the several masters. Some of the best were removed from the Stadhuis when it be- -came the palace ; and to these were added others AMSTERDAM. 113 that were purchased at the public expense from private collections. A very few only can be no- ticed here. There are five pictures of Gerard Dow, all of them good, but two in particular are eminently beautiful. The one is a large picture of a school by candlelight. It contains twelve figures and five difterent lights, so placed as to give to the painting a wonderful efl'ect of light and shade, and to produce a perfect illusion by the manage- ment of the strong lights in front, gradually dimi- nishing to the back-ground, and giving great breadth and distance to the picture. The other is a cavalier and a richly-dressed lady, under the shade of a thick wood, highly and beautifully finished. There are three pictures of Van Dyk, but none in his best manner. Two portraits, the size of life, of the Princess Mary of England, and her brother the Duke of Gloucester, are the best. A magnificent picture of B. Van der Heist, which Sir Joshua Reynolds pronounced to be — and few will dispute the propriety of his taste — superior to another large picture of Rembrandt, in the same collection, and so it is considered by the artists of Holland. It represents a feast given by the officers of a company of the Civic Guard of Amsterdam, commanded by Captain Witts, to the Spanish Ambassador, in commemoration of the peace concluded at Munster in 1648 ; this appears from an inscription of four lines painted on a large drum. This noble work of art contains about thirty full length portraits, to whose company the Spanish Ambasador is introduced, and is in the 114 AMSTERDAM. si act of shaking hands with the Captain. ' Of this picture,' says Sir Joshua, ' 1 had heard great com- mendations ; but it as far exceeded my expecta- tion, as that of Rembrandt fell below it ;' and he adds, ' This is, perhaps, the first picture of por- traits in the worhl, comprehending more of those qualities which make a perfect portrait than any others I have ever seen. They are correctly drawn, both head and figure, and well coloured, and have great variety of action, characters, and counte- nances, and those so lively and truly expressing what they are about, that the spectator has nothing to wish for/ Another picture of Van der Heist, represent- ing a party of the corps of crossbow-nien sit- ting at a table, examining a silver vase, appa- remly intended as a prize for the best marksman. This picture is fine, but every way inferior to the preceding. There are a few good pictures of Mieris; but one in particular, a lady sitting at a table, writing a letter, a servant waiting her orders, and a little dog asleep upon a stool, are all well conceived and admirably executed. Avery large picture of Paul Potter, representing a mountainous landscape, in the foreground of which is a boar defending itself against the attack of some dogs, urged by a hunter on horseback, accompanied by another on foot, while on the right of the picture a young bear is seen clambering up a tree, with a dog springing after it. The old boar, who defends himself bravely, has laid one of the dogs sprawling on the ground, and another is dreadfully lacerated by his paws. The drawing of the dogs is uncommonly fine ; full of energy in AMSTERDAM. 115 their action, and ferocity in their faces. The horse and his rider are as large as life; and when viewed from the opposite corner of the room, both of them really look, as Smirk says in the Minor, * as if they only wanted a spark from the torch of Prometheus to start from the canvass,' — and gallop over the spectators. Without pretensions to con- noisseurship, j)erhaps one may venture to pronounce this as one of the finest pictures, though by no means an agreeable one, that was ever painted by the artist. Another specimen of Paul Potter is a rich land- scape, well filled with oxen, goats, sheep, asses, and all in their proper situations and attitudes, while under an ancient oak a woman is sucklinsr her child, and a man, with a dog beside him, is playing on the bagpipes. A sort of companion to this is Orpheus playing on his lyre : ail the beasts of the forest, from the large elephant to the meanest reptile and insect, are scattered over the canvass. There are four pictures of Rembrandt, every one of which will connnand attention. The first is well known under the name of ' La Garde de Nuit;* which, if we believe the Dutch, who ought to know, and the descriptive catalogue, is entirely a misnomer. The subject of this extraordinary picture — the onlv fit companion to the great pic- ture before noticed of Van der Heist — represents the departure of a certain Captain Kok, accom- panied bv his ofiicers and arquebusiers, to fire at a mark. The figures are numerous, and the details beautifully executed. On the upper part of a pillar are painted the names of the persons repre- 12 I* -^ 116 AMSTERDAM. sented in the picture ; and yet, of one of tlie most celebrated pictures in Europe, the subject of it is left as a matter of doubt. Sir Joshua, however, did not think very highly of it : he said it was undeserving its great reputation, and that he could with difliculty persuade himself it was painted by Rembrandt, notwithstanding the name and date which are upon it. The second picture of Rembrandt is tlie ' Decol- lation of St. John the Baptist;' all the figures of the natural size, but cut off by the knees. The executioner stands in the midst of the picture, pre- senting the head of the saint upon a salver to He- rodias, who seems somewhat terrified, and to have communicated her terrors to her mother. It is a finely painted but disagreeable representation of a disgusting subject. The third picture is composed of tlie portraits of five regents of a certain corporation of Amsterdam, sitting at a table, with a book before them. There is something very striking in this picture, though composed entirely of portraits, which can scarcely be said to be in action. In the Queen of the Netherlands' boudoir, in Brussels, we saw either a copy or the original of this picture ; but we all agreed that it was fresher, and on the whole a better picture than this in the Museum of Amster- dam. The fourth is a portrait of some person of no note, and inferior to many of this great master. Rubens does not shine here. There are but two pictures of his ; — the subject of one is Roman filial piety ; and the other a sketch of Christ bear- ing his Cross to Mount Calvary. AMSTERDAM. ii U7 Jan Steen has a great number of pictures, the most exquisite of which, if not of his whole works, is that of a baker, in his shirt, placing his hot loaves on the window of liis shop, while the boy is blowing the horn to announce * hot rolls.' The fete of St. Nicholas is an admirable picture ; every figure in it tells the story, and the thoughts and feelings are expressed in the most lively man- ner on each countenance. Teniers has several pictures, and so has Ostade, but nothing very remarkable. Of the former, the * Temptation of St. Anthony' is perhaps the best. W. Van de Velde has some excellent pictures, representing the naval battles that took place be- tween the fleets of England and Holland, and of course those only in which the latter were victo- rious. A beautiful and bustling picture of this master is a view of the lower part of the city of Amsterdam, taken from the Schreyershoeks-tooren, (the tower of the mourners,) as far as the island of Kattenburg. But there is a pair of pictures by this artist, painted with great care and exactness, which are highly flattering to the national glory of the Dutch. The one re2)resents four sail of English line-of-battle ships, taken in the battle of 1 666, between De Ruyter and Monck ; the otiier is the capture of the Prince-royal, three days after the above-mentioned action. There are several others of storms and calms by this master, and also by Backhuisen ; one in particular of the latter, which must also possess great interest with the Dutch. It is the embarka- tion of the grand pensioner De Witt, on his taking command of the fleet in 1665. The multitude of 118 AMSTERDAM. people assembled of all descriptions, — the great man himself marching down, attended by his staff, — the people and the boats employed in embark- ing the troops, — and the fleet with loosened sails in the distance, present a scene of bustle and busi- ness, which gives uncommon life and animation to this grand picture, which is finely painted in all its parts. Wouverman has several very fine pictures in this collection, and so has Van der Werf and Wynants. There are some good portraits by Miereveld. That of Maurice, Prince of Orange, is equal to any that Van Dyk has painted. Paintings of birds, plants, and insects, by Hon- dekoeter, — of flowers and fruits by Huysum, and Mignon, and Van Os, and De Heem, are some of the most perfect specimens that can be met with of these masters. They occupy principally a room bv themselves. It would be unjust to a disciple of Rubens, who has hardly received his due share of praise, not to notice two pictures, which are close imitations of his master's style. The * Adoration of the Shep- herds,' and the ' Descent from the Cross,' by G. De Craijer, or Craiyer, who has painted seve- ral altar-pieces and other pictures for tlie churches and chapels of Antwerp, and other churches and public edifices in the Netherlands. There are many other pictures of great merit which it is impossible to particularize ; such as those of Berchem, Both, Cuyp, Haarlem, Jor- daens, Ruisdaal, Poelenburg, Sneyders, Terburg, Wynants, and several other artists of note in Hol- land and Flanders. I' r I AMSTERDAM. 119 The total want of specimens of the school of Italian painting, might render the Museum of Amsterdam of no great estimation in the eyes of those who can see nothing worth bestowing a look upon, but subjects treated in the manner which they are pleased to style the beau ideal ; that is to say, to produce something that does not exactly exist in nature, but superior to it ; — angelic fea- tures, superhuman forms, and beings created out of the fervour of a heated and luxuriant imagina- tion ; the story wrapt up in some hidden meaning, which none but the painter himself can understand or explain ; Gods and goddesses, nymphs, cupids, fawns, and satyrs, — in short, anything that is not human or natural, if painted with fine flowing lines and warm colouring, is extolled as the link which connects painting with poetry ; and so far the conception is just, as both of them, to ensure the praise and admiration of their votaries, must deal in fiction. The Dutch and Flemish painters are mostly content to follow nature, and only fail when they attempt something that is beyond her. Rubens himself never succeeds so ill as where he attempts what is called allegory. It is in some of those pieces where he found it necessary to intro- duce creatures like nothing that exists on earth, and where his females are such uncouth beings, as almost to justify the resemblance they were said by one of his critics to bear to Flanders* mares. Our next visit was to the park or plantation— plantajie, as it is generally called by the inhabit- ants. It is situated near the southern extremity of the city, at the end of that noble street, the Heeren \ 120 AMSTERDAM. Graglit, and is surrounded by canals ; and, ac- cording to the space it appears to occupy on the plan, may be about one thousand yards long by iive hundred broad ; or, in extent of surface, about one hundred acres ; it contains some tolerably fine trees, and is laid out in straight walks, at right angles to each other. Near one corner is a small botanical garden, consisting chiefly of medicinal plants, l)ut not to be mentioned after the garden of Ley den. Not far from the park is the stone bridge over the Amstel, where this river enters the city in a fine broad sheet of water, and with so gentle a current as scarcely to be perceptible. It is called, one knows not why, the Lover's Bridge. It is said to be six hundred and sixty feet long, and seventy feet wide ; it has eleven arches, with piers of stone masonry, mixed with brick-work, apparently of solid and well- executed workmansliip. From the centre of this bridge is a favourable view of the citv on one side, and on the other an extensive prospect over the flat surface of this singular country, divided into squares and parallelograms, by means of dykes and ditches, called polders; spaces that contain, within their boundaries, villas and gardens, which are kept dry by innumerable windmills employed in pumping out the water. Ascending the quay of the hinnen Amstel, or the river within the city, we are led to the Ex- change, under which it passes through a large arch ; and at this point, over the centre of the arch, is conspicuously placed the figure of Mer- cury, of a colossal size, — rather an odd appen- dage to be selected as the guardian deity of 1 AMSTERDAM. 121 the temple, wlierein all the mercantile and money concerns of the capital are transacted. For though this winged gentleman was the protect- ing deity of commerce, the Dutch were no doubt aware that, among his other qualifications, he had the reputation of being well versed in the art of appropriating to himself what belonged to otliers. He is also renowned for activity and swiftness, which have not been supposed among the most prominent features of the Dutch cha- racter. Like all tlie continental exchanges, which resemble our own, that of Amsterdam is a qua- drangular building, with an open square space in the middle, round which is an arcade or gal- lery, supported by forty-six columns, each being appropriated to some particular class of mer- chants or traders ; and here people of all nations daily assemble in crowds, at a particular hour, for the transaction of business. This crowd wore a very Jewish and shabby appearance, which made one of our party observe, that he never saw such a multitude of monied men together, that looked so very much like a set of pickpockets. Having since visited the stock- exchange of London, and the bank rotunda, he is quite ready to qualify the harsh opinion he had pronounced on the merchants and money-changers of Amsterdam. A similar crowd, with a good sprinkling of Jews, were loitering daily about the lottery-offices, which are numerous in the neighbouring streets, and particularly about the Dam. The prevalence of gambling is a vice, from which the Dutch M ii^ 122 AMSTERDAM. government has no scruple in deriving a consider- able revenue ; and what can be a fitter subject for taxation ? It was but a mawkish kind of niorahty that induced a late English chancellor of the exchequer to give up a considerable revenue, levied on the votaries of this vice, at the instigation of a class of men, who are at great pains to make them- selves be thought more righteous than their neigh- bours. The little time w^e had to spare would not admit of our visiting all the numerous institutions, with which this city abounds, for the alleviation of human misery and distress, in all their various shapes. The several hospitals, generally kept distinct for the reception of the aged, the infirm, and the desolate ; the blind, the lame, the widows, and orphans; for foundlings, and for those de- prived of reason ; of which^ taken together, there appears to be not fewer than forty, most of them large and convenient buildings. The various prisons, and houses of correction and of industry, are said to be under a better system of control and management, than are most of a similar de- scription in other parts of Europe. These several establishments have been founded by, ahd derive their support either from, the public, the several religious societies, or rich individuals, particularly widows, who are left in good circuni- stances, and who are frequently most liberal contri- butors to charities of this kind. But to make our- selves acquainted with the details of the manage- ment of institutions of this kind required too much time for a flying visit, and we were therefore reluctantly obliged' to be satisfied with viewing, as we did most of them, externally. I ' AMSTERDAM. 