HOLLAND Aa"D Its People BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS Author of '■Constantinople^'' ''Studies of Paris^^ • • < . 342 Friesland , , 1 • • « . 355 Groningen . • • • < . 382 From Groningen '. ro Arnhem . , . 401 ^ OF THE ^A jniversity' HOLLAND Whoever looks for the first time at a large map of Holland, wonders that a country so constituted can con- tinue to exist. At the first glance, it is difficult to say whether land or water predominates, or whether Holland belongs most to the continent or to the sea. Those broken and compressed coasts, those deep bays, those great rivers that, losing the aspect of rivers, seem bringing new seas to the sea; and that sea, which, changing itself into rivers, penetrates the land and breaks it into archipela- goes ; the lakes, the vast morasses, the canals crossing and recrossing each other, all combine to give the idea of a country that may at any moment disintegrate and dis- appear. Seals and beavers would seem to be its rightful inhabitants ; but since there are men bold enough to live in it, they surely cannot ever sleep in peace. 2 HOLLAND, These were my thoughts as I looked for the first time at a map of Holland^ aud experienced a desire to know some- thing about the formation of so strange a country ; and as that which I learned induced me to write this book, I put it down here^ with the hope that it may induce others to read it. What sort of a country Holland is_, has been told by many in few words. Napoleon said that it was an alluvion of French rivers, — the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse, — and with this pretext he added it to the empire. One writer has defined it as a sort of transition between land and sea. Another, as an immense crust of earth floating on the water. Others, an annex of the old continent, the China of Europe, the end of the earth and the beginning of the ocean, a measureless raft of mud and sand ; and Phillip II. called it the country nearest to hell. But they all agreed upon one point, and all expressed it in the same words : — Holland is a conquest made by man over the sea — it is an artificial country — the Hol- landers made it — it exists because the Hollanders pre- serve it — it will vanish whenever the Hollanders shall abandon it. To comprehend this truth, we must imagine Holland as it was when first inhabited by the first German tribes that wandered away in search of a country. It was almost uninhabitable. There were vast tem- pestuous lakes, like seas, touching one another; morass beside morass ; one tract covered with brushwood after another ; immense forests of pines, oaks, and alders. HOLLAND. 3 traversed by herds of wild horses; and so thick were these forests that tradition savs one could travel lca";ues 4/ <-J passing from tree to tree without ever putting foot to the ground. The deep bays and gulfs carried into the heart of the country the fury of the northern tempests. Some provinces disappeared once every year under the waters of the sea, and were nothing but muddy tracts, neither land nor water, where it was impossible either to walk or to sail. The large rivers, without sufficient inclination to descend to the sea, wandered here and there uncertain of their way, and slept in monstrous pools and ponds among the sands of the coasts. It was a sinister place, swept by furious winds, beaten by obstinate rains, veiled in a perpetual fog, where nothing was heard but the roar of the sea, and the voices of wild beasts and birds of the ocean. The first people who had the courage to plant their tents there, had to raise with their own hands dykes of earth to keep out the rivers and the sea, and lived within them like shipwrecked men upon desolate islands, venturing forth at the subsidence of the waters in quest of food in the shape of fish and game, and gathering the eggs of marine birds upon the sand. Csesar, passing by, was the first to name this people. The other Latin historians speak with compassion and respect of those intrepid barbarians who lived upon a " floating land,-*^ exposed to the intemperance of a cruel sky, and the fury of the mysterious northern sea ; and the imagination pictures the Roman soldiers, who, from the heights of the uttermost citadels of the empire, beaten by the waves, contemplated with wonder and pity those 4 MOLLAND. wandering tribes upon their desolate land^ like a race accursed of heaven. Now_, if we remember that such a region has become one of the most fertile, wealthiest, and best regulated of the countries of the world, we shall understand the justice of the saying that Holland is a conquest made by man. But, it must be added, the conquest goes on for ever. To explain this fact, to show how the existence of Holland, in spite of the great defensive works constructed by the inhabitants, demands an incessant and most peri- lous struggle, it will be enough to touch here and there upon a few of the principal vicissitudes of her physical history, from the time when her inhabitants had already reduced her to a habitable country. Tradition speaks of a great inundation in Friesland in the sixth century. From that time every gulf, every island, and, it may be said, every city in Holland has its catastrophe to record. In thirteen centuries, it is re- corded that one great inundation, besides smaller ones, has occurred every seven years ; and the country being all plain, these inundations were veritable floods. To- wards the end of the thirteenth century, the sea destroyed a part of a fertile peninsula near the mouth of the Ems, and swallowed up more than thirty villages. In the course of the same century, a series of inundations opened an immense chasm in northern Holland, and formed tlie Zuyder Zee, causing the death of more than eighty thou- sand persons. In 1421 a tempest swelled the Meuse, so that in one night the waters overwhelmed seventy-two villages and one hundred thousand inhabitants. In 1532 HOLLAND. 5 the sea burst the dykes of Zealand^ destroying hundreds of villages, and covering for ever a large tract of country. In 1570 a storm caused another inundation in Zealand, in the province of Utrecht, Amsterdam was invaded by the waters, and in Frieslaud twenty thousand people were drowned. Other great inundations took place in the seventeenth century ; two terrible ones at the beginning and the end of the eighteenth; one in 1825 that desolated North Holland, Friesland, Over-Yssel, and Gueldres; and another great one of the Rhine, in 1855, which invaded Gueldres and the province of Utrecht, and covered a great part of North Brabant. Besides these great catastrophes, there happened in different centuries innumerable smaller ones, which would have been famous in any other country, and which in Holland are scarcely remem- bered ; like the rising of the lake of Harlem, itself the result of an inundation of the sea; flourishing cities of the gulf of Zuyder Zee vanished under the waters; the islands of Zealand covered again and again by the sea, and again emerging ; villages of the coast, from Helder to the mouths of the Meuse, from time to time inundated and destroyed ; and in all these inundations immense loss of life of men and animals. It is plain that miracles of courage, constancy and industry, must have been accomplished by the Hollanders, first in creating and afterwards in preserving such a country. The enemy from which they had to wrest it, was triple : the sea, the lakes, the rivers. They drained the lakes, drove back the sea, and imprisoned the rivers. To drain the lakes the Hollanders pressed the air into 6 HOLLAND. their service. The lakes^ the marshes, were surrounded by dykes, the dykes by canals ; and an army of windmills, putting in motion force-pumps^ turned the water into the canals, which carried it ofiP to the rivers and the sea. Thus vast tracts of land buried under the water_, saw the sun, and were transformed,, as if by magic, into fertile fields, covered with villages, and intersected by canals and roads. In the seventeenth century, in less than forty years, twenty-six lakes were drained. At the beginning of the present century, in North Holland alone, more than six thousand hectares (or fifteen thousand acres) were thus redeemed from the waters; in South Holland, before 1844, twenty-nine thousand hectares ; in the whole of Holland, from 1500 to 1858, three hundred and fifty-five thousand hectares. Substituting steam-mills for windmills, in thirty-nine months was completed the great undertaking of the draining of the lake of Harlem, which measured forty-four kilometres in circumference, and for ever threatened with its tempests the cities of Harlem, Amster- dam, and Leyden. And they are now meditating the prodigious work of drying up the Zuyder Zee, which embraces an area of more than seven hundred square kilometres. The rivers, another internal enemy, cost no less of labour and sacrifice. Some, like the Rhine, which lost itself in the sands before reaching the sea, had to be chan- nelled and defended at their mouths, against the tides, by formidable cataracts ; others, like the Meuse, bordered by dykes as powerful as those that were raised against the ocean ; others, turned frorfi their course ; the wandering HOLLAND. 7 waters gatbered together; the course of the affluents regulated ; the waters divided with rigorous measure in order to maintain that enormous mass of liquid in equilibrium, where the slightest inequality might cost a province; and in this way all the rivers that formerly spread their devastating floods about the country, were disciplined into streams and constrained to do service. But the most tremendous struggle was the battle with the ocean. Holland is in great part lower than the level of the sea ; consequently, everywhere that the coast is not defended by sand-banks, it has to be protected by dykes. If these interminable bulwarks of earth, granite, and wood were not there to attest the indomitable courage and perseverance o£ the Hollanders, it would not be believed that the hand of man could, even in many cen- turies, have accomplished such a work. In Zealand alone the dykes extend to a distance of more than four hundred kilometres. The western coast of the island of Walcheren is defended by a dyke, in which it is computed that the expense o£ construction added to that of preservation, if it were put out at interest, would amount to a sum equal in value to that which the dyke itself would be worth were it made of massive copper. Around the city of H elder, at the northern extremity of North Holland, extends a dyke ten kilometres long, constructed of masses of Norwegian granite, which descends more than sixty metres into the sea. The whole province of Friesland, for the length of eighty-eight kilometres, is defended by three rows of piles sustained by masses of Norwegian and German granite. Amsterdam, all the cities of the Zuyder Zee, and all the 8 HOLLAND. islands — ^fragments of vanislied lands — which are strung like beads between Friesland and North Holland, are pro- tected by dykes. From the mouths of the Ems to those of the Scheldt Holland is an impenetrable fortress, of whose immense bastions the mills are the towers, the cataracts are the gates, the islands the advanced forts ; and like a true fortress, it shows to its enemy, the sea, only the tops of its bell-towers and the roofs of its houses, as if in defiance and derision. Holland is a fortress, and her people live as in a fortress, on a war-footing with the sea. An army of engineers, directed by the Minister of the Interior, spread over the country, and ordered like an army, continually spy the enemy, watch over the internal waters, foresee the bursting of the dykes, order and direct the defensive works. The expenses of the war are divided; one part to the State, one part to the provinces ; every proprietor pays, besides the general imposts, a special impost for the dykes, in proportion to the extent of his lands and their proximity to the water. An accidental rupture, an inadvertence, may cause a flood ; the peril is unceasing ; the sentinels are at their posts upon the bulwarks ; at the first assault of the sea, they shout the war-cry, and Holland sends men, material, and money. And even when there is no great battle, a quiet, silent struggle is for ever going on. The innumerable mills, even in the drained districts, con- tinue to work unresting, to absorb and turn into the canals the water that falls in rain and that which filters in from the sea. Every day the cataracts of the bays and rivers close their gigantic gates against the high tide trying to rush HOLLAND. 9 into the heart of the land. The work of strengthening dykes^ fortifying sand-banks with plantations, throwing out new dykes where the banks are low, straight as great lances, vibrating in the bosom of the sea, and breaking the first impetus of the wave, is for ever going on. And the sea externally knocks at the river - gates, beats upon the ramparts, growls on every side her ceaseless menace, lifting her curious waves as if to see the land she counts as hers, piling up banks of sand before the gates to kill the commerce of the cities, for ever gnawing, scratching, digging at the coast; and failing to overthrow the ramparts upon which she foams and fumes in angry efPort, she casts at their feet ships full of the dead, that they may announce to the rebellious country her fury and her strength. In the midst of this great and terrible struggle Holland is transformed : Holland is the land of transformations. A geographical map of that country as it existed eight centuries ago is not recognisable. Transforming the sea, men also are transformed. The sea, at some points, drives back the land : it takes portions from the continent, leaves them, and takes them again ; joins islands to the mainland with ropes of sand, as in the case of Zealand ; breaks off bits from the mainland and makes new islands, as in AVieringen ; retires from certain coasts and makes land cities out of what were cities of the sea, as Leu» varde ; converts vast tracts of plain into archipelagoes of a hundred islets, as Biisbosch ; separates a city from the land, as Dordrecht ; forms new gulfs two leagues broad, like the gulf of Dollart; divides two provinces with a 10 EOLLAND. new sea^ like Nortli Holland and Friesland. The effect of the inundations is to cause the level of the sea to rise in some places and to sink in others ; sterile lands are fertilised bv the slime of the rivers, fertile lands are changed into deserts of sand. With the transformations of the waters alternate the transformations of labour. Islands are united to continents^ like the island of Ame- land; entire provinces are reduced to island, as North Holland will be by the new canal of Amsterdam, which is to separate it from South Holland ; lakes as large as pro- vinces disappear altogether, like the lake of Beemster ; by the extraction of peat, land is converted into lakes, and these lakes are again transformed into meadows. And thus the country changes its aspect according to the violence of nature or the needs of men. And while one goes over it with the latest map in hand, one may be sure that the map will be useless in a few years, because even now there are new gulfs in process of formation, tracts of land just ready to be detached from the mainland, and great canals being cut that will carry life to uninhabited districts. But Holland has done more than defend herself against the waters ; she has made herself mistress of them, and has used them for her own defence. Should a. foreign army invade her territory, she has but to open her dj^kes and unchain the sea and the rivers, as she did against the Romans, against the Spaniards, against the army of Louis XIV., and defend the land cities with her fleet. Water was the source of her poverty, she has made it the source of wealth. Over the whole country extends an HOLLAND. 11 immense net-work of canals which serve both for the irri- gation of the land and as a means of communication. The cities, by means of canals, communicate with the sea; canals run from town to town, and from them to villages, which are themselves bound together by these watery ways, and are connected even to the houses scattered over the country; smaller canals surround the fields and orchards, pastures and kitchen-gardens, serving at once as boundary-wall, hedge, and road-way ; every house is a little port. Ships, boats, rafts move about in all directions, as in other places carts and carriages. The canals are the arteries ot Holland, and the v/ater her life- blood. But even setting aside the canals, the draining of the lakes, and the defensive works, on every side are seen the traces of marvellous undertakings. The soil, which in other countries is a gift of nature, is in Holland a work of men^s hands. Holland draws the greater part of her wealth from commerce ; but before commerce comes the cultivation of the soil; and the soil had to be created. There were sand-banks, interspersed with layers of peat, broad downs swept by the winds, great tracts of barren land apparently condemned to an eternal stcrilitv. The first elements of manufacture, iron and coal, were wanting; there was no wood, because the forests had already been destroyed b}' tempests when agriculture began; there was no stone, there were no metals. Nature, says a Dutch poet, had refused all her gifts to Holland ; the Hollanders had to do everything in spite of nature. They began by fertilising the sand. \2 HOLLAND. In some places they formed a productive soil with earth brought from a distance, as a garden is made ; they spread the siliceous dust of the downs over the too watery meadows ; they mixed with the sandy earth the remains of peat taken from the bottoms ; they extracted clay to lend fertility to the surface of their lands ; they laboured to break up the downs with the plough; and thus in a thousand ways, and continually fighting off the menacing waters, they succeeded in bringing Holland to a state of cultivation not inferior to that of more favoured regions. That Holland, the sandy, marshy country that the ancients considered all but uninhabitable, now sends out yearly from her confines agricultural pro- ducts to the value of a hundred millions of francs, pos- sesses about one million three hundred thousand head of cattle, and, in proportion to the extent of her territory, may be accounted one of the most populous of European states. It may be easily understood how the physical peculiarities of their country must influence the Dutch people ; and their genius is in perfect harmony with the character of Holland. It is sufficient to contemplate the monuments of their great struggle with the sea in order to understand that their distinctive characteristics must be firmness and patience, accompanied by a calm and constant courage. That glorious battle, and the consciousness of owing everything to their own strength, must have infused and fortified in them a high sense of dignity and an indomitable spirit of liberty and independence. The necessity of a constant struggle, of a continuous labour, and perpetual sacrifices HOLLAND, 13 in defence of their existence, for ever taking them back to a sense of reality, must have made them a highly practical and economical people; good sense should be their most salient quality, economy one of their chief virtues ; they must be excellent in all useful arts, sparing of diversion, simple even in their greatness ; succeeding in what they undertake, by dint of tenacity and a thought- ful and orderly activity ; more wise than heroic ; more conservative than creative ; giving no great architects to the edifice of modern thought, but the ablest of workmen, a legion of patient and laborious artisans. And by virtue of these qualities of prudence, phlegmatic activity, and the spirit of conservatism^ they are ever advancing, though by slow degrees ; they acquire gradually, but never lose what they have gained ; holding stubbornly to their ancient customs; preserving almost intact, and despite the neighbourhood of three great nations, their own originality ; preserving it through every form of government, through foreign invasions, through political and religious wars, and in spite of the immense concourse of strangers from every country that are always coming among them ; and remaining, in short, of all the northern races, that one which, though ever advancing in the path of civilisation, has kept its antique stamp most clearly. It is enough also to remember its form in order to com- prehend that this country of three millions and a half of inhabitants, although bound in so compact a political union, although recognisable among all the other northern peoples by certain traits peculiar to the population of all 14 HOLLAND. its provinces, must present a great variety. And so it is in fact. Between Zealand and Holland proper, between Holland and Friesland^ between Friesland and Gueldres, between Groningen and Brabant_, in spite of vicinity and so many common ties, there is no less difference than between the more distant provinces of Italy and France : difference of language, costume, and character; difference of race and of religion. The communal regime has im- pressed an indelible mark upon this people, because in no other country does it so conform to the nature of things. The country is divided into various groups of interests organised in the same manner as the hydraulic system. Whence, association and mutual help against the common enemy, the sea ; but liberty for local institutions and forces. Monarchy has not extinguished the ancient municipal spirit, and this it is that renders impossible a complete fusion of the State, in all the great States that have made the attempt. The great rivers and gulfs are at the same time commercial roads serving as national bonds between the different provinces, and barriers, which defend old traditions and old customs in each. But however wonderful may be the physical history of Holland, her political history is still more so. This small territory, invaded from the beginning by different tribes of the Germanic races, subjugated by the Romans and the Franks, devastated by the Normans and by the Danes, desolated by centuries of civil war with all its horrors, this small people of fishermen and traders, saves its civil liberty and its freedom of conscience by a war of eighty years against the formidable monarchy of Philip II., and HOLLAND, 15 founds a republic which becomes the ark of salvation to the liberties o£ all the worlds the adopted country of science, the Exchange of Europe, the station for the com- merce of the world; a republic which extends its domination to Java, Sumatra, Hindostan, Ceylon, New Holland, Japan, Brazil, Guiana, the Cape of Good Hope, the West Indies, and New York; a republic which vanquishes England on the sea, which resists the united arms of Charles II. and Louis XIV., and which treats an equal terms with the greatest nations, and is, for a time, one of the three Powers that decide the fate of Europe. She is not now the great Holland of the seventeenth century; but she is still, after England, the first colonizing State in the world ; instead of her ancient greatness, she has tranquil prosperity ; she restricts herself to commerce acquired by agriculture ; she retains the substance of the republican regime although she has lost the form ; a family of patriot princes, dear to the people, governs tran- quilly in the midst of her liberties, ancient and modern. There is wealth without ostentation, freedom without in- solence, and there are taxes without poverty. She is, perhaps, of all European states the one where there is most popular education and least corruption of manners. Alone, at the extremity of the continent, occupied with her dykes and her colonies, she enjoys in peace the fruits of her labours, with the comforting conviction that no people in the world have conquered at the price of greater sacrifices liberty of conscience and the independence of the State. 