123 From all we could learn, however, concerning these public and private institutions for charitable purposes, the state of the hospitals, the prisons, and houses of correction, the following summary, taken from an old author, who visited Amsterdam nearly a hundred years ago, may be considered as pretty nearly a correct statement at the present day. * I shall now proceed and speak of the alms- houses, and of the government of the poor, of the prisons, and houses of correction of this wealthy place. * This city is said to have twenty thousand poor every day at bed and board. The almshouses are many, and look more like princes' palaces than lodgings for poor people. First, there are houses for poor old men and women ; then a large square palace for three hundred widows ; then there are hospitals for boys and girls, for burghers' children, and for strangers' children, or those called foundlings. All these boys and girls have, every Sunday, and other days of wor- ship, two doits given them by the fathers of these houses, the which the children put into the dea- cons* bag when they gather for the poor in the churches. Then there is an hospital for fools, and a bedlam ; then there are houses where com- mon beggars, and gamesters, and frequenters of tap houses are kept hard at work ; there is also a house called a Rasp-house, where petty thieves, and such as slash one another with knives, — such as beg with cheating devices,—- women with feigned great bellies, — men pretend- ing to have been taken by the Turks, — others ; / 24 AMSTERDAM. AMSTERDAM. 125 * that pretend wreck at sea, — and such as be^^ with * a clapper or hell, as if they could not speak or * hear ; — such as these are kept hard at work, ' rasping every day fil'ty pounds between two of * them, or else"^ are' beaten ; and if yet they rebel, * and won't work, they are set in a tub, where, if * tliey do not pump, the water will swell over their * heads. Tlien there is a house where wh s * are kept to work, and also disobedient children, * who live idle, and take no course to maintain * themselves ; likewise women commonly drinking * themselves drunk, and scolds. * All these sorts of hospitals and alms-houses * are stately buildings, richly adorned with i)ictures, * and their lodgings very neat and clean. In * some of the boys' and girls' hospitals there are * one thousand five hundred ; in some, eight hun- * dred, and in some, five hundred in a house. * Then they have houses where a man or woman * may have their diet, washing, and lodging, for * life^ bv giving a small sum of money ; these are * called Proveniers houses.* Whether these various establishments are capable of relieving the whole mass of human wretchedness Avhich this capital, in common with all large cities, must contain, would require a long residence to determine ; but we could not help making the same remark here as in Rotterdam — thai in all our rambles we had not met with a drunken per- son in the streets ; nay, more, that we had not observed a man, woman, or child, in rags, or met with a real object of compassion in any part of the town ; and the only beggars that accosted us, and those were in some of the lower parts of the town, were decrepit old men. The truth is, that if a young sturdy beggar should be discovered teasing passengers for alms, the police would instantly seize hold of him and send him at once to one of the work-houses, where, if he refused to perform the task set him, he would be treated, as is mentioned in the above extract, with a spell at the pump. Those who are at the head of the police are not so squeamish in Holland as we are. There is none of that fearfulness and timidity, — none of the non- sensical speeches and conversations which our Dogberries of the East and of the AVest are so fond of making, for the pleasure of seeing them- selves exhibited in the daily papers, — none of the gossiping, for the gentlemen of the press to detail in their respective journals, whenever a rogue or vagabond — especially one of notoriety — happens to be brought before them. The law in Holland is clearly defined, and, if the fact be proved, the magistrate has no other line to pursue than to direct that the law shall take its course ; and thus the public is relieved from a. nuisance, and society benefited by the example. * All rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars/ which the act of Elizabeth, in our statute book, professes to set to work, the Dutch take good care shall be set to work ; and they also take care to have ready in hand, what our statute likewise directs to have in hand, ' a convenient stock of * flax, hemp, wool, thread, corn, and other neces- * sary ware and stuff, to set the poor on work.' To aid the police in the praiseworthy task of finding useful labour for the poor and idle, * The ! 126 AMSTERDAM. AMSTERDAM. 127 Society of Friends of Humanity and Public Utility, have established an agricultural colony called i^re- derik's-oord, near Steenwyk, on the eastern side ot the Zuyder Zee, where the land rises into barren heaths and downs. This institution is said to have answered so well, that the King of Denmark un- dertook to form a similar establishment in his dominions, which, however, failed. Mr Jacob has eiven the details of Frederik s-oord from the annual reports printed in Holland; but we doubt much of the ultimate success of an institution grounded, as in point of tUct it is, on the principle and practice of forced labour. No loose women are permitted to intest the streets of Amsterdam ; and the public eye, there- fore is not offended by their indecent and immo- dest conduct. Private haunts of intemperance and debauchery, it is well known, are winked at, perhaps sanctioned, by the government, which could not be prevented either here or elsewhere ; and on this ground it may, perhaps, be deemed politic to allow them. But those disgusting dens of profligacv, known by the names of s;;e?z/- houses or TH w.sicos, frequented by both sexes, and to whicii, on certain days of the year, respectable families were in the habit of taking their children, to wit- ness scenes of vice in their most odious shape, m order to disgust them— a lesson of doubttul mo- rality—can scarcely now be said to exist, except amono- the very lowest of the inhabitants. The police of the city appears to be excellently reo-ulated. Robberies or house-breaking are of rare occurrence. The minister intrusted with the police takes care to employ stout young men, who may be seen in the evening walking in pairs ; and these are efficient guardians of peace and quiet during the night. Our new and excellent police establishment is not unlike that of Amster- dam, j Excepting about the quays, where there is always some show of business and bustle, and in the Warmoos Straut and Calvers Straut, in both of which are the principal shops for all kinds of wares and merchandise, and which may be compared, in point of wealth, with the Strand in London, but without the advantage of its side pavements, Amsterdam appeared to be just as dull and gloomy as the west end of London is in the month of October ; and this arose apparently from the same cause, the merchants and gentry being at this time absent at their country villas, enjoying themselves, — some in the sports of the field, confined mostly to the shooting of rabbits, and otliers in the tulip and hyacinth beds of their neatly-trimmed gardens. It was generally admitted that the trade, and consequently the prosperity, of Amsterdam had not yet recovered, since the peace, from the shock which they had here, as in Rotterdam, experienced by fraternizing with the French republicans ; and it was also admitted, as a natural consequence, that the population liad greatly decreased. The whale-fishery, once the source of great wealth, had entirely ceased ; and the East India trade and possessions, to which had been mainly owing the prosperity, the splendour, and the maritime power of the nation, had now become a source of vast expenditure, without a hope of their ever recover- ing their ancient prosperity. 128 AMSTERDAM. As a proof of the declining state of Oriental commerce, the East India House and its maga- zines on tlie ishand of Oostenburg are crumbhng into ruins. They are fully sensible that they never can, under anv circumstances, pretend to compete with the English and the Americans m the East India and Cliina trade; and the opinion of the soundest politicians is, that the best thing they can do would be to abandon the trade and possessions aUogethcr. ^ . The bad management and grasping avarice ot the Dutch servants in Java have created a rebel- lion among four millions of people, whom that active, intelligent, zealous, and humane governor, Sir Stamford Raffles, had made happy, prosperous, and free. Under his rule they had been relieved from the power of their oppressors, and freed from that impolitic and unjust system of exactions and forced deliveries of produce, which the Dutch had imposed on their land and their labour. It was a great mistake on our part, in the nego- ciations for peace, to have voluntarily surrendered this fine island and its four millions of people to the Dutch, as an act of generosity to a fallen nation, for as to any claim on us, they had none. Ihey never were, and it was not likely they ever would become, T)opular among the Javanese. Their sys- tem of policy has gone far to rum this noble island, and they have reaped nothing but disgrace, expense, and embarrassment. The same indication, which amounts nearly ta proof of a decreasing population, that we noticed in other towns of Holland, struck us forcibly here. We did not see a single new house, or a house AMSTERDAM. 129 building in all Amsterdam ; but we did observe three or four old ones puUing down in the Jews' quarter, with an intention, probably, of rebuildino- tliem, as they stood on the margin of a canal. The conclusion to be drawn from the few re- marks we made of Amsterdam is, what many per- sons have supposed to be tlie case, that it is a very dull, and therefore not a very interesting place. The fact, however, is not so : there is alwavs some- thing going on to excite attention. Mrs. Montagu says, that she never could understand what the expression ' stock-still' meant till she visited Am- sterdam, when she at once felt its full force. No doubt the 'stocks' or * stakes,* of which there are so many thousands along the quays of Amsterdam, were ' still' enough ; but the sea by which they are surrounded is not always so. The canals are * still,' but the craft constantly moving about in thcni is not so. The quays of a town from whicli two thousand vessels clear out annually, or about six daily, are not likely to be ' still ;' and if Mrs. Montagu had gone a-shopphig in Warmoos Straat, or Calvers Straat, she would not have found much ' still ' life there. No city, for its size and population, abounds with more societies for the cultivation of literature, science, and the fine arts, than Amsterdam. It has an academy of painting, sculpture, cngravino-, and architecture. At the Fdix mentis^ ?i most respectable society for the encouragement of every branch of art, science, and literature, of physics, music, and even commerce and political economy, lectures are delivered and dissertations read on all subjects. They have a library stocked with books K 130 AMSTERDAM. in all departments of science ; a collection of plas- ter casts from ancient statues ; a cliemical a].pa- ratus, and a collection of mathematical, pluloso- pliical, and even musical instruments, and tliey give concerts. All these are contamed m a very handsome huildins^. . The Society of Puhlic I tility is common to every citv and town in Holland above the rank of a villa-e. Schools of every kind are numerous. Those for the poor are said to be well attended by more than four thousand children : they are under the direction of a certain number of curators, who admit the children of the poor without distinction of religious sects. ,, . n +« The shortness of our stay would not allow us to form any correct conclusions as to the state ot society. The ladies seldom appear m public, and rarelvinthe streets, excepting in the two where the T)nncipal shops are ; and very few carriages ot any kind are seen in Amsterdam. One ot the most common, which serves the place of our hacknev-coaches, is a small-bodied coach, like a Briohton * Fly,' without wheels, and fixed on a woollen sledge, drawn by a single horse, and attended by a man who walks by the side, to pre- vent it from upsetting. The Dutch of both sexes now dress pretty much in the same manner as other Europeans. The Friezland ladies, however have a peculiar head-dress, consisting of a small cap close to the head, to each side ot which, and covering the temples nearly as far as tiie eyes, is attached a plate of gold. The first impression which this odd appendage gives is, that the wearer must have been trepanned. This tasteless head- AMSTERDAM. 