16 HOLLAND. All these things I revolved in my mind to the stimula- tion of my curiosity, as at Antwerp one fine summer morning I went on board the ship which was to take me by the way of the Scheldt to Zealand, the most mysterious of the provinces of the low countries ZEALAND. If before I had made up my mind to go to Holland some professor of geography had stopped me in the street and demanded suddenly — Where is Zealand ? I should have remained speechless ; and I think I am not mistaken in supposing that numbers of my fellow-citizens to whom the question might be put would not easily find an answer. Zealand is a mystery even for the Hollanders themselves ; very few of them have been there, and of these the greater part have only passed through it in a boat ; con- sequently it is seldom spoken of, and always as a very distant country. The first words that reached my ears among the travellers who came on board the vessel with me, and who were almost all Belgians and Dutch, informed me that they also were about to visit that province for the first time ; we were all, therefore, full of curiosity, and the ship had not left her moorings when we entered into con- versation, and questions which no one could answer passed from one to another. 18 HOLLAND. The ship sailed at sunrise, and for a time we enjoyed the spectacle of the steeple of Antwerp Cathedral, made out of Mechlin lace_, as Napoleon, who was in love with it, used to say ; and after having touched at the fortress of HL ap<^Xille and the village of Doel we came out of Belgium and entered Zealand. At the moment of passing for the first time the frontier of a state, although it is evident that the prospect will not change all at once, everyone seems to imagine that it must do so. We all, therefore, stood at the side of the vessel to behold the apparition of Zealand. But for a good while our expectations were deluded : nothing was to be seen but the green flat shores of the Scheldt, wide as an arm of the sea, and sprinkled with sand-banks, upon which alighted flocks of screaming sea- gulls ; and the pure, clear sky did not seem the sky of Holland. The ship sailed in between the island of Zuid- Beveland and that strip of land which forms the left bank of the Scheldt, called Flanders of the States, or Flemish Zealand. The story of this strip of land is very curious. For the stranger entering Holland it is, as it were, the first page of that great epic which is entitled — the battle with the sea. In the middle ages there was nothing here but a vast gulf with a few scattered islets. In the beginning of the sixteenth century this gulf no longer existed ; four hundred years of slow and patient labour had changed it into a fertile plain defended by dykes, intersected by canals, and populated with villages, under the name of Flemish Zealand. When the war of independence broke ZEALAND, 19 out, the inhabitants of Flemish Zealand, rather than give it up to the Spaniards, cut their djd^es, let in the sea, and destroying in one day the labour of four centuries, it became once more the gulf of the middle ages. The war of independence over, the work of reformation was again commenced, and in three hundred years Flemish Zealand again emerged from the waters, and was restored to the continent, like a daughter that had been dead and was alive again. Flemish Zealand, divided from Belgian Flanders by a double political and religious barrier, and separated from Holland by the Scheldt, preserves its customs and its faith as they were in the sixteenth century. The traditions of the war with Spain are as speaking and vivid as any event of the day. The soil is fertile, the inhabitants enjoy a more than ordinary prosperity, they have schools and printing-presses, their manners are severe and simple, and they live peaceably on their fragment of country, risen from the sea but yesterday, antil the day when the sea shall once more claim it for its third burial. A Belofian fellow- passenger, who gave me this information, called my atten- tion to the fact that the inhabitants of Flemish Zealand, when they inundated their country and rose against the Spanish domination, were still Catholics ; consequently the strange circumstance occurred that while they went down into the waters good Catholics, they rose to the surface Protestants. To my great amazement, the ship, instead of continuing to descend the Scheldt and skirting the island of Zuid- Beveland, when it reached a certain point, entered a narrow canal which cuts that island into two parts and 20 HOLLAND. joins the two brandies of the river which are made by the island itself. It was the first Dutch canal that I had seen^ and the impression was a new one. It is bordered by two lofty dykes which hide the country ; the ship glided along as if it were in ambush and meant to rnsh out at the other end to somebody's confusion ; and as there was not a boat on the canal nor a living being on the banks^ the silence and solitude gave a still more piratical air to the pro- ceeding. Issuing out into the eastern branch of the Scheldt we were in the heart of Zealand. To our right lay the island of Tholen ; to the left, that of North Beveland ; behind, that of Sonth Beveland ; before, that of Schon- wen. Except the island of Walcheren, all the prin- cipal islands of the mysterious archipelago were around us. The mystery lay in the fact that the islands were only to be divined, not seen. To the right and left of the wide river, before and behind our vessel, the straight lines of the dykes lay like green strips upon the waters ; and beyond these strips, here and there, the tops of trees and steeples and the red roofs of houses seemed rising up to peep at us. Not a hill, not a bit of rising ground, not a house could be descried on any side; everything seemed hidden, im- mersed in the water; the islands might have been on the point of sinking into the depths of the waves ; we appeared to be traversing a country on the day of a great flood, and were sensible of some consolation at the thought that we ZEALAND. 21 were in a ship. Now and then the vessel stopped to let out a passenger who got into a small boat and was rowed to shore. I was myself very curious to see Zealand^ and yet I looked at these people with a feeling of compassion, as if those objects which seemed islands were really only monstrous whales that would vanish under the waters at the boat-'s approach. The captain of our ship, a Hollander, stopping to look at a small map of Zealand which I was studying, I seized the occasion to bombard him with questions, for- tunately I had fallen upon one of those few Dutchmen who, in common with us Latins, have the weakness of loving the sound of their own voices. " Here in Zealand,-''' said he, with the gravity of a schoolmaster giving a lesson, ^^ the dykes are, even more than in the other provinces, a question of life and death. At high tide all Zealand is under water. At every broken dyke an island would vanish. And the worst of it is that the dykes have to resist not only the direct attack of the waves, but still another even more dangerous force. The rivers throw themselves into the sea, the sea rushes against the rivers, and in this continual struggle under- currents are formed which gnaw at the base of the dykes, so that they crumble in all at once like a wall that has been undermined. The Zealanders have to stand ever on the alert. When a dyke is in peril, they build another one within it, and await the assault of the waters behind that, and so gain time, until they can either rebuild the first dyke or continue to strengthen those within, and the current diversfcs and thev are saved /^ 22 HOLLAND. '^ And may it not be/^ said I, always hungry for poetic possibilities, '' that some day Zealand may no longer exist P^"* " Quite the contrary/^ he answered, to my great regret ; " the day may come in which Zealand will be no longer an archipelago, but te7Ta firma. The Scheldt and the Meuse constantly bring down deposits of mud which remain at the bottom of the arms of the sea, and which, gradually rising, enlarge the islands and enclose within the land cities and villages which were once upon the shore and had their ports. Azel, Goes, Veere, Arnemindcn, Middelburg, were once maritime towns, and are such no longer. A day will come when Zealand shall be divided by no waters but those of her rivers, and when a network of railways shall extend over the whole country, which will be joined to the mainland as Zuid-Beveland is joined. Zealand grows greater in her battle with the sea. The sea may succeed in doing something in other parts of Holland, but here it will get the worst of it. You know the arms of Zealand, do you not? A lion swimming, and the motto, Luctor et emergo.^' Here he was silent for a moment_, and a gleam of pride sparkled for a moment in his eye, and was quenched; then he began again with all his former gravity : " Emergo ; but not always immersed. Everyone of the islands of Zealand, one after the other, slept for more or less time under the waters. Three centuries ago Schonweu was inundated by the sea, drowning inhabitants and cattle from one end to the other, and leaving it a desert. North Beveland was entirely submerged a short time after, and for several years only the tops of her steeples could he ZEALAND. 23 seen ahove the water. South Beveland had the same fate in the middle of the fourteenth century. Tholen the same in 1825. Walcheren. the same in 1808; and in Middelburg^ her capital city, several miles distant from the coast_, the water was up to the roofs of the houses .''' What with hearing for ever of water and floods, of countries submerged and people drowned, I began to think it strange that I was not drowned myself. I asked the captain what sort of people these were who inhabited the invisible islands with water under their feet and over their heads. ^^Agricultural people and shepherds/^ he answered. ''^In point of agriculture Zealand is the richest province in. the low countries. The soil is one of wonderful fertility. Grain, flax, colza, madder, grow as in few other places. There are fine large cattle and colossal horses ; bigger than the Flemish horses. The people are strong and well made, preserving their ancient customs and living con- tented in their prosperity and peace, Zealand is a hidden paradise.''^ Whilst the captain talked, the ship entcTed the canal of Keete, which divides the islands of Schonwen and Tholen, famous as having been forded by the Spaniards in 1575, as the eastern arm of the Scheldt is famous for the ford of 1572. All Zealand is full of memorials of that war. This little sandy archipelago, half buried in the sea, was the very hotbed of war and heresy, both because of its connection with William of Orange, hereditary lord of many of the islands, and because of the impediments of every kind which it opposed to the invader, and the 24 HOLLAND, Duke of Alva burned to get possession of it Conse- quently the most obstinate struggles went on upon its shores with all the mingled horrors of land fights and sea fights. The soldiers forded the canals at night,, holding on to each other, with water up to their necks, in peril from the tides, beaten by the rain, fired at from the shores ; horses and artillery sank into the mud ; the wounded were caught by the currents and buried alive in the quagmires ; the air resounded with the voices of Germans, Italians, Flemings, Walloons ; torches illuminated here and there the great arquebuses, pom- pous plumes, strange visages, and the battle seemed a fantastic funeral; and it was indeed the funeral of the great Spanish monarch}^, w^hich was being slowly drowned in the waters of Holland and covered with mud and male- dictions. He who is guilty of any overwhelming tender- ness for Spain has only to go to Holland. There never, perhaps, existed two nations who had better cause to hate each other with all the strength of their souls, or who have proved it with more furious wrath. The ship now passed between the island of Schonwen and the smaller one of San Philipsland, and in a few mo- ments came out into the large arm of the Mouse called Krammer, which divides the island of Overflakkee from the mainland. We appeared to be sailing through a chain of large lakes. The shores were distant and presented the same aspect as those of the Scheldt : long perspectives of dykes, tops of