131 dress, with its cap and golden flaps, is said to cost from ten to twelve pounds ; but being a distinction from the vulgar, it is considered cheap enough. These Friezlanders wear besides golden rinjjlets round the neck, and pendants from the ear. They are said to be exceedingly tenacious of their ancient customs and dress, and also of their language, which differs as much from modern Dutch as the Flemish does. The dress of the ladies of Amsterdam is French ; and that usually worn by tradesmen's wives and servant-girls differs but Httle from that of the same classes in England, except that the latter description of Hollanders have rarely any summer covering on their head but a cap, and they fre- quently wear long cloaks with hoods, as in the Netherlands. The men also now dress much the same as with us. The little round hat, the puckered jacket, and the wide breeches of the men have entirely disappeared, except among some of the northern fishermen ; and the same kind of hat, the jacket, and short petticoat, displaying a pair of sky-blue stockings, have been equally de- serted by the females. Both sexes ai)pear healthy, which our doctors say they ought not to do in a climate so humid, and amidst a stench from stagnant canals so dele- terious. The deaths, we understood, amount to about twenty a day ; which, on a j)opulation of one hundred and eighty thousand, give an average of four per cent. ; a much greater mortality than the average of European cities. One cannot walk the length of a street in Amsterdam without meeting a certain gentleman K 2 132 AMSTERDAM. dressed in black, with a crape dependmp: from his hat, and a sheet of pai>er in his hand. He is known by the name of aamprecker, (announcer, or reporter,) whose business it is to go round to the rehatives and acquaintances of a deceased per- son, to announce his death. To give notice to the friends of the birth of a cliikl, a written bul- letin is frequently stuck up on the door-post ot the house, statincT the health of the mother and child to be, as usual, ' as well as can be expected.' If Amsterdam should happily regain its former state of prosperity, it well either be necessary to build on the boulevards, or fill up the adjoining polders ; though it is probable that, in such aii event, another city would rise on the north side ot the Ai. opposite to the old one, either by Buick- sluys, where the grand canal enters it, or at Saar- dam,'or more properly Saandam, where the Czar Peter under the name of Peter Michaelhof, learnt the trade of ship-building ; and where the late Emperor Alexander, when at Amsterdam, visited the cabin and its homely furniture of his great ancestor. , . That side of the Ai is preferable as a port to tins on which the city now stands, being the weather- shore, and sheltered from all winds. The king is said to have it in contemplation to appoint com- missioners to examine and report on his naval establishments. He could not do better than remove the dock-yard of Amsterdam across the water, as, in its present position, it is exposed to the prevailing winds. At present, however, it would appear^more prudent to direct his attention to his army rather than the navy. He will find AMSTERDAM. 133 that a military navy is not to be made without an extensive mercantile navy, which he has not. Certain northern political economists, among their many absurdities, have hazarded the assertion that an efficient navy may be raised and main- tained without merchant-ships, colonies, or com- merce. A nation that should be foolish enough to try the experiment would find itself much in the situation of the Israelites, who were required by the Egyptians to make bricks without straw. The Dutch have more sense than to be gulled by such fooleries. Chapter V. AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. Having thus in two days satisfied our curiosity in re"P"»"t,^"'l^^'T Dutcl.man must tl.e «ff-'/.VlTave'anrpWegn.atic. fto.n tl.e necessarily be grave »"" J" o , ^ animal spirits bemg ^"'^^f^^i'^^h they a ^ almost :;^e— iiaf kn7 :— ions, is very certain ; Tt their parsimony '-^^^'^^2:^^^^li lability, t|.e -|^-1 J7J Itorproductive of '''''fit Th"ir « men, almost from the penod rtirTJ;fa; y ar? ^^^^J^C^^ r;:irbtielro?nLTotlain, a portion of which is laid by every year. c Industrious habits in each l>of J^ ^^J^' And industry begets a love of gam. ^ cial pursuits, and incieea m ^ • and ,,e/are ecju J ^-;^l^^^c^e patient, with the 1^"°"""° j eharactcr of this AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. 147 the most splendid edifices ; without a tree they have laid the foundations of large cities on piles of wood ; without a stick of timber fit for a ship's top-mast, they built a navy that disputed the seas >\lth the most powerful navy in the world; that almost without an acre of arable land they supplied the markets of half of Europe with grain ; that with a country not larger than Yorkshire they were able to raise a respectable army, and to take a leading part in the politics of Europe ; and it ought to be added that, in all their mercantile transac- tions, the Dutch are remarkable for their punc- tuality, integrity, and honour. Their patriotism or love of country has always been a predominant feature in the Dutch character ; in whatever part of the world a Dutchman may be placed, the word Vaderland bears a charm and is never heard without exciting a sensation of pleasure in his mind. But then they are accused of being cruel and inhuman ; and with what justice, as a nation, they can be so accused, it would not be so easy to show. The numerous charitable institutions of Holland, more particularly of Amsterdam, many of which are entirely supported at the expense of indi- viduals, should alone be sufficient to disprove such an imputation. There is a little trait connected with ojie of these institutions, which shows them not only a humane but kind-hearted people. The hospital for the reception of the old and indigent of both sexes, on the quay of the Amstel, is con- trived admirably for the comfort and convenience of the aged and infirm. Tiie building is three hundred and sixty feet long by two hundred and L 2 J48 AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. , • . !»»,. A callerv on each of the three thirty deep. J^f^^^^^^^ .jjes of the square, stories runs round tne lout inmates to and behind it is a large gard n for th ^ walk in, and enjoy the h-e»li a.r ^ has a dining-room of one humUe l J^ *-e feet in '-^'■'-/i^g'gl He centennial dimensions lie yea 1^^^ ^„,l „„ t,,, anniversary of Its e tab ^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^,^^ °''*.'!r\ ounU^to i^,wards of six hundred and *«V? wlKu^e re-valed in the most sumptuous fifty, who »eie re a Amsterdam were manner, and the best P^" »' ^ , tinguish the people of Holland. ^^ P^^^^^ lation ounded on the remotest ^^.^^^^^^^^ ^^ but solely on that ot -fe''^ '"o , . .^,i lUeir -ff -:;^i,f 5 • K signifies) Mr. canton or district y^'"^" Returns, has col- Ku £:f ^^^^^^^^^ of its progress and condmoi. This' benevolent inf t""""'. -''l^^d imCv the sSt^-^iSxiiei: AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. 149 benevolence of General Van den Boscli. This officer, when in Java, purchased an estate and made the pursuit of agriculture his study. A Chinese mandarin with a number of emigrants from that country settled by chance near him. The General soon observed that, with all his labour and care, the crops of his Chinese neigh- bour greatly exceeded his own ; he therefore took lessons of the mandarin, and such was the suc- cessful result, that, when he returned to Europe, the estate which had cost him twenty-five thousand rix-dollars, he sold for one hundred and fifty thou- sand. The General, on his return to his native country, published a little tract on the practicability of instituting a general pauper establishment in the kingdom of the Netherlands. It happened that the good king (for so he may justly be styled) was in 1817 occupied with a plan for bringing into productive tillage an extensive waste of heath land between Maestricht and Breda. The atten- tion of his Majesty was drawn to that of the General. A society was set on foot at the Hague, for the intended experiment, under the patronage of the King, of which Prince Frederick, his second son, was nominated president for life. Twenty thousand individuals became members, and their contributions amounted to seventy thou- sand florins, or 5,833/. sterling. The first operation was to purchase an estate near the town of Steenwyk, on the confines of Friesland, Overyssel, and Drenthe, consisting of about one thousand three hundred English acres, toirether with two thousand six hundred acres of 11 150 AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. heath land, for which the society paid tl''i;"";^°f fiftv-six thousand florins, or about 4,666/. Ihe rllr Aa, or Ju, which runs tl-ough it was made navigable for boats into the Zuyder Zee. Build in<.s°for fifty-two families, to consist of s.x to eiaht individuals each, a storehouse, a school, and alpinning house, were speedily erected. AH these operations were commenced early m September, 1818, and ere the 10th of November followino-, fifty-two indigent families sent by the commun''e's entered upon their new liabitations To each family was granted seven morgen or iour- teen acres of land. The whole outfit for each family, made on a minute estimate, was one thou- Band seven hundred florins, or 14 U. 13.. sterling which was to be repaid to the soc.etym sixteen veLrs, while the annual rent, with which the colo- S were to be charged, was settled to be equal to the interest of the outfit; -^\'-fj^.J^'^^ success of this small establishment, that, alter a •few years' experience, it was found that the annual excess of produce over subsistence of each of the Iftv-two families established at Freder.ck's-oord, amounted to one hundred gilders or florins, or 81 6s. 8d. sterling. , Loans were now raised for extending the sys- tem, to be advanced by the king in his individual cha;acter, or by the government, or I'vl.e com- munes, or charitable corporations, or by mdivi- Tals, each loan limited to five thousand one hund ed gilders, or 425/ sterling the exact outfit of Three families : the advantage of .us grouping them together was, that two o them were to consist of six paupers each, and tlie AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. 151 third of six orphans or foundlings, not under six years of age, with a married couple, or a woman only to take charge of the children. For every such sum the contrihutors had the privilege of sending three such families. Sixty guilders were to be paid back yearly to the contributors, for the maintenance of each child, which in the orphan and poor-houses was found to cost nearly double ; and it is reported that these twelve paupers do more than maintain themselves. The first principle of this society is, that no colonist shall, even for the shortest period, be un- employed ; and with this view they are under the inspection of the different officers, who exercise their respective duties with the strictness of mili- tary precision. General Van den Bosch, as supe- rior director, superintended in person the whole establishment. A sub-director presided over one hundred families ; a quarter-master over twenty- four families ; a section-master over twelve, who was required to be a practical agricultu- rist. * Thus the whole mechanism,' says Mr. Jacob, ' resembles that of an army, divided into * sections, companies, battalions, and brigades.* They are employed in various kinds of labour, as the preparation of lime from shells, making of bricks, building dwellings, barns, &c., but the greater portion is employed in field labour; the chief implements are the spade and the hoe, at which they soon become sufficiently expert. Every kind of labour is performed by the piece, nothing by the day. The women are employed in spinning and weaving. The amount of their earnings is regularly kept, and a card given which 152 AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. procures at the public store food and otlier arti- ^iTarfixed pricel The labour with ^P-^^^^ ^^^ individuals in digging fourteen acres, and >epea n the operation when required, the ^''^""g; f;^ H"^ vestincr, rnav be supposed to occupy but a certain «S of the fifty- wo weeks; the rcst.s chiefly ^™Sed in preparing the composts for in anu.e and on this, in fact, the success of the colony ^^'XVScIiS^^uriousandavervinip— one, as without it poor soils such as Band and h ath canneverberenderedproduct.ve,andw.thitwel.aNe here incontestible proof that they can. Mi. Jacob has collected all the details, and very remarkable tltey are, on this subject ; the practice .s precisely whit General Van den Bosch learnt from his Ch - nese mandarin. The result of the experiment « Stat the society obtain rent at about twelve shil- nl ^>e°norgen, for the seven niorgen l.ouse am! barn ; they are repaid the cost of the flax and varn that has been spun, for the use of thedraugh catt"e carts, and implements ; for the furniture and do hing ; ami for the provisions consumed before the first crops were harvested ; and the seven i^orgen of knd, which cost them originally less San^ four pounds an acre, will produce a yearly rent of more than that sum. If any proof was wantin- of the complete success of the experiment n hfs -that bv Ihe last statistical return, which Mr Jac^b has received, up to 1825, that is to say, feven years after the first establishment the num- ber of colonists settled at Frederick's-oord amounted to six thousand seven hundred and Beventy-eigh individuals, including two thousand one hundred AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. 153 and seventy-four orplians and foundlings ; and since then he tells us considerable additions have been made to the loans and to the numbers ad- mitted. In the southern provinces similar plans have been put in practice. A colony formed at AVor- tel, near Antwerp, on a barren heath, in 1822, had, at the end of 1823, one hundred and twenty- five farms already in cultivation ; and the society had contracted with the government to maintain one thousand mendicants during sixteen years, at the rate of thirty-five guilders, not quite 3/. a year, most of them beggars and idlers from Brussels. The chief director of the establishment is Captain Van den Bosch, a brother of the General, whose plans he implicitly follows. It is, in fact, to the active intelligence, the unshaken firmness, and incorruptible integrity of this humane and disin- terested individual that the success of Frederick's- oord has been mainly owing. The example is spreading fast throughout the kingdom. At Bruges, an individual who is possessed of a tract of heathland has contracted with Government to take a thousand mendicants on the same terms. It may be added that everv encourajyement is sriven to meritorious colonists by indulgences of various kinds, and by the distributions of gold, silver, and copper medals ; and there is also a graduated scale of punishments for offences. No indecent or profane words are allowed while at work ; no wrangling, quarrelling, or fighting ; the use of ardent spirits is forbidden. Places of worship are provided for Catholics, Lutherans, and even for the Jews. School-houses are built, and regular 11 1i J54 AMSTERDAM TO NIMBGUEN. masters provided ; and the books made use of are Tel that neither Catholic nor Protestant can object to them and it is stated that the pious nistrucfons of he d^rsY, combined «ith constant employment, hafe had f most beneBcial inBuence o" '- 'f ^ „f !l the paupers, but more especially o the voun" er porS of them. Can .uch a people, so LaT; oCetch forth a hand for the "hef of po- verty and wretchedness be justly accused of nl u- mlnity or of avarice ?-every fact contradicts the ^' Mr'Tacob observes, that ' it is impossible to . look it the condition of Ireland and "ot ^ f-^- . paraestlv that some plan similar to what lie has . Sed butaccomm'odated to the state of society . td to the character of the peasantry of hat ' K 1 1 st^ T^ed.