trees, steeples and roofs behind them. Only upon some projection of the shore, forming a sort of breach in the immense bastion of the islands, could be ZEALAND, 25 seen a sort of sketcli of a Dutch landscape, a colored house^ a windmill, a boat, looking like the revelation of a hidden thing, made to sharpen the curiosity of travellers, and to delude it. Going towards the prow of the vessel I made a pleasant discovery. There was a group of peasants, men and women, wearing the costume of Zealand, I do not remem- ber of which island, for the costume differs, as does the dialect, which is a mixture of Dutch and Flemish, if that may be said of two languages which differ but slightly from each other. The men wore round felt hats with an embroidered baud ; jackets of dark cloth, short and tight, and opening in front to display a sort of vest bordered with red, yellow and green, buttoned with a row of silver buttons, so close together as to resemble a chain ; short breeches of the same colour as the jacket, bound round the waist by a belt, furnished with a large stud or buckle of chased silver ; a scarlet cravat, and fine woollen stock- ings coming to the knee. One of them had coins for buttons, a not uncommon custom. The women wore a straw hat in the shape of a truncated cone, very tall, something like a bucket turned upside down, with a quan- tity of blue ribbons fluttering about it ; a dark-coloured gown open on the bosom over an embroidered chemise ; their arms bare to the elbow; and enormous gold or gilded ear-rings that projected nearly over the cheeks. Although I did my best to copy Victor Hugo, and " admire everything like a brute," I could not succeed in persuading myself that that fashion of dress was beautiful. But I was prepared for this sort of contrariety. I kne\^ 26 HOLLAND. that in Holland one seeks tlie new rather than the beau- tif ulj and the good rather than the new ; and therefore I was more disposed for observation than enthusiasm. I comforted myself for the disappointment of my taste for the picturesque with the thought that all those peasants certainly knew how to read and write ; that they hadj perhaps^ that very evening committed to memory some of the verses of their great poet, Jacob Catz ; and that pro- bably they were then going, with their excellent pro- gramme in their pockets^ to some rural meeting, where some of them were to confute with the arguments of their modest experience the propositions of a learned agronome of Goes or Middelburg. Ludovico Guicciardini, a Florentine gentleman, and author of a fine work on the Low Countries, printed in Antwerp in the sixteenth century, says that in Zealand there is scarcely a person of either sex who speaks French or Spanish, but that many speak Italian. This, which was perhaps an exaggeration even in his time, is now an absolute fable; but it is certain, however, that there is an extraordinary amount of intellectual culture among them, superior to that of the French, Belgian, or German peasant, and superior also to that of the other parts of Holland. The ship skirted the island of San Philipsland, and we were out of Zealand. So this province, mysterious before we entered it, ap- peared still more mysterious when we got out of it. We had been through it, but we had not seen it. We went in and came out with our curiosity ungratified. The only thing we ZEALAXD, 27 had seen ^vas tlie fact that Zealand was invisible. But it would be a mistake to suppose that it is a country of mystery merely because it is hidden. Every thin 2;' in Zealand is mysterious. In the first place, how was it formed ? Was it a group of very small islands, separated by canals and uninhabited, which, as some believe, joined themselves together and became large islands ? or was it, as others believe, terra firma when the Scheldt emptied itself into the Meuse ? But leaving the question of its origin, in what other country in the world do the things happen which happen in Zealand ? In what other country do the fishermen catch a Siren in their nets, and the husband, having in vain entreated with tears that she should be restored to him, catches up a handful of sand and throws it at them, prophesying at the same time that that sand shall choke up the city ports, and the prophecy is ac- complished ? In what country, as on the shores of the island of "Walcheren, do the souls of the dead, lost at sea, come and wake up the fishermen, and oblige them to carry them in their boats to the English coast ? In what country do the tempests bring, as oq the shores of the island of Schonweu, corpses from the Polar seas, of mon- sterSj half man, half boat, mummies dressed in trunks of trees that float ? and is there not one to be seen now in the Municipal Hall of Zeirikzee? In what country, except near TVemeldinge, does it happen to a man to fall head first into a canal and remain under one hour, during which time he sees his dead wife and children, who con- verse with him from Paradise, and he is then taken out alive, and relates the prodigy to Victor Hugo, who believes 28 HOLLAND. it true and writes a commentary upon it, concluding that the soul may leave the body for a time and return to it again ? In what country, save Domburg, do they fish up at low water antique temples and statues of unknown divinities? In what country, except at Wemeldinge, docs the sword of a Spanish captain, Mondragone, serve as a lightning-rod to a tower ? In what country but the island of Schonwen, do they m.ake unfaitliful wives walk naked through the streets, with two stones tied to their necks, and an iron cylinder upon their heads ? But come, this last wonder is no more to be seen ; but the stones exist still, and anyone may see them in the Town Hall of Brauwers- liaven. The ship now entered that portion of the southern branch of the Mouse, which is called Vokerak ; the scene was still the same : dykes, and again dykes, tops of steeples, roofs of houses, here and there a vessel. One thing only was changed — the sky. I saw there for the first time the sky of Holland under its usual aspect, and looked on at one of those battles of light, proper to the Low Countries, which the great Dutch landscape painters rendered with such unrivalled excel- lence. Until then the sky had been serene, a lovely summer's day, the waters blue, the shores bright green, the air warm, and not a puff of wind. Suddenly a dense cloud hid the sun, and in less time than it takes to write it, everything changed its aspect, as if in one instant season, latitude, and time had changed. The water became dark, the green of the shores grew dull, the horizon hid itself behind a grey veil, every object appeared surrounded ZEALAND. 29 by a dim light that softened and confused the outlines, and a malignant breeze arose that froze one^s very bones. It seemed December^ and we felt the damp chill of winter^ and that uneasiness which is brought by any sudden, unex- pected change in nature. Then, from the whole circle of the horizon, leaden clouds began to rise, moving with great rapidity, seeming to seek with a sort of painful im- patience a direction and a form, and the water became agitated, streaked with luminous reflections, broad, greenish, violet, whitish, clay-colored, and black strips; and at length the irritation of nature resolved itself into a thick, heavy rain, confusing sea and land and sky into one grey mass, hardly interrupted by a slightly darker shade where lay the distant shore, or where the sails of some vessel stood, up here and there like a dim phantom on the waters of the rivers. " We are now really in Holland,^^ said the captain to a group of passengers who stood contemplating the scene. " These sudden changes are seen nowhere but here.^'* Then, in answer to a question from one of us, he added : " Holland has a meteorology of her own. The winter is Ions;, the summer short, the spring nothing but the end of winter, and now and then, as we see, winter looks back at us even in summer. There is a saying among us that we may see the four seasons in one day. We have the most inconstant sky in the world, and we are for ever talking about the weather. The atmosphere is the most variable spectacle that we can boast. But it is a dreary climate. The sea sends rain from three quarters, and the winds sweep over us without resistance; even on the finest 80 HOLLAND. days the earth exhales vapors that obscure the horizon ; for many months the air has no transparency. See the winter; there are days when it seems as if we should never see the sky again ; the darkness comes from above, like the light ; the north-west wind brings the icy air from the poles and lashes the sea into a fury that seems capable of destroying the coast/^ Here he turned to me with a smile, and said : " You are better off in Italy."" Then he became grave again_, and added : ^^ But every country has its good and its evil/^ The ship now coming out of the Volkerak, passed before the fortress of Willemstadt, built in 1583 by the Prince 6i Orange, and entered the Hollandsdiep, a large branch of the Meuse with separates South Holland from North Bra- bant. A great stretch of water, two dark lines to right and left, and an ash- colored sky, were all that could be seen from the vessel. A French lady, amid the general silence, exclaimed with a yawn : " How lovely Holland is ! '^ and everybody, but the Hollanders, laughed. '* Ah, Captain," said a little old gentleman, a Belgian, one of those pillars of the cafe who are for ever airing their political opinions, " every country has its good and its evil side, and we Belgians and Hollanders must at least be persuaded of this truth, and sympathise with each other in order to live in peace and harmony. When we think that we are a State of nine millions, we with our manu- factures, and you with your commerce, with two capitals like Amsterdam and Brussels, and two commercial cities like Antwerp and Rotterdam ! we should count for some- thing in the world, eh, Captain ? '* ZEALAND. 31 The captain made no reply. Another Dutchman said: " To be sure ; with religious wars going on twelve months in the vear.'^ The little old Belgian^ rather disconcerted, continued in a low voice to me : " It is a fact^ Signor mio. It is a trifle,, especially on our side. You will see in Holland : Amsterdam is not Brussels ; no, indeed, and the country is as flat and as tiresome as it can be ; but as for prosperity, you will see. They spend a florin, which is more than two francs, where we spend a franc. You will find that out in the hotel bills. They are twice as rich as we are. The blow was given by William I., who wanted to make a Dutch Bel- gium, and pushed us to extremities. You know how things went on,^^ &c. In the Hollandsdiep we began to see large boats, fishing vessels, and some large ships from Hellevoetsluis, a great maritime port on the right bank of the Meuse, near the mouth, where all the vessels that make the voyage to India stop. The rain ceased, the sky gradually, almost unwillingly, cleared in part, the water and the shores again took on their fresh and vivid colors, and we were in summer once more. In a short time the ship was off the village of Moer- digk. There is to be seen one of the largest bridges in the world. It is an iron bridge, one mile and a half in length, over which passes the railway to Dordrecht and Rotterdam. From a distance it presents the aspect as of fourteen enormous buildings of equal size placed across the river, these edifices being the piers of the arches which 32 HOLLAND sustain the rails. Passing over it_, as I did some montlis aftei'wards, one sees notliing but sky and water. It is not a pleasant sensation. The ship turned to the left in front of the bridge and entered a narrow arm of the Meuse, called Dordshe kil_, bordered by dykes, and having more the look of a canal than a river. It was the seventh turn she had made since we crossed the frontier. We now began to see around us something like the appearance of a great city. Long piles of trees upon the banks, bushes, small houses, canals on either side, and a coming and going of boats large and small. The name of Dordrecht was in everybody's mouth, and all seemed making ready for some spectacle. The ship turned for the eighth time and entered the Oude-Maas, or old Meuse, and in a few minutes we saw the first houses of the environs of Dor- drecht. It was like the sudden apparition of Holland, the in- stantaneous satisfaction of all our curiosity, the revelation of all the mysteries that tormented our imaginations ; we awakened in a new world. On every side we saw very high windmills with their long arms ; houses were sprinkled along the river, of a thou- sand strange forms, villas, pavilions, kiosks, with red roofs, black walls, and walls of rose, blue, and ash color, the windows and doors surrounded by broad snow-white bands. Canals great and small divided these houses, and were bordered by rows of trees ; ships lay all along ; boats before every door; sails gleamed at the bottoms of the streets ; pennons, ships' flags, and arms of windmills rose confusedly above the trees and roofs ; bridges, small stair- ^V^ oT •!