\"tt • is airr t fetrtlit'w 11 remain to be desired ; for were the Srei?tXi^i:^otr:pr:oC:s^; ^Toud b fl^d. unless armed witl. military autho- rity, to undertake the direction wiUi any hope ot bringing it to a successlul issue. AMSTERDitM TO NIMEOUEN. 155 That many individuals of tlie Dutch nation liave proved themselves unwortliy the character of hu- manity in their eastern possessions, is but too true ; and it is not improbable that the unfavor- able impression may have been caused from what has happened in that quarter of the world. At the same time it must be admitted that the Dutch are not the only people whom a residence among the slaves of the east has operated a change of character unfavorable to individuals, but which ought not to affect the national cliaracter. India is unhappily a part of tlie world to which it is not too much to say, individuals are gene- rally sent with no other view or object than to accumulate wealth; and they go under the im- pression, tliat the sooner they make a fortune, and quit the country, the more agreeable. Hence it has happened, not to the Dutch alone, that, during the process of accumulation, we have heard of but too many instances where avarice and inhumanity have not undeservedly stamped with infamy the names of individuals. Thus it was avarice alone that induced the governor of a Dutch fort, to commit the base act of selliiiix to the enemy which was investing it the very gnn- powcler by which he was enabled to make its cap- ture ; and the same base passion alone must have actuated that servant of the English East India Company, who was accused of fitting out a priva- teer under false colours, to capture a ship belonging to his employers. These are individual delin- quencies not chargeable to the national character. As little reason is there for accusing: the Dutch generally with inhumanity for the atrocious pro- 156 AMSTERDAM TO NiMEGUEN. ceea-.ngs of -nah. 'n^^^^^^^^^^ then, at tl>e '""«^*'>„^f,ers belonged, it may be been endured at home. ^ ^j Irial, before jucl.es cl-- for the P^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ same faction. But b^wuse we a ^^^^^^ i„l,-.n '»•»"• i,,„„,ii, „„i.a, OT. ot I. AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. 157 matron. When lier son, to avenge liis father's death, had entered into a conspiracy against tlie government, was tried and condemned, tlie mother petitioned for his pardon, and on heing asked why she had not petitioned for her Imsband, nobly replied, ' I would not ask for my husband's pardon, * because he was innocent and needed no pardon ; ' I ask for my son's, because he is guilty.' Holland, indeed, is not wanting in examples of female lieroism and self-devotion, nor is Kenau Hasselaar the only heroine who gained distinction, when the inhuman Spaniards laid siege to Leyden and Haarlem. We saw too little of female society to form any judgment as to the share which the ladies lake in the amusements of their lords and masters. They are understood, however, to make excellent wives, and to manage the domestic concerns with fidelity and ability; 'yea,' as an old anonymous writer lias it, ' it is a general observation in this country, * that where tlie women have the direction of the ' purse and trade, the husbands seldom prove ' bankrupts, it being the property of a true-born * Holland wife, presently after marriage, to apply *■ herself wholly to her business.' It may also be mentioned that instances of infidelity are more rare in Holland than in any other nation, indeed they can scarcely be said to exist. The middling and lower class of females are certainly not remarkable for their beauty ; but their dress is not exactly calculated to set off their features to advantage. Among the better classes, Parisian fashions have crept in since they have had the advantage of a visit from the French court in Amsterdam. 158 AMSTERDAM TO NIMEGUEN. On tlie whole we could not agree with the this mi^iu ^ ,^ I ^ j^ is a country where rrS ist«e?:ban the air, a„a profit „,ore ' „ request than l>onour ; «here there is more . sense than wit, more good-nature than good- . riour and in'ore wealth than pleasure • whe e . a man would choose rather to travel than to . liv" will find more things to observe than ' Ztwe ■ and more persons to esteem than love. '^Br;ewiU concede by adding, that there are „o nWDle in Europe so well governed as the Dufch with so little expense, and w,th so h tie K ;, because they are -^er-mmded qu.et industrious, and obedient to the laws »-^b«^^";^« thev have a King to whom they do but Dare juXe in styling him the ' father of h.s people. I Chapter VI. PASSAGE UP THE RHINE. FROM NIME- GUEN TO COLOGNE. The bad weather, which was but just clearing up this afternoon, had probably deterred passengers from embarking on board the steamer, which left Rotterdam in the morning, as there were not above half a dozen on board. We had therefore the pa- villion^ or stern cabin, wholly to ourselves ; which was so far fortunate, as it was necessary we should pass the night in the boat. We left Nimeguen about six in the evening, and about nine reached Emmerick, the frontier town, which marks the territorial division of the King of the Nether- lands and of Prussia, on the left bank of the Rhine. Here we were stopped about a quarter of an hour by a visit from the Prussian douaniers, who appeared to be military officers. They con- ducted themselves towards us with the utmost politeness, and were satisfied with merely opening our trunks, without examining or even touching any article within them. AVe had not much to regret by passing up this lower part of the Rhine by night, as the whole country on both sides of the river is a dead flat, or nearly so, as far as Dusseldorf ; and even there it does not much improve. Low natural banks, overgrown with reeds, rushes, and willows, not 160 PASSAGE UP THE RHINE. suersed with corn-hcids, •"> ^ ^ , „ot licking village, make up. vUeie^e ba ^^ ^^_^ obstruct the v.ew for t^. grea^^ v^ ^^^^^ gardens, and avenues of -^i' ''J'^o.^fo/t Sl^Sul^ftuIir country, and .lucU naked, dirty, and «"»-b»',"t;;'X ,^,e between Tins was more particular!) tl.e case Urdingen and Ke.rserwert . >^r the ^„„,. Tl,c !»««. »~ J," „'£,„ ,1,. ruinous condition, and surioumieu . The author of the best guide for those «ho visit the Banks of the Rhine. FROM NIMEGUEN TO COLOGNE. 161 women and cliildren, wlio were the only persons seen, were ill-clad and disgustingly diVty, with ill-looking, vacant countenalices, and as' brown as Portuguese. At Urdingen the Rhine is crossed by a flying bridge. Hitherto we had scarcely seen a vessel of any description navigating this fine river ; and among those few which were here and there lying a*t anclior under its banks, we did not observe a single one that carried the Dutch flag. It was not clear whether this circumstance was owing to any im- pediments caused by the discussions carrying on with the * Etats Riverains,' in consequence of the treaty of Vienna, or merely to the difficulties and disadvantages occurring in a river navigation, with a current of at least four miles an hour, and in some of the contracted parts, five. Even our steamer could not make good above five knots in the most favourable parts, frequently not above four, and sometimes only three, and was obliged to cross constantly from one side to the other to catch the eddy water. The recent rains had considerably swelled the river, and of course increased the strength of the current. On approaching Dusseldorf, the first hills are seen to make their appearance at a short distance behind it. We had heard much of the beauty and bustle which might be expected at this German city, once famed for its gallery of pictures, but that portion of it at least which borders on the river showed no symptoms of either j and as we were only to stop half an hour to take on board some passengers, we did not think it worth our while to land. A ruined castle and the tower of a church u jg2 PASSAGE UP THE BHINE. attention. ., ,, j^g^ vvinds in an From D"^=«W°^f *°^*"4count of its having, extraordinary ^='™"' °"JX„ its ancient bed, at some time o'^ °*^/°X: .one in tl.e time which, however, it is ^^^°'' ,„^g to the walls of the Komans, when it ^^^^^^^^^ ^his town of Neus, then '-•''"f'l, ^"il""';" of nearly two stands at present at the distance o y ^^^^ miles inland, -£'"t'K church St. Quirin lofty tower and the cuP"'^ » ^j^^ ^ of the "*" ^''•rrfulUen' h cobssal statue of the saint, cupola 13 a tull-iene,"' -^ j distance, which has a fine «Weara"cejven at ^^ ^^^^ It was at Neus ">at Dr >sus ^ ';'^^ ^ .^ „.„, i^^re thrown a bridge «"«f *' f_f ^ f,, Armies effected that, in the year l^l^S. '''« ^'l'^ ^^^^^ .^ their first ?a«^='g^f ^[^^.^^ rbefor^ Neus, a flying now, at the bead of "'« J^'^ , ,, ^ great dis- Sf u^r st^." i"^- ^'-^ '-'- '"^ ^ 'Srs°oot7hadTe passed the .-t W 'nSo river before Neus, *!- a range of fin blue hiU^ showed themselves m the distance anc^^^^^^^^ to great a^-" ^f ..J^ „:» then to be Spread **"tekl£ Khalations probably from over tlieir bicieb, in . ^^ ^^g. ^'^^ '^': ^tfteite'e "b::: iccustomed so Cg,^d stt^letely -^^Vit ^eX^ ^tm^^TS'Ty.:"? HS,°and with tl.wU- FROM NIMEGUEN TO COLOGNE. 163 lows and ruslies of the low banks of the Rhine, it was a great relief to survey the gentle acclivity which the face of the country now put on, commencing close to and ascending from the banks of the river. The rising grounds were covered with cornfields, copses, and plantations of wood, and backed by those distant hills, wliich were wearing so enchant- ing a hue. Opposite to the Chateau of Benrath, the Rhine makes another extraordinary bend which opens out into one of the finest reaches we had yet seen of this great river. This Chateau had all the appearance of being a good substantial house; it was backed by an extensive wood of beech trees, through which several avenues had either been cut, or the trees, as is most probable, had orio^i- .nally been planted in regular lines to form them. The grounds in front and on each side were in a high state of cultivation, and numerous peasantry of both sexes employed upon them. At the bot- tom, or, more correctly speaking, at the upper end of the reach stands the ancient town of Zons, exhibiting its two spires rising out of its two towers — the one square, the other round. From hence all this part of the grand Duchy of Berg, as far as the eye could take in the country, was backed by a long range of hills, well wooded in parts, and chequered with cornfields up to their very sunnnits, so that the view was eminently beautiful. On the left bank of the next reach of the Rhine is the town of Woringen, from whence the voyr ager obtains the first sight of the ' Seven Moun- tains,' rearing their blue heads just above the hori- zon. M 2 If X64 PASSAGE UP THE SHIXE. Several villages now begin to appear in suc- cession alone? both banks of tlie river, till >ve cession '"" ^ , , j ^5,^ immediate ncigh- bSo o \S the surface of the country annearecl naked and sandy, but the river itself Sdtto a succession of ^road reactes resemj Win- so many lakes, especially that fine broad exVrnse of water, on the right margin of vvluch the town of Wiesdorf is situated. . „ , „„ Hrwe first get ^ig'^* °f />- "*/ "^ Su> V with its numerous spires and towers, [^^^^'""y The town of Muhleim appears, ^""f ^ °'},,*^j riffht bank at the head of one of tlie finest 'r fcLs of the Rhine which we had y^^^S At this place, which is supposed to have ueen rtie clpital of the Ubians, Caesar is said to have thrown a wooden bridge across the Rhine In fact 1 wooden bridge still exists across he rWer at this place, but it - o^ly^^^.^fl^-g hridvn of Bm- een, and the vine-clad side of the opposite moun- Uin afforded a contrast equally striking and aar;eable. The broad expansive Rhme glis ened in the sun-beams, as its ample volume flowed ma- iestically towards us, interrupted only by the Maus-thurm. or as travellers interpret it, the tower of rats, which is built on a rock m the middle of the river, and by dividing the current, adds to the velocity and the noise of the Bingen- lock, which is considered to be dangerous to navi- ^^Tlds curious tower is too romantically placed to be without its fegend, which says it was so COBLENTZ TO FRANCKFORT. 207 named, because one Hatton, a profligate bishop, was by divine punishment so tormented by rats, as to be obliged to fly and seek for refuge in this tower ; but he was pursued by the vermin, who fell upon and devoured him ; a fate wh^^.h he drew upon himself, by having shut up a number of poor people during a famine in a bam, and set fire to It, reproaching them as being the rats that de- voured the bread of those who had laboured for it. There can be little doubt that we should either read Mauth-thurm^ the tower of customs or tolls, or, Mausen-ihnrrn, the thieving-tower ; at any rate the legend would appear to an English reader a very clumsy one, in giving the name of mouse to a tower celebrated by a feat performed by rats, if he did not know that the word maus means rat as well as mouse. The endless succession of ancient dilapidated castles is generally spoken of by travellers with a degree of rapture in which some of us did not exactly partake. The eternal round tower, or stone cylinder, which always accompanies, and is always left standing amidst, the castellated ruins, and that alone sometimes remaining, is the very reverse of picturesque. There is besides a moral feeling attached to them, that is apt to carry the recollec- tion back to those days of feudal tenure, when murder and robbery were hardly considered as crimes ; and when many an unhappy victim lin- gered out a miserable existence in the cells and dungeons of these ancient ruins, which still remain as memorials of the villainous scenes that have been transacted within their walls. A French writer thinks otherwise ; he tells us how delightful he 206 COBLENTZ TO FRA.NCKFORT. most picturesque mountains, some clothed with wood, others naked, black, and frowning with rocks, rearing their pinnacled heads under every fantastic shape, and scarcely distinguishable from the ruined remains of forts and castles, which are seen crowning their rugged summits, themselves ' shaped as they had turrets been, in mockery of man's art ;' while the narrow spaces between their feet and the margin of the lakes are smiling with cultivation, and enlivened with towns and villages in the midst of vineyards. Here, in short, is ' A blendinj^ of all beauties ; streams and dells. Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, corn-fields, mountain, vine, And chieiless castles, breathing stem farewells From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greatly dwells.' On clearing the ravine, however, the scene was entirely changed, and the eye had now full scope to range round the whole of the soutliern, eastern, and western horizons. The sun was just setting as we left the dark and gloomy gulph, and its western rays, falling on the little town of Bin- gen, and the vine-clad side of the opposite moun- tain, afforded a contrast equally striking and agreeable. The broad expansive Rhine glistened in the sun-beams, as its ample volume flowed ma- jestically towards us, interrupted only by the Maus-thurm, or as travellers interpret it, the tower of rats, which is built on a rock in the middle of the river, and by dividing the current, adds to the velocity and the noise of the Bingen- lock, which is considered to be dangerous to navi- gation. This curious tower is too romantically placed to be without its legend, which says it was so COBLENTZ TO FRANCKFORT. 207 named, because one Hatton, a profligate bishop, was by divine punishment so tormented by rats, as to be obliged to fly and seek for refuge in this tower ; but he was pursued by the vermin, who feli upon and devoured him ; a fate wh'>h he drew upon himself, by having shut up a number of poor people during a famine in a barn, and set fire to it, reproaching them as being the rats that de- voured the bread of those who had laboured for it. There can be little doubt that we should either read Maiith-thurm^ the tower of customs or tolls, or, Mausen'thunn^ the thieving-tower ; at any rate the legend would appear to an English reader a very clumsy one, in giving the name of mouse to a tower celebrated by a feat performed by rats, if he did not know that the word maus means rat as well as mouse. The endless succession of ancient dilapidated castles is generally spoken of by travellers with a degree of rapture in which some of us did not exactly partake. The eternal round tower, or stone cylinder, which always accompanies, and is always left standing amidst, the castellated ruins, and that alone sometimes remaining, is the ver\^ reverse of picturesque. There is besides a moral fecling^ attached to them, that is apt to carry the recollec- tion back to those days of feudal tenure, when murder and robbery were hardly considered as crimes ; and when many an unhappy victim lin- gered out a miserable existence in the cells and dungeons of these ancient ruins, which still remain as memorials of the villainous scenes that have been transacted within their walls. A French writer thinks otherwise ; he tells us how delightful he 208 COBLENTZ TO FRANCKFORT. feels in transporting himself in imagination to those remote ajjes '-'' ancient chivalry — those ages, as he call. ... -ilour and virtue — in imagi- ning himself to be surrounded by those preux chevaliers, t^e protectors of weakness, the defend- ers o^ .A vvhich in those days knew no other ornament out delicacy and gentility. Perhaps he would have been nearer the truth if, instead of preux chevaliers, he liad painted these castles to his mind as the retreats of bands of brigands. Lord Byron, we suspect, has taken a juster view of them. * Beneath these battlements, within those walls Power dwelt amidst her passions ; in proud state Each robber chief upheld his armed halls, Doing his evil will, not less elate Than mightier heroes of a longer date.' As we were here to quit the Rhine, a word or two may be added on the general character of this interesting river. We frequently find the epithet • magnificent ' coupled with the Rhine. To speak correctly, it is not sufficiently capacious to justify the application of that term ; but to the eye of the traveller it possesses charms, abundantly superior to those rivers that are so truly magnificent, that one shore is frequently invisible from the other. The Rhine includes within its banks sublimity and beauty, softness and amenity. In gliding down the stream the eye embraces all these at a glance, and riots in endless variety, — the rugged and fantastic forms displayed by naked mountain tops, vying in picturesque with some ancient and ruined castle — the overhanging forest — the sombre crag mingled with the verdant vine — the neatly culti- • » ■ c < t ♦ V, 1o '. O 3 ' t 3 o 4 , .c • « « • f r » f - i § ^ r"^' I COBLENTZ TO FRANCKFORT. 209 vated plain — the clustered town with its turretted towers and spires— the sequestered village, and the lonely cottage— the beautiful island, and the con- stant succession of new objects, and a new dis- position of them, — these are the features ever varied that constitute the beauties, and afford that delight, which travellers rarely fail to derive from an excursion on or along the banks of the Rhine. The town of Bingen is situated at the conflu- ence of the Nahe with the Rhine, and is approached from the north by a stone bridge over the former, said to have been built, or its remaining piers at least built, in the time of Drusus. The situation is beautiful, and there was an appearance of industry and bustle which we had not witnessed since our departure from Amsterdam. A number of vessels were lying alongside the quay, and in every street were coopers, house-carpenters, and masons, work- mg at their several trades ; the first preparing their large pipes for the approaching vintage, and the others on new houses building, and old ones re- pairing. Extensive floats of timber were lyino- along the quay and the shore, and about a dozen of those remarkably long and narrow vessels that navigate the Rhine were at anchor, having each a house on the deck, in which the owner or navi- gator with his whole family dwells. We remained for the night at the hotel of the White Horse, a good comfortable house, with a little garden by the river side, the people civil, and the charges remarkably reasonable. There is not much to be seen in the town. A ruined old fort or castle near the upper extremity commands a fine view of the 210 COBLENTZ TO FRANCKFORT. surrounding country and tlie Rliine, wliicli here spreads out to the eastward into a wider expanse of water than in any of its reaches lower down. The mound on which this castle stands is supposed to have been tlie camp of Drusus, but being called the Klopp, Mr. Schreiber supposes it may have been the retreat of one of the chevaliers brigands of the middle ages, and that its name is derived from the Greek — (a.-Xctttj^'?). From the mound is a splendid view of the Rhyngau, or district of the Rhine, on the opposite side of the river, extending from Cassel near the jMaine to Lorrich, and comprehending all the far-famed vineyards of Asmannshausen, Geisenheim, Rudcsheim, Johan- nisberg and Hockheim. On the morning of the 20th we proceeded on our route, which no longer skirts the margin of the Rhine, but passes in a direct line inland, and up a gentle ascent through the midst of highly cultivated vineyards, far different, in size and luxu- riance, from those small patches on the mountain slopes of the great ravine of the Rhine. We are now in the midst of hundreds of acres completely covered with them, till, as we advance up the hill towards Neider Ingelheim, the culture begins to be varied by a mixture of grain, clover, pota- toes, and various other vegetables interspersed among the vineyards. From the summit level of the rising country, on which Ingelheim stands, is a magnificent view of the Rhyngau, with Rudesheim, Geisenheim, Hockheim, and Johan- nisberg, and the numerous villages scattered over the surface of the country on the farther side of the Rhine. COBLENTZ TO FRANCKFORT. 211 Neider Engelheim was tlie favourite residence of Charlemagne, where, it is said, he built a palace surrounded by a portico of a hundred columns, brought from Rome and Ravenna. We observed some ruins, but they might have been a church, a castle, or a palace, but looked more like au old barn than any of them. On the highest point of this elevated country, in a small copse on the right of the road, stands an obehsk, on the front of which is this inscription — * Route (le Charlemagne, Terminer en 1' An. 1. flu regue Je Napoleon, Empereur de Francais, sous les auspices de Monsieur Jean Bon St. Andre', Prefet du Department du MontTonn^re.' On the other three sides are the names of Entrepreneurs, Ingencurs, &c. The proximity of Ingelheim may have suggested to M. Jean Ron St. Andre the introduction of the name of Char- lemagne, where some have supposed he was born ; and at the same time the implied compliment to Buonaparte, to whom and to Julius Caisar this and others of his flatterers pretended to find in him a parallel. In restless activity, rapidity of move- ment, and unrelenting persecution of those who opposed him, Buonaparte might certainly be com- pared with Charlemagne. The enormities of the latter, Iiowever, were the results of fanaticism, those of the former, sheer pride and ambition, of which, as Byron says, he was the champion and the child, one ' "Whose ^ame was empires, and whose stakes were thrones, "\Vfe«se table, earth — whose dice were human bones.' P 2 212 MENTZ, OR MAYENCE. MENTZ, OR MAYENCE. Having passed tlie summit, we proceed by a gentle descent, and a tolerably good road, planted on both sides with apple and other fruit-trees, to Mentz, or Mayence. This city belongs to the territory of the Prince of Hesse Darmstadt ; but as the small ness of the contingent furnished by this German prince to the confederacy would not admit of his placing a sufficient garrison in this important place, it was settled at the Congress of Vienna that it should have an Austrian and Prussian governor, in alternate years, and be gar- risoned by Austrian and Prussian troops in equal numbers ; but such rapid changes having been found inconvenient, and the garrison composed of the two nations not agreeing well together, it was afterwards settled that each governor should remain three years. The number of troops were at this time so considerable, that the whole town wore a military appearance. In the streets few persons were seen but soldiers. The old palaces, hotels, and convents were converted into barracks, and the finest houses in the town occupied by the Austrian and Prussian officers. With all this, Mayence appeared to be one of the dullest towns, for its size, that we have met with. We observed a little bustle about the quay, along which a con- siderable number of shipping were lying; but there was much less than might have been ex- pected from its commanding situation on the Rhine, near the confluence of the fine navigable river, the Maine, which, in its descent, passes one MENTZ, OR MAYENCE. 213 of the finest, most wealthy, and most commercial cities in all Germany. From this river, though it joins the Rhine on the opposite side, and some- what above the town, Maintz, or Mentz, takes its name. The ancient name was Moguntiacum. Most of the streets are narrow and crooked, par- ticularly those about the old cathedral, or Dom Church : but a fine open street runs down the centre to the very quay; and there are several squares and open places, one in particular, in which the parade is held. The entrance into the town is over draw- bridges, bastions, and all the various kinds of defences, and within it are bar- racks and guard-rooms in almost every street. The fine old Gothic tower, and, indeed, the whole of the exterior of the cathedral, built of red sandstone, with its fretwork and pinnacles, is a very striking object. The tower was once surmounted with a spire of wood, eighty feet above the present crumbling summit, but was burnt down by lightning. It is a remarkable fact, that there is scarcely an old church along the Rhine or in the Netherlands, that, in some part of its history, has not been con- sumed wholly, or in part, by fire. W^e had some difficulty in finding our way into this noble build- ing, on account of the mean old houses that are clustered round it. The great door was quite blocked up by these houses and shops, and paltry stalls for the sale of fruit, vegetables, and other trifling matters. In groping our way through a dark passage in quest of this door, we might with truth say that, like ' the way that leadeth unto life,* the way into this church ' was narrow,' and diffi- 214 MENTZ, OR MAYENCE. cult to find. Over the door we read the following" Latin couplet, — ' Haec qui templa subis, ad cerium attollite mentem, Sintque procul nugae, sit scelus omne procul.' The interior corresponds in c^randeur with the exterior ; but when the French Jacobins took possession of it, as they did of all the churches wherever they went, to convert them into bar- racks, hospitals, and magazines for their armies, the Cathedral of Mentz was most scandalously and wantonly abused. The beautiful marble tombs were mutilated, the pictures destroyed, the bronze and iron railings torn up ; the ceiling is blackened, obviously by fire, and full of holes, as if it had been pierced by shot. The Swiss of the church, in pointing out tiie various mischief com- mitted by the French, added, that the people of Mentz would not be sorrv to have them aj^ain, as they spent a waggon-load of money when there. This was the only church, however, we had yet seen that had not undergone repair, and been puri' fied from the defilement and mischief done by tiiese unholy miscreants, and there appeared to be some feeble attempt making to put this also into some- what better condition ; but whether at the expense of the clergy, the inhabitants, or the Prince of Hesse Darmstadt, we did not enquire. Under the monument of one of the archbishops, (that of Albert, Margrave of Brandenburgh,) is a head repres3nting Time, with its wings finely sculp- tured, by Melchior, who would a])pear to have had in his mind the head of Homer. There is also a MENTZ, OR MAYENCE. 215 large bronze font, richly chased with excellent workmanship. In a small square on the left of the great street, which leads to the quay, is a handsome fountain, representing the Rhine, under the personification of a well-executed figure of an old man ; and in this square is the public library, and the museum. The former we could not see as it was under repair, and the books were all displaced and on the floors of the rooms, but we went through the small collection of pictures, which generally speaking are not of the first class. Among them was Christ in the Temple,' by S. Jourdaen — ' Christ bearing his Cross,' by Otto Venius — ' A Holy Family,' by Hannibal Caracci — a ' Saint Francis,' bv Guercino — ' Rubens' second wife and chil Iren/ by himself ; the animals in this last picture by Sney- ders. The old Keeper was a little angry that we should have expressed a doubt of the originality of this ])icture. There was also the portrait of ApoUonia by Dominichino, the Adam and Eve, by Albert Durer, or some one of his school, and a very pretty ])icture of the Virgin and Child by Alonzo di Gradi, for which the superintendent told us an ofi'er of six thousand florins had been made by a London picture dealer ; and in two rooms below was a large collection of Roman antiquities, very well arranged, which were sent chiefly from the old palace of Ingelheim and other places near the Rhine. Among them was a curious slab, on which was sculptured the ' 22nd Legion ; ' with certain creatures which they are pleased to call sea-horses on one side, and a bull on the other, m the way of supporters. 