«« A o-^ ZEALAND. 33 ways, gardens hanging over the water,, and a coming and going of men, women, and children on the banks of the canals and over the bridges, making a lively and varied spectacle. There was something of theatrical and childish, a little Chinese, a little European, a little of no country, mingled with an air of blessed peace and innocence. So appeared to me Dordrecht for the first time, one of the oldest as well as one of the freshest and gayest of Dutch cities ; queen of commerce in the middle ages ; fertile mother of painters and learned men ; honoured by first assembly of deputies from the United Provinces in 1572; the seat at different times of memorable synods; and especially famous for that assembly of Protestant theologians in 1618, which was a sort of (Ecumenical Council of Reform, which fixed the form of. the national religion, and caused the beginning of that series of agita- t'ons and persecutions which ended with the fatal execution of Barnevelt and the bloody triumph of Maurice of Orange. Dordrecht is still one of the most flourishing of the cities of the United Provinces, thanks to its easy com- munication with the sea, with Belgium, and the interior of Holland. At Dordrecht arrive the immense provisions of wood which come dowa the Rhine from the Black Forest and Switzerland, the wines of the Rhine, lime, cement, and stone; in her small port there is a continual coming and going of sails, clouds of smoke, and flags, bringing greetings from i^rnhem, from Bois-le-Duc, from Ni- megnen, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and all her mysterious sisters of Zealand. Our ship stopped a few minutes at Dordrecht^ and I 34 HOLLAND. was strongly tempted to land and look about me, but reflecting tbat I should have better opportunities and more to see at Rotterdam, I refrained; and we pre- sently turned (our ninth turning) into a narrow branch of the Meuse called De Noord, one of the thousand threads of the inextricable watery network that covers South Holland. The position of Dordrecht is most singular. It is placed upon the extremity of a tract of land, separated from the continent^ forming an island in the midst of landj surrounded by rivers,, partly natural, partly artificial, of which one, the large stream called the New Merwede, was entirely formed by the hand of man. The im- prisonment of this piece of land upon which Dordrecht stands is an episode of one of Holland^s great battles with the sea. The archipelago of Biesbosch did not exist before the fifteenth century, and in its place extended a beautiful plain, dotted with populous villages. On the night of the 18th of November 1421, the waters of the Waal and the Meuse burst the dykes, destroyed more than seventy villages, drowned a hundred thousand people, and broke up the plain into a hundred or so of small islands, leaving only one tower erect amid the ruin, some remains of which, called Casa Merwede, are still to be seen. Thus was Dordrecht separated from the mainland, and the archipelago of Biesbosch made its appearance upon the earth, which, as if to show that it has some reason to exist, ofi'ers hay, canes, and reeds to a small village that is stuck like a swallow^s nest upon one of the surrounding dykes. But this is not all the singularity of Dordrecht. ZEALAND. 35 Tradition relates that the entire citj, with its houses, its mills, its canals, was, in the time of that memorable inun- dation, transported all in one piece from one place to another ; and that when the inhabitants of the neighbour- ing towms came to it after the catastrophe they could not find it. And this prodigy is explained by the fact that Dordrecht is founded upon a stratum of clay, and that this stratum of clay slid bodily down with the city upon it. I write it as I heard it, or read it. Before the ship left the canal of Noord my hope of seeing my first sunset in Holland was deluded by another sudden change of weather. The sky grew dark, the water became livid, and the horizon vanished behind a dense vapory veil. At that point where the Meuse takes prisoner and carries with her the waters of the main branch of the Rhine, the Vaal, and receives those of the Leek and the Yssel, the width is very great, and the banks are crowned by long rows of trees, interspersed with houses, manufac- tories, workshops_, and arsenals, that extend all the way to Rotterdam. The first time that one sees the Meuse, and thinks of the disasters, the transformations, the thousand calamities, and innumerable victims of that capricious and terrible river, one examines it with a sort of anxious curiosity, as if it were some famous brigand, and one's eyes run along the dykes with a sentiment of grateful satisfaction, as when one beholds the famous bandit manacled and in the hands of the carabinieri. Whilst we stood expecting the first view of Rottei'dam, a pas- senger told us that, when the Meuse is frozen, the current 36 HOLLAND. which comes from warmer regions bursts from beneath the ice that covers the stream^ and with a terrible noise, piles it against the dykes in immense masses, thus arrest- ting the course of the water and making it overflow. Then begins a strange battle. To the threats of the.Meuse the Hollanders reply with cannon, and charges of grapeshot break the towers and barricades of ice which choke the current into a tempest of briny and icy rain. ^^ I think/' concluded the passenger, '^^that we Hollanders are the only people who are forced to fight their rivers with cannon.''^ When we arrived in sight of Rotterdam it rained and was foggy ; we could see, as through a veil, only an im- mense confusion of ships, houses, windmills, towers, trees, and people in motion on the dykes and bridges ; there were lights everywhere ; a great city with such an aspect as I had never seen before, and which fog and darkness soon hid from me altogether. When I had taken leave of my travelling companions, and had put my luggage in order, it was night. " So much the better,'^ I thought, as I entered a carriage ; '^ I shall see the first Dutch city by night, which must be a strange spectacle.^' And, indeed, when M. Bismarck was at Rotterdam, he wrote to his wife that at night he saw spectres on the roofs. ROTTERDAM. It is difficult to make raucli of the city of Rotterdam, entering it at night. Tiie carriage passed ahnost imme- diately over a bridge that resounded hollowly beneath it, and whilst I thought myself, and was in fact, within the city, I saw with amazement, on my right and left, two rows of ships vanishing in the gloom. Leaving the bridge, we passed through a street, lighted, and full of people, and found ourselves upon another bridge, and between two rows of vessels, as before. And so on from bridge to street, from street to bridge, and to increase the confusion, an illumination of lamps at the corners of houses, lanterns on masts of ships, lighthouses on the bridges, small lights under the houses, and all these lights reflected in the water. All at once the car- riage stopped, people crowded about; I looked out, and saw a bridge in the air. In answer to my question, some- one said that a vessel was passing. We went on again, seeing a perspective of canals and bridges, crossing and 38 HOLLAND. recrossing each other, until we came to a great square, sparkling with lights, and bristling with masts of ships_, and finally we reached our inn in an adjacent street. My first care on entering my room, was to see whether Dutch cleanliness deserved its fame. It did, indeed, and may be called the religion of cleanliness. The linen was snow white, the window-panes transparent as the air, the furniture shining like crystal, the floors so clean that a microscope could not discover a black speck. There was a basket for waste-paper, a tablet for scratching matches, a dish for cigar ashes, a box for cigar stumps, a spittoon, and a bootjack; in short, there was no possible pretext for soiling anything. My room examined, I spread a map of Rotterdam upon the table, and made some preparatory studies for the morrow. It is a singular thing that the great cities of Holland, although built upon a shifting soil, and amid difficulties of every kind, have all great regularity of form. Amster- dam is a semicircle, the Hague square, Rotterdam an equi- lateral triangle. The base of the triangle is an immense dyke, which defends the city from the Mouse, and is called the Boompjes, signifying, in Dutch, small trees, from a row of little elms, now very tall, that were planted when it was first constructed. Another great dyke forms a second bulwark against the river, which divides the city into two almost equal parts, from the middle of the left side to the opposite angle. That part of Rotterdam which is comprised between the two dykes, is all canals, islands, and bridges, and is the EOTTEBDAM. . 39 new city ; tliat -whicli extends beyond tlie second dyke is the old city. Two great canals extend along the other two sides of the town to the apex^ where they meet,, and receive the waters of the river Eotte^ which with the affix of dam, or dyke, gives its name to the city. Having thus fulfilled my conscientious duty as a traveller, and with many precautions not to soil, even by a breath, the purity of that jewel of a chamber, I aban- doned myself with humility to my first Dutch bed. Dutch beds, I speak of those in the hotels, are gene- rally short and wide, and occupied, in a great part, by an immense feather pillow in which a giant^s head would be overwhelmed; I may add that the ordinary light is a copper candlestick, of the size of a dinner-plate, which might sustain a torch, but holds, instead, a tiny candle about the size of a Spanish lady's finger. In the morning I made haste to rise and issue forth into the strange streets, unlike anything in Europe. The first I saw was the Hoog Straat, a long straight thorough- fare running along the interior dyke. The unplastered houses, of every shade of brick, from the darkest red to light rose color, chiefly two windows wide and two stories high, have the front wall rising above and concealing the roof, and in the shape of a blunt triangle surmounted by a parapet. Some of these pointed fa9ades rise into two curves, like a long neck without a head j some are cut into steps like the houses that children build with blocks ; some present the as- pect of a conical pavilion, some of a village church, some of theatrical cabins. The parapets are, in general, sur- 40 HOLLAND, rounded by while stripes^ coarse arabesques in plaster, and other ornaments in very bad taste; the doors and Ti'indows are bordered by broad white stripes ; other white lines divide the different stories ; the spaces between the doors in front are marked by white wooden panels ; so that two colors, white and red, prevail everywhere, and as in the distance the darker red looks black, the prospect is half festive, half funereal, all the houses looking as if they were hung with white linen. At first I had an inclination to laugh, for it seemed impossible that it could have been done seriously, and that quiet sober people lived in those houses. They looked as if tliey had been run up for a festival, and would presently disappear, like the paper framework of a grand display of fireworks. Whilst I stood looking vaguely at tlie street, I noticed one house that puzzled me somewhat; and thinking that my eyes had been deceived, I looked more carefully at it, and compared it with its neighbours. Turning into the next street, the same thing met my astonished gaze. There is no doubt about it ; the whole city of Rotterdam presents the appearance of a town that has been shaken smartly by an earthquake, and is on the point of falling into ruin. All the houscvs — in any street one may count the excep- tions on their fingers — lean more or less, but the greater part of them so much that at the roof they lean forward at least a foot beyond their neighbours, which may be straight, or not so visibly inclined ; one leans forward as if it would fall into the street ; another backwards, another to the left, another to the right, at some points six or EOTTFBDAM, 41 seven contiguous houses all lean forward togetlier, tliose in the middle most, those at the ends less, looking like a paling with the crowd pressing against it. At another point, two houses lean together as if supporting one another. In certain streets the houses for a long distance lean all one way, like trees beaten by a prevailing- wind; and then another long row will lean in the oppo- site direction, as if the wind had changed. Sometimes there is a certain regularity of inclination that is scarcely noticeable; and again, at crossings and in the smaller streets, there is an indescribable confusion of lines, a real architectural frolic, a dance of houses, a disorder that seems animated. There are houses that nod forwards as if asleep, others that start backwards as if frightened, some bending towards each other, their roofs almost touching, as if in secret conference ; some falling upon one another as if they were drunk, some leaning back- wards between others that lean forwards like malefactors dragged onwards by their guards; rows of houses that curtsey to a steeple, groups of small houses all inclined towards one in the middle, like conspirators in conclave. Observe them attentively one by one, from top to bottom, and they are as interesting as pictures. In some, upon the summit of the facade, there projects from the middle of the parapet a beam, with cord and pulley to pull up baskets and buckets. In others, jutting from a round window, is the carved head of a deer, a sheep, or a goat. Under the head, a line of whitewashed stone or wood cuts the whole fa9ade in half. Under this line there are two broad windows with projecting 42 HOLLAND. awnings of striped linen. Under these again, over the upper panesj a little green curtain. Below tliis green curtain, two white ones, divided in the middle to show a suspended birdcage or a basket of flowers. And below the basket or the cage, the lower panes are covered by a network of fine wire that prevents the passer-by from seeing into the room. Within, behind the netting, there stands a table covered with objects in porcelain, crystal, flowers, and toys of various kinds. Outside, on the stone sill, is a row of small flower-pots. From the stone sill, or from one side, projects an iron stem curving upwards, which sustains two small mirrors joined in the form of a book, movable, and surmounted by another, also movable, so that those inside the house can see, without being seen, everything that passes in the street. On some of the houses there is a lamp projecting between the two windows, and below is the door of the house, or a shop-door. If it is a shop, over the door there is the carved head of a Moor with his mouth wide open, or that of a Turk with a hideous grimace ; sometimes there is an elephant, or a goose; sometimes a horse^s or a bull's head, a serpent, a half-moon, a windmill, or an arm ex- tended, the hand holding some object of the kind sold in the shop. If it is the house -door — always kept closed — there is a brass plate with the name of the occupant, another with a slit for letters, another with the handle of a bell, the whole, including the locks and bolts, shining like gold. Before the door there is a small bridge of wood, because in many of the houses the ground-floor or basement is much lower than the street ; and before BOTTEEBAM. 43 the bridge two little stone columns surmounted by two balls; two more columns in front of these are united by iron chains, tbe large links of which are in the form of crosses, stars, and polygons; in the space between the street and the house, are pots of flowers ; and at the win- dows of the ground-floor, more flower-pots and curtains. In the more retired streets there are birdcages on both sides of the windows, boxes full of green growing things, clothes hung out to air or dry, a thousand objects and colors, like a universal fair. But without going out of the older town one need only go away from the centre to see something new at every step. In some narrow straight streets one may see the end suddenly closed as if by a curtain concealing the view ; but it disappears as it came, and is recognised as the sail of a vessel moving in a canal. In other streets a network of cordage seems to stop the way ; the rigging of vessels Iving in some basin. In one direction there is a draw-bridge raised, and looking like a gigantic swing provided for the diversion of the people who live in those preposterous houses; and in another there is a windmill, tall as a steeple and black as an antique tower, moving its arms like a monstrous firework. On every side, finally, among the houses, above the roofs, between the distant trees, are seen masts of vessels, flags, and sails and rigging, reminding us that we are surrounded by water and that the city is a seaport. Meantime the shops were opened and the streets became full of people. There was great animation, but 44 HOLLAND. no hurry, the absence of which distiugaishes the streets of Rotterdam from those of London_, between which some travellers find great resemblance, especially in the color of the houses and the grave aspect of the inha- bitants. White faces, pallid faces, faces the color of Parmesan cheese ; light hair, very light hair, reddish, yellowish ; broad beardless visages, beards under the chin and around the neck; blue eyes, so light as to seem almost without a pupil ; women stumpy, fat, rosy, slow, with v»'hite caps and ear-rings in the form of cork- screws; these are the first things one observes in the crowd. But for the moment it was not the people that most stimulated my curiosity. I crossed the Hoog Straat, and found myself in the new city. Here it is impossible to say if it be port or city, if land or water predominate, if there are more ships than houses, or vice versa. Broad and long canals divide the city into so many islands, united by draw-bridges, turning bridges, and bridges of stone. On either side of every canal extends a street, flanked by trees on one side and houses on the other. All these canals are deep enough to float large vessels, and all are full of them from one end to the other, except a space in the middle left for passage in and out. An immense fleet imprisoned in a city. When I arrived it was the busiest hour, so I planted myself upon the highest bridge over the principal cross- ing. From thence were visible four canals, four forests of ships, bordered by eight files of trees ; the streets were crammed with people and merchandise ; droves of cattle EOTTEBBAM. 45 were crossing tlie bridges; bridges were rising in the air, or opening in the middle, to allow vessels to pass through; and were scarcely replaced or closed before they ^Yere inundated by a throng of people, carts, and carriages ; ships came and went in the canals, shining like models in a museum, and with the wives and children of the sailors on the decks; boats darted from vessel to vessel; the shops drove a busy trade ; servant- women washed the walls and windows ; and all this moving life was ren- dered more gay and cheerful by the reflections in the water, the green of the trees, the red of the houses, the tall windmills, showing their dark tops and white sails against the azure of the sky, and still more by an air of quiet simplicity not seen in any other northern city. I took observations of a Dutch vessel. Almost all the ships crowded in the canals of Rotterdam are built for the Rhine and Holland ; they have one mast only, and are broad, stout, and variously colored like toy ships. The hull is generally of a bright grass green, ornamented with a red or a white stripe, or sometimes several stripes, looking like a band of different colored ribbons. The poop is usually gilded. The deck and mast are varnished and shining like the cleanest of house-floors. The outside of the hatches, the buckets, the barrels, the yards, the planks, are all painted red, with white or blue stripes. The cabin where the sailors' families are is colored like a Chinese kiosk, and has its windows of clear glass, and it-^ white muslin curtains tied up with knots of rose-colored ribbon. In every moment of spare time, sailors, women, and children are busy washing, sweeping, polishing every 46 HOLLAND, part with infinite care and pains ; and wlien tlieir little vessel makes its exit from the port^ all fresh and shining like a holiday-coach_, they all stand on the poop and accept with dignity the mnte compliments which they gather from the glances of the spectators along the canals. From canal to canal, and from bridge to bridge, T finally reached the dyke of the Boompjes npon the Meuse, where boils and bubbles all the life of the great commer- cial city. On the left extends a long row of small many- colored steamboats, which start every hour in the day for Dordrecht, Arnhem, Gonda, Schiedam, Brilla, Zealand, and continually send forth clouds of white smoke and the sound of their cheerful bells. To the right lie the large ships which make the voyage to various European ports, mingled with fine three-masted vessels bound for the East Indies, with names written in golden letters — Java, Su- matra, Borneo, Samarang — carrying the fancy to those distant and savage countries like the echoes of distant voices. In front the Meuse, covered with boats and barks, and the distant shore with a forest of beech trees, wind- mills, and towers ; and over all the unquiet sky, full of gleams of light, and gloomy clouds, fleeting and changing in their constant movement, as if repeating the restless labour on the earth below. Rotterdam, it must be said here, is, in commercial im- portance, the first city in Holland after Amsterdam. It was already a flourishing town in the thirteenth century. Ludovico Guicciardini, in his work on the Low Conntries, already cited, adduces a proof of the wealth of the city m the sixteenth century, saying that in one year nine ROTTERDAM, 47 hundred houses tliat had been destroyed by fire were re- built. Bentivoglio^ in his history of the war in Flanders_, calls it " the largest and most mercantile of the lands of Holland/^ But its greatest prosperity did not begin until 1830_, or after the separation of Holland and Bel- gium^ when Piotterdam seemed to draw to herself every- thing that was lost by her rival,, Antwerp. Her situation is extremely advantageous. She communicates with the sea by the Meuse, which brings to her ports in a few hours the largest merchantmen ; and by the same river she communicates with the Rhine, which brings to her from the Swiss mountains and Bavaria immense quantities of timber — entire forests that come to Holland to be trans- formed into ships, dykes, and villages. More than eighty splendid vessels come and go, in the space of nine months, between Rotterdam and India. Merchandise flows in from all sides in such great abundance that a large part of it has to be distributed through the neighbouring towns. Meantime, Rotterdam is growing ; vast store-houses are now in process of construction, and the works are com- menced for an enormous bridge which will cross the Meuse and the entire city, thus extending the railway which now stops on the left bank of the river, if not to