216 MENTZ, OR MAYENCE. ^ At the bottom of this fine street, on the left side, and close to the Rhine, stands the ancient electoral palace, now made use of as magazines for all the goods that arrive here for shipment. It consists of two immense wings, of a very sin- gular mixture of architecture, partly Grecian and partly fanciful, with fluted pilasters and rich capitals, the whole of red stone and most elabo- rately worked. The other two wings appear to have been the offices. The gates of the court- yard are locked up at nights, and as far as we could learn, there is something of a warehousing system, which allows merchandize to be lodged in this building till disposed of, and the duties paid. From Mayence a noble bridge of fifty-two pon- toons or boats crosses the Rhine to Cassel, a small fortified town. The Rhine is here not less than from seven to eight hundred yards across, and widens out to more than twice that breadth a little higher up, where it receives the waters of the Maine. Below the bridge are moored in the river sixteen or eighteen water mills, which were all busily employed in grinding corn. This bridge, like those at Coblentz and Cologne, has its convex side opposed to the stream, and like them also it furnishes a fine broad platform as a prome- nade for the inhabitants. There is, however, a very pleasant mall at the west end of the town planted with trees, extending down the bank of the Rhine above a mile, which is frequented for its shade in the heat of the day. Being so near, not more than from six to seven leagues, to Franckfort, we determined at once to proceed to tliat city ; and at the request of our very MAYENCE TO FRANCKFORT. 217 decent and well-behaved driver, whom we brought from Cologne, we consented to go a little out of our way to the left of Cassel, to a village of which lie was a native, in order to change our tired horses. These small animals are capable of performing an incredible quantity of work ; and all the bait they get in the course of a day's journey is once, and sometimes twice, a loaf of rye-bread, which they immediately devour with great eagerness, how- ever tired they may be, and when they would refuse either hay or oats. We now ascended a pretty steep hill, on each side of which were luxuriant and extensive vine- yards, the vines so tall as to look from a little distance almost like plantations of hops. These are the vineyards of Hockheim, and above them, on the sunnnit of the hill, stand the village and church of tiie same name. This elevated situation commands a most extensive view to the south- ward of the whole valley of the Maine, as far as Hesse Darmstadt and to the mouth of the river where it joins the Rhine, and on the east is the town of Wisbaden and the whole range of the Taunus mountains, fertile in mineral springs and batliing- houses. Wisbaden has recently become a fashion- able watering-place, and is frequented by numbers of English families. Having passed the hill of Hockheim and descended to the level plain, we entered upon an open and well-cultivated country, a great part of whose surface had been covered with wheat, now all reaped and carried ; a good deal of oats still remained uncut, and whole fields of poppy were under the sickle, from the prolific heads of which 218 MAYENCE TO FRANCKFORT. they express an oil. Beet and mangel-wurzel, clover and potatoes, were in great abundance, and large patches of hemp and flax intervened, but very few turni})s. There was no appearance of meadow or grass land, and it is not easy to con- ceive from whence the large towns on the Rliine, the populous villages in the valley of the INIaine, and the city of Frankfort, derive their supplies of beef, mutton, butter, and milk. Yet they have plenty of all, though we agreed that we had not tasted either good butter or good milk since we left Holland, nor had we observed a single cow all the way up the Rhine from Cologne to Mayence. The few that are kept must be confined to the shed, and fare very poorly. We observed along the road-side, and subsequently along the whole of the Netherlands, women with large knives, bent like a reaping-hook, cutting the grass in the ditches and on the banks, and carrying it off in sacks as food for the cows : and in the vineyards of Hockheim they were taking off the prurient shoots, and the superabundant leaves, of the vines, binding them in little bundles, and sticking them to dry on the tops of the stakes or espaliers to which the vines are bound ; and this, we under- stood, was meant as winter food for the cows. Neither did we see any sheep: the system of feeding off the turnips has not been adopted here, nor, as we afterwards found, in the Netherlands ; but we observed several very large flocks of fine geese, watched by boys, feeding on the stubble, and probably fattening for Michaelmas. FRANCKFORT. 219 FRANCKFORT. Franckfort may be called a city of palaces. The houses of the merchants and the hotels are on a magnificent scale. Some that have been recently erected on a terrace, along the bank of the Maine, are })articularly elegant, but not on so large a scale as some of the old hotels at v/hicli formerly the German princes used to reside, and many of which are still inhabited by the plenipotentiaries of the states of Germany who attend the diet. At the extremity of the terrace is the new public library, a chaste and handsome building, with a portico of the Corinthian order, on the entabla- ture of which is the following short inscription : * Studiis libertati reddita civitas.' The library appeared to be well arranged and particularly rich in ancient and modern history. It contained a few Roman and Egyptian antiqui- ties, and some hieroglyphics of no great value.— The view, from this terrace, of the river and its banks, and the stone bridge of fourteen arches, with the shipping lying below it, is lively and animating. The great street called Zeil^ in which most of the hotels arc situated, is, perhaps, one of the finest in Euro|)e. We jmt up at the Weiden- busch, kept by Mr. May» a civil, obliging, and in- telligent man. The eating and the wines were ex- cellent, and the charge reasonable — three francs each at the table d'hote and four in private — and some twenty or thirty different dishes are generally served up. It was in vain here, and indeed every- 220 FRANCKFORT. where, when we wished to dine alone, that we en- treated to sit down to tliree or four dishes at most; tliere seemed to be a feeling that the house would think itself dis n = . -■ - , 3 ; • ••• ~ t c t c r ■ o * »c I GHENT. 267 figures of white marble, from the quarries of Genoa, rest. One of these, a bishop of Ghent, by Quesnoy, and another, a German bishop, by PaoH, are exquisitely fine. The pulpit is a finished piece of carving, supported by two statues of Time and Truth, under tlie figures of an angel hold- ing open the ' Book of Life ' before the face of an old man ; and on each flight of steps is the figure of an angel : — the whole by Laurent de Veana. There is a picture of St. Bavon, by Rubens, but in 80 bad a light that the subject can scarcely be made out. There is also a large picture of the raising of Lazarus, by Van Veen, reckoned fine ; and the Paschal Lamb, by Van Eyck, and three others, are highly valued by the inhabitants. The grand altar of black and white marble, with the statue of St. Bavon, is by Vanbruggen ; the two colossal statues of Carara marble by which he is supported are by another hand. The four massive candelabra on the great altar are said to have belonged to our Charles L, and to have originally been the property of the old Metropolitan church of Saint Paul of London. Ghent is almost as much intersected by canals as if it were a town of Holland ; and they talk of its twenty-seven islands and three hundred bridges, which are i)robably about three times the actual number. In the architecture of the churches we observed nothing very remarkable, but the stepped gables of the houses give a pecuUar character to the town. It has some good streets and open squares that are lighted with gas ; and we could not but notice that a great many more well dressed people, both ladies and gentlemen, appeared 268 GHENT. abroad in the streets, tlian we had observed else- where ; it appeared, however, that the greater part of them were Engh'sh, who liave congregated here in numbers as considerable, perhaps, as at Brussels. There are, no doubt, many induce- ments held out at Ghent for English families, in moderate circumstances, to fix their abode there. All the necessaries of life are abundant and cheap*. There is an excellent college, at which the pupils are instructed in every branch of literature on the most reasonable terms ; and no distinction made between protestant and catholic. There is an aca- demy for the fine arts, which possesses a good col- lection of pictures, a public library, and a very good botanical garden, which was founded under the republican government of Franqe, out of the gardens and grounds of a suppressed convent. The present king, not to be behindhand with the French in beneficence to his good subjects of Ghent, has founded and built for them the above- mentioned college, or university as it is called, which does great honour to the care and paternal love for his people, displayed in no way more than in his desire, manifested in every part of his dominions, to instil a taste for literature, science, and fine arts among them. The building is mag- nificent; the facade, with its eight Corinthian columns, and noble pediment intended to be deco- rated with allegorical sculpture in bas-relief, does credit to the architect. Already, we understood, it has about six hundred students, and it possesses very valuable collections in the several depart- ments of natural history, and a library of fifty or sixty thousand volumes. Ghent. 269 AVe regretted much that time would not allow us to visit the interior of this splendid monument dedicated to the arts and literature. When a traveller finds a free and easy access to these and similar institutions, which are open to all the world in almost every city on the conti- nent, an Englishman's pride ought to suffer some little humiliation if he only reflects that, when a foreigner comes into England, he cannot have access, even in the capital, to any one collection of pictures, nor to any scientific society, without a special introduction. As to pictures, indeed, we have no public collection, save only the few that are huddled together in a small shabby house in Pall-mall, which we ridiculously call a National Gallerv. If we really had a national gallery, no one can for a moment doubt that there are numerous indi- viduals public spirited enough to fill it by con- tributions from their respective collections, and with pictures not at all inferior to those we meet with on the continent; but we have not even the bare walls of a building fit to receive them. It can scarcely be believed by a foreigner, that a country which has subsidized all the nations of Europe ; that raises a revenue equal — or nearly so — to the accumulated revenues of all Europe ; that has a debt of eight hundred millions, the interest of which is paid punctually on the day it becomes due: — that such a nation cannot aflbrd to lay out a few thousand pounds, to bring to- gether such an assemblage of works of art, as would probably not be matched in any part of the continent of Europe, is a thing that foreigners cannot understand, especially as they well know \ ' y \\ 270 GHENT TO BRUGES. that many of the finest specimens of some of the best masters are in England, and would be libe- rally contributed, provided we had but a suitable building for their reception. Nay more, — a foreigner cannot even gain ad- mission to the only two churches that we have in the capital worth seeing, without payment being demanded at the door ; but in this respect he i*s on the same footing with our own countrymen, against whom they are equally closed. On the continent, the churches are open to everybody, and should any of them happen to be closed, tlie person in the neighbourhood who holds the key is always most ready to attend. He may know, perhaps, that he will be recompensed for his trouble, but the odium of making a regular demand at the door is unknown. The distance from Ghent to Bruges is about thirty miles ; and as the country is here one con- tinued flat, we resolved to travel, by way of variety, in the treckschuyt, or, as they call it, the barge — a very commodious vessel, with good apartments and a canopy over the quarter-deck. She is drawn by four horses, which proceed at a gentle trot of about four miles an hour, and they are changed at half way. The fare for this passage is five and a half francs, or four shillings and seven- pence each person, a tolerably good dinner and beer into the bargain. For those who are not in haste, or for invalids, there is no mode of travelling to be compared to this for ease and comfort, and, at the same time, it enables the passenger to occupy himself in any kind of emplovment lie may choose to engage in ; and in the greater part of this particular passage there is nothing to dis- \ BRUGES. 271 tract his attention, the banks being so high as to intercept the view of the country. We could see enough, however, to satisfy us that the whole surface was in an admirable state of tillage. It is said, indeed, that in no part of the Netherlands are finer crops produced than in the district between this line of country and Antwerp, called the Waesland, which centuries ago was a con- tinued waste of barren heath, naked sand, and splashes of water. BRUGES. It took us about eight hours to reach Bruges, a clean, quiet, dull town. Once the central mart for almost all the commerce of the Low Countries, it still exhibits the remains of former grandeur. With its commerce and its opulence, its population gradually fell to nearly one-half of what it was. It is now said to contain about seven thousand houses, and thirty-eight thousand inhabitants. One portion of the population, and no inconsider- able one, ought not perhaps to be deemed as any very great loss, — that which peopled some dozen convents and abbeys, with their extensive esta- blishments and large tracts of ground within the city walls, most of them now suppressed. One of these, which still remains near the western extremity of the town, is the Beguinage, an establishment for the support of old nuns. It is a large enclosure containing a handsome chapel, a number of very good and neat houses round a spacious square planted with trees, and gardens behind them. These elderly ladies are in the enjoyment of every comfort. There is a similar 272 BRUGES. establishment at Ghent, the cliapel of wliich we attended during service time, but were not much enraptured by the voices of these ancient virgins ; indeed the whole of that institution was much inferior to tliis at Bruges. Here we also visited an English nunnery which had been founded ninety-nine years ago. The old lay-sister, notwithstanding her well-trimmed beard, and a pair of mustaches, was a very intelligent and agreeable person, exceedingly connnunicative, and much pleased to see her country people, and lamented that she could not indulge us with ad- mission to the cloisters, and the interior, but their regulations, she said, were strict and positive to allow no person to see any of the professed nuns, except their relations or their acquaintances at the parloir. Even the chapel, she said, had recently been closed against the public by an order from the government, but she would venture to shew it to us, and indeed urged us to see it. This chapel is certainly the most perfect model of the kind that can be imagined. It is fitted up with good taste and elegance, and devoid of all trumpery decorations. Indeed there was nothing within it, with the exception of the altar, and scarcely that, to indicate that it was a place for Catholic worship. A vertical section through the centre of the Sybil's temple will convey an idea of the form of the altar. It is supported on each side by two very elegant marble columns of the Ionic order. The base or plinth on which it stands, the table of the altar, and the steps leading to it, are all of varied, and the most beautiful kinds of marble, which the lady told us was a present from Rome BRUGES. 