the port of Delph, at least to its junction with the road to the Hague. Rotterdam, in short, has a future more splendid than that of Amsterdam, and has long been regarded as a lival by her elder sister. She does not possess the wealth of the capital ; but is more industrious in increasing wiiat she has ; she dares, risks, undertakes, like a young and 48 HOLLAND. adventurous city. Amsterdam, like a merchant grown cautious after having made his fortune by hazardous undertakings, begins to doze over her treasures. At Rot- terdam fortunes are made ; at Amsterdam they are conso- lidated ; at the Hague they are spent. It may be understood from this that Rotterdam is regarded somewhat in the light of 2i parvenu by the other two cities ; and also for another reason : that she is simply a trader, occupied only in trade, and has but little aristo- cracy, and that little modest and not rich. Amsterdam, on the contrary, contains the flower of the mercantile patriciate; Amsterdam has picture galleries, protects art and literature ; but notwithstanding her superiority, each is jealous of the other ; what one does the other tries to do ; what the Government accords to one the other wants also. At this very moment (1874) both are cutting canals to the sea. It is not yet quite certain what use can be made of these two canals ; but that does not matter. So children act : Peter has a horse, I want a horse too, and Grandpapa Government must content both big and little. Having visited the port, I traversed the dykes of the Boompjes, along which extends an uninterrupted line of big new houses, in the style of Paris and London, houses which, as is usual, the inhabitants admire, and the stranger never looks at, or looks at them with dislike; then returning, I re-entered the city and came to the corner formed by the Hoog Straat and one of the two long canals that bound the city on the east. It is the poorest quarter of the town ; the streets are narrow, and the houses smaller and more crooked than in other parts; ■AL17W EOTTEBDAM. 49 in some you can touch the roof with your hand. The windows are about a foot from the ground, and the doors so low that you must stoop to enter them. Nevertheless, there is no appearance of misery. Even here the windows have their small looking-glasses — spies, as they are called in Holland — their flower-pots, and their white curtains ; and the doors, painted green or blue, stand wide open, giving a view of the bed-room, the kitchen, all the internal arrangements ; tiny rooms like boxes, but everything in them ranged in order, and clean and bright as in gentle- raen^s houses. There is no dirt in the streets, no bad smells, not a rag to be seen, or a hand held out to beg ; there is an atmosphere of cleaviliness and well-being which makes one blush for the miserable quarters where the poor are crowded in our cities, not excepting Paris, which has its Rue Mouffetard. On my way back to my hotel I passed through the great market-place in the middle of the city, not less peculiar than all its surroundings. It is both a public square and a bridge, and connects the Hoog Straat, or principal dyke, with another quarter of the city surrounded by canals. This airy place is bor- dered on three sides by old buildings and a long, dark, narrow canal, like a street in Venice ; the fourth side is open upon a kind of basin formed by the largest canai, which communicates with the river Mouse. In the middle of the market-place, surrounded by heaps of vegetables, fruit, and earthenware pots and pans, stands the statue of Desiderius Erasmus, the first literary light of Holland; that Gerrit Gerritz — for he assumed the Latin 50 HOLLAND. name himself^ according to the custom of writers in his day — that Gerrit Gerritz belonged^ by his education, his style, and his ideas^ to the family of the humanists and erudite of Italy ; a fine writer, profound and indefatigable in letters and science, he filled all Europe with his name between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; he was loaded with favours by the popes, and sought after and entertained by princes ; and his " Praise of Folly,'-' written in Latin like the rest of his innumerable works, and dedicated to Sir Thomas More, is still read. The bronze statue, erected in 1622, represents Erasmus dressed in a furred gown, with a cap of the same, a little bent forward as if walking, and in the act of reading a large book, held open in the hand ; the pedestal bears a double inscription, in Dutch and Latin, calling him, " Vir saecidi sui primarius ^' and '' Civis omnium prcestantissimus." In spite of this pompous eulogium, however, poor Erasmus, planted there like a municipal guard in the market-place, makes but a pitiful figure. I do not believe that there is in the world another statue of a man of letters that is, like this, neglected by the passer-by, despised by those about it, commiserated by those who look at it. But who knows whether Erasmus, acute philosopher as he was, and must be still, be not contented with his corner, the more that it is not far from his own house, if the tradition is correct ? In a small street near the market-place, in the wall of a little house now occupied as a tavern, there is a niche with a bronze statuette representing the great writer, and under it the inscription, ^' Hcec est parva domus magnus qua natus Erasmus,'' EOTTEEBAM. 51 In one corner of this square there is a little house known as the " House of Fear/^ upon the wall of which may be seen an ancient painting whose subject I have forgotten. The name of the " House of Fear'^ was given to it, says the tradition, because when the Spaniards sacked the city the most conspicuous personages took refuge in this house and remained shut up in it three days without food. And this is not the only memorial of the Spaniards at Hotterdam. Many edifices, built during their domination, show the style of architecture which was then in use in Spain ; and some still bear Spanish inscriptions. In Holland inscriptions upon houses are very common. They glory in their old age like bottles of wine, and bear the date of the year of their construction inscribed in large characters on the fa9ade. In the market-place I had a good opportunity for ob- serving the ear-rings of the women, which are well worthy of remark. At Rotterdam I saw only the ear-rings in use in South Holland ; but even so, their variety is very great. They are all alike, however, in one particular, that instead of being in the ears, they are attached to the two extremities of an ornament in gold, silver, or gilt copper, which encircles the head like a diadem and ends on the temples. The commonest form of ear-ring is a spiral of five or six rows, often very large, and setting out on either side of the face in a very conspicuous fashion. Many of the women wear ordinary ear-rings ati?ached to these spiral ornaments, which dangle over their cheeks and fall down upon the bosom. Some have a second circlet of gold^ 52 HOLLAND. much chased and ornamented with flowers and buttons in relief,, that passes over the forehead. Almost all wear tlie hair smooth and tight^ and covered with a night-cap like head-dress of lace and muslin^ falling in a sort of veil over the neck and shoulders. This Arab-like veil and their extravagant and preposterous ear-rings give them a mixed regal and barbaric aspect, which^ if they were not as fair as they are, might cause them to be mistaken for the women of some savage country who had preserved the head-dress of their ancient costune. I do not wonder that some travellers, seeing them for the first time^ should have believed that their ear-rings were a combination of ornament and implement, and asked their purpose. But we may also suppose that they serve as defensive armSj since any impertinent person, who should put his face too near that of the wearer, would find his approach warded oif by these impediments. Worn chiefly by the peasants, these ear-rings and their accessories are generally in gold, and cost a large sura ; but I saw still greater riches among the Dutch peasantry. Near the market-place is the cathedral, founded towards the end of the fifteenth century, at the time of the decline of Gothic architecture, then a Catholic church dedicated to Saint Lawrence, and now the first Protestant church in the city. Protestantism, that vandal of religion, entered the ancient churches with a pick and a white- wash brush, and with pedantic fanaticism eradicated everything that was beautiful and splAidid, reducing it to a naked white- ness and coldness, such as in the times of the false and lying gods might have suited a temple sacred to the god- EOTTEBJDAM. 63 dess of Ennui. An immense organ, with about fifty thousand pipes, giving among other sounds the effect of an echo; some tombs of admirals adorned with long inscriptions in Dutch and Latin ; numerous benches ; a few boys with their caps on their heads ; a group of women chattering together in loud voices; an old man in a corner, with a cigar in his mou':h ; this was all I saw. That was the first Protestant church in which I set my foot, and I confess that it made a disagreeable impression upon me. I was half saddened, half scandalised. I compared its deso- late and bare interior with the magnificent cathedrals of Spain and Italy, where, amid the soft mysterious light and through clouds of incense, the eye encounters the loving looks of saints and angels on the walls, pointing us to heaven; where we see so many images o£ innocence that calm our souls, and of pain that help us to suffer, while they inspire resignation, peace, the sweetness of forgive- ness; where the homeless and the hungry, driven from the rich man's door, may pray amid marble and gold, as in a kmgdom where he is not disdained, amid a pomp and splendor that does not humiliate him, that even honours and comforts his miserv : those cathedrals where we knelt as children at our mother's side, and felt for the first time a sweet security of living again one day with her in those azuxe depths depicted upon the domes above our heads. Coraparmg the church with those cathedrals, I discovered that 1 was a better Catholic than I had thought, and I felt the truth of those words of Emilio Castelar : '^ Well, yes, I am a rationalist ; but if one day I should wish to return into +he bosom of a religion, I would go back to that 54 HOLLAND. splendid one of my fathers,, and not to this squalid and naked religion that saddens my eyes and my heart ! '' From the top of the tower^ the whole of Rotterdam can be seen at a glance, with all its little sharp red roofs, its broad canals, its ships scattered among houses, and all about the city a vast green plain, intersected by canals bordered by trees, sprinkled with windmills, and villages hidden in masses of verdure, showing only the tops ot their steeples. When I was there, the sky was clear, and I could see the waters of the Meuse shining from the neighbourhood of Bois-le-Duc, nearly to its mouth ; the steeples of Dordrecht, Leyden, Delft, the Hague, and Gonda were visible, but neither far nor near was there a hill, a rising ground, a swell to interrupt the straight and rigid line of the horizon. It was like a green and motion- less sea, where the steeples represented masts of ships at anchor. The eye roamed over that immense space with a sense of repose, and I felt for the first time, that indefinable sentiment inspired by the Dutch landscape, which is neither pleasure, nor sadness, nor ennui, but a mixture of all three, and which holds you for a long time silent and motionless. Suddenly I was startled by the sound of strange music coming from I knew not where. It was a chime of belis ringing a lively air, the silvery notes now falbng slowly one by one, and now coming in groups, in strangfc flourishes, in trills, in sonorous chords, a quaint dancing; strain, somewhat primitive like the many-colored city, on which its notes hovered like a flock of wild birds, or like the city's natural voice, an echo of the antique lire BOTTEEDAM. 