273 to the patroness. Lady Lucy Herbert. Beyond the dome, and in each side of the nuns' gal'lerv, are two lofty and well-proportioned Corinthian columns. The number of professed nuns is forty, all from England and Ireland. The whole sisterhood were expelled from this convent on the irruption of the French, and made their way to England, where they were received, and a convent fitted up for them, by Sir Thomas Gage. While there, the old lady said they were all very unhappy, though well treated ; and though there were among them several young ladies unprofessed, and in frequent communication with their friends, there was not, while in England, a single case of desertion — such is the influence that is exercised over the minds of these young creatures, when once entered within the pale of monastic life. Observing a large concourse of people not far from the convent, and proceeding towards that quarter, we saw in an enclosed piece of ground a number of persons dressed in green jackets, with bows and arrows, shooting at a small wooden figure of a bird, apparently not larger than a sparrow, perched at the top of a sort of maypole about one hundred and fifty feet high. * These arbuletriers, or toxophilites, for they were of that society, of ancient standing in Hol- land and the Netherlands, shot their arrows in turn ; and in the course of about a quarter of an hour the bird was hit twice, whicli was the more dexterously done, as the wind was blowing Strong This kind of pole may be observed in almost t 274 BRUGES. every village of the Netherlands, and for the double purpose of exercising the toxophilites at the mark on its summit, and also of decorating with garlands on fairs and festivals, when it is a common practice to grease or soap the lower part, and hang up a prize for him who has the skill, and can endure the fatigue, of ascending this slippery pole, so as to reach it. The streets of Bruges are kept as clean as those of a Dutch town. The houses and shops are not elegant, but neat, and the people generally appear to "be in decent circumstances. The shops and the markets are well supplied with every necessary of life ; the fruit and vegetables are good in qua- lity, and abundant. The great drawback is the want of good fresh water, which can only be had from a considerable distance. The cheapness of provisions, of house-rent, and of education, has induced many English families to repair to Bruges, as well as to Ghent and Brussels. Besides the very small expense of private teachers, they have the advantage of public libraries, reading-rooms, collections of pictures, public and private, and an academy of painting. We rambled through the northern side of the town, which consists of whole streets of cottages, mostly built on one plan, and kept neat and clean by whitewashing. All the women belonging to these cottages were busily employed in weaving lace before the doors, and in many places whole groups of them gossiping while fingering their bobbins with as much rapidity, and seemingly with as much ease and pleasure, as a young lady runs her fingers over the keys of a piano forte. We BRUGES. 275 understood that from seven to eight thousand women are employed on this species of manufac- ture. The dress of the people of the Netherlands is not the most becoming, particularly that of the women. Except those who move in the higher sphere of life, and who imitate French and Eng- lish fashions, the generality of citizens' wives and daughters wear, even in tlie warmest weather, long black cloaks, reaching to their heels, with deep hoods, which the old ladies generally draw over the head, but the young ones mostly turn down, in order to exhibit a neat cap, bordered with lace| always clean and as white as snow. The men wear, almost universally, the common blue frock and cap which prevails throughout Ger- many ; the frock among the better class being used only as a covering to preserve the regular suit of clothes beneath it. TJie Spanish character of olive complexions, black hair, and dark eyes, are very obvious among tlie Belgians ; but not a remnant of the Spanish language remains, and very little French is spoken except at Antwerp and Brussels. Their language, which is called Flemish, is a corrupt jargon of German and Dutch, partaking of both, but not much resembling either ; so that, although among us we could make our way by either language, the true Flemish was quite unintelligible to us all. Finding that the departure of the steam-packet from Ostend had been put off from the 2nd to the 3rd of September, we resolved to spend the day at Bruges rather than Ostend, which gave us an opportunity of seeing the churches of Notre Dame, T 2 276 BRUGE?. or the cathedral, and St. Salvador. Notre Dame is a heavy mass of huildini^, with a tower and spire, that belong to no specific class of architecture. The nave is divided from the side aisles by massive columns. The pulpit is one of those curiously- carved fabrics, common to almost every church in the Netherlands. It is supported by the figure of the Virgin sitting on a globe. There are two pieces of sculpture in white marble, representing the Virgin and Child, that are extremely beautiful. The one near the high altar is esteemed the best, and, indeed, has been claimed as the work of Michael Angelo. It was found in a Genoese vessel, that had been taken by a Dutch privateer belonging to Bruges, and lodged in this church. Sir Joshua Reynolds is of opinion that it is of the school of Michael Angelo. While looking with admiration at this beautiful specimen of sculpture, a gentleman of very re- spectable appearance went down before it on both knees, and with outstretched arms remained mo- tionless for at least ten minutes, looking intensely at the Virgin, after which he arose, made a pro- found reverence, and walked out of the church. This is the only act of devotion, or rather of idolatrous worship, that we had witnessed on the part of any male individual of a decent appear- ance in our whole route, and we never once ob- served a man to go into the confessional box, while women were entering them constantly. The other piece of sculpture is also beauti- fully executed ; indeed, to those who, like our- selves, are not much versed in the niceties of the art, the inferiority is hardly apparent. There is BRUGES. 277 I) something so very natural in the easy and grace- ful figure and position of the Virgin and her mild placid countenance, that one cannot contem- plate it without a feeling of pleasure, almost of reverence. At the bottom of the side-aisle are two pic- tures, which appeared not unworthy of notice. — One was the ' Crucifixion ' in the style of Van Dyk, and the other the * Adoration of the Kings,' after the manner of Rubens. We set them down as equal to Crayer, but could not learn who the artist was. In this church we also observed a picture of the ' Nativity * with two doors or wings, in each of which was a multitude of heads crowded together ; the whole by Holbein or one of his school. St. Salvador is far superior in point of architecture and decorations to Notre Dame. It is a fine specimen of the old light-clustered Gothic, the slender and dehcate shafts climbing up the side of the large ponderous central coliunn, like the creepers that cling to the huge tree in a tropical forest. The arcades between the columns are light and lofty. The organ is a powerful instrument and well played, and the celebration of high mass far superior to that of Notre Dame. There were no pictures of the first class, but several of tolerable merit, two or three by Van Os, and one of the ' Last Supper,' by Pourbus, of the date 1562, very good but rather hard. We observed also an old painting of the ' Crucifixion,' bearing date 1300, which at once sets aside the pretensions of Van Eyck, who is supposed to have made the discovery of painting in oils at Bruges, in the year UIO. Sir Joshua Reynolds, indeed, 278 BRUGES. was decidedly of opinion that this important branch of the art was known many years before Van Eyck was born. The claim, therefore, is probably no better founded than that which gives to Stevin of this city the merit of being the inventor of decimal arithmetic. Having heard much of the church or chapel of Jerusalem, we paid a visit to it, but were griev- ously disappointed. We found it a miserable little' chapel that would with difficulty hold a hun- dred persons ; but in one corner of it there is a Bort of cave, to enter which it is necessary to Stoop ; and in this cave is the sepulclire of Christ, tlie same, we are told, as it is seen at Jerusalem. On entering, we perceived, by a glimmering light, an old woman kneeling before the recumbent figure of a man, with a pale face and a disgusting bFack beard, and the body covered up by a white sheet. We need scarcely say that we speedily quitted this receptacle of a piece of detestable mummery with disgust, — a species of fooleiy, by which the ignorant poor suffer their minds to be deluded, and their pockets picked of that little which scarcely affords them the means of purchas- ing the necessaries of life. The old town-house of Bruges well deserves to be noticed, forming one side of the great square or market-place. The building itself has no pre- tensions to taste or elegance, having something of the appearance of large barracks. One of its largest sides, on the ground floor, is appropriated as a flesh market, which has the merit of being quite concealed from public view, like that under the town-hall of Leyden ; and the side next the ' ■ ■ » ' » I J * i D u 1 n n • • • • 2 • • • • 1 : • • » • I t t \f. 1R * t f r ? \ BRUGES. 279 square is the cloth market. The tower is rather re- markable and very lofty : it consists of thre« parts ; the lower part is a heavy square Gothic structure, corresponding with the body of the building, and pinnacled at the four corners. Out of this rises a second square, of smaller dimensions ; and the third stage, still more contracted, is an octagon. The height cannot be far short of three hundred feet. The carillons have the sweetest tones of any we had heard, and they play almost inces- santly. The present Stadhuis, or town-hall, is in a smaller square, whose upper part is planted with trees, and contains the governor's house, before which the military band plays at certain times of the day. This town-house is a very peculiar and striking building, lofty for its size, and its walls terminated by three turrets crowned with spires, and numerous little minarets on the ridge of the roof. The walls are ornamented with fretted work, and the windows are rich and loftv. The head office of police, the guard and watch- houses adjoining, are curious specimens of old light florid Gothic, well worthy of attention. We had frequent occasion to remark, in the course of our tour, that certain component parts of buildings, not very important in themselves, when common or oft repeated, will sometimes give a character to a town. Thus the lofty broad windows and large squares of glass distinguished the houses of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and the high steps and stoops, as they are called, before the doors, are characteristic of all Dutch towns. The painted wooden houses, the overhanging I 280 BRUGES. upper stories, and the plain-corniced gables, are the common features of a Rhenish town ; and the tall ornamented gable of many stories, with its fantastic scrawls and fretwork, is characteristic of Antwerp, while those of Ghent are generally a series of steps. The arched chimney of semicir- cular tiles, placed thus, ^ives a marked feature to Bruges, as the •ii chimney does to Amsterdam, where it sometimes appears with three arms. AVe had frequent occasions to notice the con- trast in appearance between the Prussian and the Dutch, or rather Belgian, soldiers when on the parade. One of these regiments, or several com- panies of one stationed here, attended divine ser- vice at Notre Dame, where all the music and singing were performed by the band and the sol- diers. To us it had an odd appearance to observe three grenadiers, with their caps on, supporting the priest on each side of the altar, and the men re- maining covered during the service. In marching to church, we could not but remark how loose and slovenly they were in their dress, and more loose in their step, and so careless in marching as con- stantly to be kicking and treading on each other's heels. AVhen contrasted with the soldier-like BRUGES. 281 appearance, the close buttoned -up coat, the up- right carriage and firm step of the Prussians, the difference of the two bodies of men, composed of the same people, was very remarkable. The fault, as we have before observed, must lie with the officers, for the men, though generally small, were young, and, by proper training, would easily be brought into a state of better order and dis- cipline. It is just possible, as the elite of the Dutch army were assembling in the neighbour- hood of Utrecht, to be reviewed by the king, the regiment in question might be chiefly com- posed of recruits. On seeing these troops attending in a body divine service according to the Catholic rites, the reflection was pressed upon us, that the throne of a Protestant king v/as intrusted for its defence to soldiers of a different persuasion. It would be difficult to ascertain the proportion which Catho lies bear to Protestants in the army of the King of the Netherlands ; but as the Dutch are not much addicted to the land service, and few of the young Netherlanders engage in the marine, it may be presumed that the land forces are drawn chieffy from the latter, and are, therefore, most of them probably Catholics. This is still more probable, as the proportion of the whole popula- tion of the Netherlands to that of the old United Provinces is about as three and a half to two, — that is to say, the Netherlands are estimated at three millions and a half, and that of Holland at barely two millions. And as it is supposed that the number of Catholics in the former is about the same as the number of Protestants in the \ 1 fe £ a «, £" ^ „ 282 BRUGES. BRUGES. 283 latter, a very great majority in the army would necessarily be Catholics, even if the aversion of the Hollander to a military life did not induce him to serve by substitute, as is, we believe, allowed by this government, though not in Prussia. It is understood that the Belgians were for a time dissatisfied by being incorporated with Hol- land ; but the moderation shown by the knig, and the desire which he has manifested to maintam a strict impartiahty towards all classes of his sub- jects, have tended very much to reconcile all parties to his government, except the Catholic priests, who never will be satisfied with anything short of supremacy. The Belgians complain of the weight of taxes, in which they are not singu- lar, and of the mode of levying them ; but the system and the rates are said to be those which the French left and King William found. The Catholic clergy ought to be the last to complain, for they have been freed from all appre- hensions as to their fate, by the liberal grant appropriated for their support, which we under- stand to be at least a third greater in amount than is made to the clergv of the established Protestant church. On the other hand, the king has been relieved from any apprehension he might have entertained of the fidelity of the Catholic clergy and their endeavouring to establish a Catholic supremacy, by the concordat he has wisely con- cluded whh the pope ; the consequence of which, one can hardly doubt, will be, that Catholic churches will rear their towers, and spires, and jingle their carillons in Amsterdam, and Protestant churches do the same in Brussels, which have hitherto been prohibited, or at least, barely winked at in both cities. After all, what has William obtained by his concordat ? He has got three things, — First, a veto, or the power of expunging, from the list of candidates for the vacant sees of archbishops and bishops, any names that shall not be agreeable to his Majesty. Secondly, he has obtained the power of exacting from any such archbishop or bishop, previous to his entering his functions, the follow- ing oath of fidelity, which any good Catholic, or Protestant either, need not hesitate to take. ' I swear and promise, on the holy Evangelists^^ ' obedience to his Majesty the King of the Nether* ' lands, my legitimate sovereign. I promise more- ' over to hold no correspondence, to assist at no * council, to engage in no suspicious confederacy, ' neither within nor without the kingdom, that ' may endanger the public peace ; and should it ' come to my knowledge, whether within my own ' diocese or elsewhere, that any measure is plotting ' to the prejudice of the state, I will make it known * to the king my master.' And thirdly, he has obtained the prayer of the church: — ' Domine salvum fac regem nostrum Guilielmum.' In return for all which liis majesty promises, out of his royal munificence, to bestow a most liberal allowance for the support of the clergy, and to supply funds for the establishment of ecclesiastical seminaries for the education of young pupils in- tended for the church. These are most important advantages on the side of the Catholics, and it may be thought, ( 284 OSTEND. OSTEND. 285 J perliaps, tliat William lias made but a bad bargain — that the veto is not worth much — that the oath is of still less value, and that the prayer is merely harmless. Of what possible use, indeed, can any oath be that is taken with a mental reservation, and by those who have the means of freeing their consciences from any breach of it, by obtaining absolution? The Papists are likely enough to be as ready as the Roundheads were, to think that, ^ * 'Tis he who makes the oath, that breaks it, Not he who, for convenience, lakes it.' The Dutch government is doing all that can be done for Belgium, by the establishment of schools for the education of youth of all classes ; and if the Belgians do their duty honestly towards the schools, which are mostly under their direction, and not adhere to that pernicious system of fet- tering the minds of their scholars in the trammels of superstition, and warping their understandings in a direction that may be most suited to their own purposes, this fine fertile country cannot fail to recover, in no great length of time, its former state of affluence and prosj)erity. On the 1st of September, about four in the afternoon, we embarked on the trekschuyt, not quite so commodious as the former one, and were landed in the evening on the quay of Ostend. The fare was one franc and one stiver, about eleven pence each person. The canal that con- nects these two towns is broad and deep, and nearly on a level with the surface of the country the whole way, which has much the appearance of Holland. In the best parts, where anything like cultivation appears, tlie soil is heaped up in rounded ridges, and the deep furrows, we observed, were mostly filled with water. As we approach Ostend, the surface, particularly on the northern side of the canal, becomes more swampy, and tiie country puts on a more dreary appearance. Here, on the 1st of September, they were busily employed in the very midst of haymaking, the uncut grass having much the appearance of being recently freed from immersion in water ; yet at a short distance were villages, with their accompanying trees and their church spire, seen in every direction. On landing, we found there was a considerable degree of alarm in Ostend on account of a fever that had broken out in the garrison ; and to allay the fears of the inhabitants, a public notice was given out, stating the few deaths that had hap- pened, — but which were so great, that if they had taken place in the same proportion in London, they would have given cause for apprehension that either the plague or the yellow-fever or the cholera had got among us. Little can be said in praise of Ostend. The town is neat enough, and looks lively, with its painted houses of green, blue, and yellow, which are the prevailing colours. The interior basin for shipping is large and commodious, and is bordered by a broad quay, which, by the grass springing up between the stones, indicated no overflux of trade. The entrance to the basin through the outer channel and harbour is difficult, and next to impossible when the wind blows strong oft" the shore. It is defended by a strong and regular 286 OSTEND TO LONDON. fort, in wliich is the citadel. Great precautions have been taken to keep out the sea, by break- waters of wood and stone, but chiefly by a sloping glacis of stonework, on the top of which is a pleasant promenade, having the sea-beach and the sands close beneath it. We embarked in the common steamer, and in sixteen hours were landed on Tower-hill. NOTE. NOTE \ .1 ON THAT PART OF THE FOREGOING SHEETS WHICH RELATES TO BELGIUM. 1st January, 1S31. It is now more than two years since the remarks on Belgium, that occur in tliis little volume, were written, and in which no change has been made but a sad change has taken place in the country itself. We left it under a strong impression of the growing prosperity of every city, town, and village through which we had passed. The anar- chy of a few months only has been enough to dry up the sources, and to wither all the branches of that prosperity. From the mild and fostering hand of a beneficent sovereign, the people of this once flourishing country, instigated by a few wicked and designing knaves, have precipitated themselves into the hard and unfeeling grasp of that worst of all tyrannies— the tyranny of a mob ; to whose disposal and caprice their lives and properties were for a time surrendered, and placed at the mercy of the will or the wants of that des- u it s » 290 NOTE. potic power ; nor have tliey yet been able to rescue themselves from the trammels of a certain set of restless and mischievous demagogues, whose game is anarchy, and the object, that of gaining some- thing in the confusion and ruin which they have created. The calamities that have befallen this fine country might almost be considered as a just retribution for the unprovoked and wholly un- called-for rebelUon against the best of rulers-a rebellion that had not even a pretext for its justi- fication. It was a pitiful imitation of what had taken place in France, aided and abetted by revolutionary Frenchmen, joined with factious Belgians, and urged on by a vindictive and seditious editor of a newspaper, who had been justly prosecuted and banished from the country. To the peaceable and well-disposed the conse- quences have been most deplorable. It is admitted by all honest and unprejudiced Belgians, that they had no real cause of complaint aaainst the government. Tliey admit that the commerce and manufactures of the Netherlands had increased threefold since their union with Holland; they admit that Antwerp was yearly rising in commercial importance, and divertmg NOTE. 291 the trade of the less convenient ports of Amster- dam and Rotterdam into its own cliannel ; that tlie cotton and iron manufactures of Liege were in the most flourishing condition ; that the cotton-mills of this district and Ghent had increased five-fold in number and extent ; and that Holland alone Iiad taken from them foiu* times the quantity of coal and iron that France had done during the annexation of Belgium to that kingdom. They admit tliat the king ruled with impar- tiality; that the ofl^ces of state were equally divided between Hollanders and Belgians, and that, on some occasions, the latter predominated ; that tliere was no exclusion, and that no one could be more anxious than the king was to conciliate his new subjects. He could not have given a stronger proof of this than the pains he took to procure a Concordat from the pope, and to re-establish the Catholic bishops — to imjirove the condition of the Catholic clergy — to encourage, by Ixis liberality and example, the establishment of schools for the children of his Catholic subjects. He founded universities and schools for the encouragement of arts, sciences, belles-lettres, and religion, in almost every town of note throughout Belgium. \ U 2 \ 292 NOTE. AVhen tliis country became incorporated witli Holland, one of tlie first steps taken by the king was to lay on protecting duties, which had the effect of excluding our manufactures from Holland, and injured the commerce of both countries for the sake of benefiting the Belgians ; and thus he incurred the displeasure of his own people and his old ally, in order to conciliate his new subjects. In short, if there ever was a man thoroughly dis- posed to meet the wishes of his people, it was William, King of the Netherlands. Of the revolt against such a sovereign, the re- sult has been melancholy for his new subjects, and Las conferred a partial benefit on his old ones. On the first burst, as is usually the case in all rebellions, massacres, robbery, pillage, and de- struction of property, indiscriminately took place, — but mostly that of productive property. One in- stance of this madness may be mentioned as a sample of what happened in many other cases. An Englishman of the name of Cockerell had established manufactories of various kinds about Liege, and one in particular on a very extended scale. On the banks of the Meuse, between Liege and Huy, the archiepiscopal palace of Sereign had been purchased or ceded to liim for NOTE. 293 the establishment of an iron foundry, in which the king took a particular interest, and is said to have contributed funds towards its completion, his object being that of furnishing the best means for the instruction of his subjects in the various branches of the iron manufacture, and for the encourage- ment of its progressive improvement in a part of the country which afforded an am])le supply of iron-ore, coal, and limestone. In this manufac- tory every species of iron-work, from the heaviest castings to the minutest articles of high polish, was carried on. Steam-engines of every power, from that of two hundred down to ten horses, were constructed — and not fewer than two thou- sand men employed in the various works belonging to it ; but the king's name being also connected with it, it was, at an early period, marked out as an object for destruction. This senseless rage of the populace, the suspen- sion of all order, and the treacherous conduct of the people of Brussels, soon produced, what civil commotions are almost sure of producing, a total stagnation of commerce, gave a deadly blow to manufacturing industry, and threw multitudes of artisans and labourers out of employment: the consequence was, j>OYerty pervading all classes, 294 NOTE. bankruptcy and ruin staring in the face the mer- chant, the banker, and the tradesman, and a total want of confidence between man and man ; and, what makes a speedy change for the better almost hopeless, the withdrawal from the country of the honest, sober-minded, and respectable portion of the inhabitants, with the wreck of their property, — leaving the De Potters, the Robaulxes, and the rest of the factious demagogues, to triumph over the ruin which they have been so instrumental in making. It is not to be doubted, however, that this evil, like most others, having reached its height, will cure itself ; and tliat a reaction must shortly take place. The faction is fast losing ground, and it is not the worst sign when the popular discontent begins to vent itself in squibs and epigrams against the authors of their misfortunes. One of these, common in the mouths of the populace, is to tliis effect — ' When Orange ruled, as our head, We butter had to smear our bread ; But since the day we hail'd De Potter, We've neither tasted bread nor butter.' It must be confessed, however, that the union NOTE, 295 of the two nations never augured well The difference of language and religion was of itself repugnant to such an alliance — more especially when toleration on one side had to contend with bigotry and superstition on the other. In this view a separation may be of benefit ultimately to both parties. I6th July. Since the above was written, the appointment of a regent has been productive of some good. They have now got a step further, and chosen a king —may tliey long keep him, and treat him better than they did their first one ! — But he, too, is a Protestant, and on that account alone, he will have a difficult card to play. THE END. I I LONDON ! Printed by William Clowes, Stamford Street. r \ f • • • • • • • • • •• • • • •• • • • • • . • •••• • .•••••• • • •!•••;•••• • •• "»• • • »• ••• • • n Cd w en w w CO ^11 r t t « 949. k. B27 I tour. JUL 9 1949 BlriDEP 'i%i^c I II I COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 0021051984 SEP 2 7 1949 . w 0^K 'ff " -, . ^*B **S'1 :Sfe:^ 'SM.*