55 of lier people, recalling the sea, tlie solitudes^ the huts, and making one smile and sigh at the same moment. All at once the music ceased, and the clock struck the hour. At the same moment other steeples took up the airy strains, playing airs of which only the higher notes reached my cars, and then they also struck the hour. This aerial con- cert is repeated every hour of the day and night, in all the steeples of Holland, the tunes being national airs, or from German or Italian operas. Thus in Holland the pass- ing hour sings, as if to distract the mind from sad thoughts of flying time, and its song is of country, faith, and love, floating in harmony above the sordid noises of the earth. The Hollanders eat a great deal. Their greatest pleasures, as Cardinal Bentivoglio says, are those of the table. Their appetites are voracious, and they care more for quantity than quality. In the old time they were laughed at by their neighbours, not only for the rudeness of their manners, but for the simplicity of their nutri- ment, and were called milk and cheese eaters. They eat, in general, five times a day ; at breakfast, tea, coflee, milk, bread, cheese, and butter; a little before noon a good luncheon ; before dinner, what might be called a bite, a biscuit and a glass of wine ; then a large dinner ; and late in the evening, supper, just so as not to go to bed with an empty stomach. They eat together on every occasion. 1 do not speak of birth and marriage feasts, which are cus- tomary in all countries ; but, for example, they have funeral feasts. It is the custom for the friends and acquaintances who have acccompanied the funeral procession, to return with the family of the defunct to their house, and there 56 HOLLAND. to eat and drink^ doing in general great honor to tlieii* entertainer. If there were no other witnesses^ the Dutch painters all bear testimony to the large part which the table holds in the life of the people. Besides the infinite number of pictures of domestic subjects^ in which it might be said that the plate and the bottle are the pru- tagonistSj almost all the great pictures that represent his- torical subjects, burgomasters, civic guards, show them seated at table in the act of biting, cutting, pouring out. Even their great hero, William the Taciturn, the incarna- tion of new Holland, was an example of this national fondness for eating, and his cook was the first artist of his time ; so great a one that the German princes sent beginners to perfect themselves in his school, and Philip II., in one of his periods of apparent reconciliation with his mortal enemy, asked for the cook as a present. But, as has been said, fhe character of Dutch cookery was rather abundance than refinement. The French, who understand the art, found much to criticise. I remem- ber a writer of certain " Memoirs sur la Hollande," who inveighs with lyric force against the Dutch kitchen, say- ing : " What is this beer soup ? this mingling of meats and sweets ? this devouring of meat in such quantity without bread ?■*' Other writers have spoken of dining in this country as of a domestic calamity. It is superfluous to say that all this is exaggeration. An ultra-delicate palate can in a short time become accustomed to Dutch cookery. The foundation of the dinner is always a dish of meat, with which are served four or five dishes of vege- tables er salted meatSj of which each one takes and com- BOTTEBBAM. 57 oines as he likes with the principal dish. The meat is very good, and the vegetables are exquisite, and cooked in a great variety of vrays ; the potatoes and cabbages are worthy of special mention, and the art of making an omelet is perfectly understood. I say nothing of game, fish, milk, and butter, because all these are already known to fame ; and I am silent, not to be carried away by enthusiasm, on the subject of that celebrated cheese, wherein when once you have thrust your knife you can never leave off until you have exca- vated the whole, while desire still hovers over the shell. A stranger dining for the first time in a Dutch tavern sees a few novelties. First of all he is struck by the great size and thickness of the plates, proportionate to the national appetite ; and in many places he will find a napkin o£ fine white paper, folded in a three-cornered shape, and stamped with a border of flowers, a little landscape in the corner, and the name of the hotel or cafe, with a Bon appeiit in large blue letters. The stranger, to be sure of his facts, will order roast beef,' and they will bring him half-a-dozen slices, as large as cabbage-leaves j or a beefsteak, and he is presented with a sort of cushion of bleeding meat, enough to satisfy a family ; or fish, and there appears a marine animal as long as the table ; and with each of these comes a mountain of boiled potatoes and a pot of vigorous mustard. Of bread, a little thin slice about as big as a dollar, most displeasing to us Latins, whose habit it is to devour bread in quantities ; so that in a Dutch tavern oue must be constantly asking for more, to the great 58 HOLLAND. amazement of the waiters. With any one of these three dishes, and a glass o£ Bavarian or Amsterdam beer, an honest man mav be said to have dined. As for wine, who- ever has the cramp in his purse will not talk of wine in Holland, since it is extremely dear ; but as purses here are pretty generally robust, almost all middle-class Dutchmen and their betters drink it ; and there are cer- tainly few countries where so great a variety and abun- dance of foreign wines are found as in Holland, French and Rhine wines especially. It is unnecessary to say that Holland is famous for its liquors, and that the most famous of all is that called, from the little town where it is manufactured, Schiedam. There are two hundred manufactories of it at Schiedam, which is distant but a few miles from Rotterdam; and to give an idea of the quantity made, I need only mention that thirty thousand swine are fed yearly with the refuse of the distilleries. This famous liquor, when tasted for the first time, is usually accompanied by a triple oath that the taster will never drink another drop of it, if he live a hundred years ; but as the French proverb says, ^' Who drinks, will drink again,^^ and one begins the second time with a morsel of sugar, and then with less, and finally with none, until at last, horribile dictu, on pretence of damp and fog, one swallows two small glasses with the ease of a sailor. Next, in order of excellence, comes Cura9oa, a fine, feminine liquor, less powerful than the Schiedam, but very much more so than the sickly sweet stuff" that is sold under its name in other countries. After Cura9oa come many more, of all grades of strength and ROTTERDAM. 59 flavor, with which an expert drinker can give himself, according to his fancy, all the shades of inebriety ; the mild, the strong, the talkative, the silent, and thus dis- pose his brains in such a way that he may see the world according as best suits his humor, as one arranges an optical instrument, changing the colors of the lenses. The first time one dines in Holland there is a surprise at the moment of paying the bill. I had made a repast that would have been scanty for a Batavian but was quite sufficient for an Italian, and, from what I knew of the dearness of everything in Holland, T expected one of those shocks to which, according to Theophile Gau- thier, the only possible answer is a pistol-shot. I was, then, pleasantly surprised when I was told that my account was forty cents, quarante sous ; and as in the great cities of Holland every kind of coin is current, I put down two silver francs, and waited for my friend to discover that he had made a mistake. Bat he looked at the mone^ without any sign of reconsideration, and remarked with gravity : " Forty sous more, if you please."" The explanation Avas simple enough. The monetary unit in Holland is the florin, which is worth t«^o Italian Ih'e (francs,) and four centmies ; consequently the Dutch sou and cenrime, are worth just double the Italian soldo and centime ; hence my delusion and its cure. Rotterdam in the evening presents an unusual aspect to the stranger's eye. Whilst in other northern cities at a certain hour of the night all the life is concentred in the houses, at Rotterdam at that hour it expands into the streets. The Hoog-straat is filled until far into the night 60 HOLLAND. with a dense throng, the shops are open, because the servants make their purchases in the evening, and the cafes crowded. Dutch cafes are peculiar. In general there is one long room, divided in the middle by a green curtain, which is drawn down at evening and conceals the back part, which is the only part lighted ; the front part, closed from the street by large glass doors, is in darkness, so that from without only dark shadowy forms can be seen, and the burning points of cigars, like so many fire- flies. Among these dark forms, the vague profile of a woman who prefers darkness to light may be detected here and there. Next in interest after the cafe come the tobacco shops. There is one at almost every step, and they are without exception the finest in Europe, even surpassing the great tobacco shops of Madrid, where Havanna tobacco is sold. In these shops, resplendent with lights like the Parisian cafes may be found cigars of every form and flavor ; and the courteous merchant hands you your purchase neatly done up in fine thin paper, after having cut ofi* the end of one cigar with a little machine. Dutch shops are illuminated in the most splendid manner ; and although in themselves they differ but little from those of other European cities, they still have a pecu- liar aspect at night because of the contrast between the ground-floor and the rest of the house. Below all is light, color, splendor, and crystal; above, the dark house- front, with its strange angles, steps, and curves The upper part is old Holland — simple, dark and silent ; the lower part is the new — life^, fashion, luxury, elegance. Besides ROTTERDAM. 61 this, as all the houses are very narrow, and the shops occupy the entire ground-floor, and are set closely one beside the other, at night, in streets like the Hoog-straat, there is not a bit of wall to be seen, the houses seem to have their ground-floors built of glass, and the street is bor- dered on either side by two long lines of brilliant illumi- nation, inundating it with light, so that anyone can see to pick up a pin. Walking through Rotterdam in the evening, it is evi- dent that the city is teeming with life and in process of expansion; a youthful city, still growing, and feeling herself every year more and more pressed for room in her streets and houses. In a not far distant future, her hun- hundred and fourteen thousand inhabitants will have increased to two hundred thousand. The smaller streets swarm with children ; there is an overflow of life and movement that cheers the eye and heart ; a kind of holi- day air. The white and rosy faces of the servant-maids, whose white caps gleam on every side ; the serene visages of shopkeepers slowly imbibing great glassfuls of beer; the peasants with their monstrous ear-rings ; the cleanli- ness; the flowers in the window^s; the tranquil and laborious throng : all give to Rotterdam an aspect of healthful and peaceful content, which brings to the lips the chant of Te Beata, not with the cry of enthusiasm, but with the smile of sympathy. When I came back to my hotel, I found a French family occupied in the hall admiring the nails in a door, which looked like so many silver buttons. The next morning, looking out of my window on the 62 HOLLAND. second floor^ and observing the roofs of tlie opposite Louses,, I recognised^ with astonishment^ that Bismarck was excusable when he imagined that he saw spectres on the roofs of the Rotterdam houses. From every chimney of all the older buildings rise tubes, curved or straight, crossing and recrossing each other like open arms, like enormous horns, forked, and in every kind of fantastic attitude, and looking very much as if they had a mutual understanding and might fly about at night with brooms. Upon descending into the Hoog-straat, I found it was a holiday and very few shops were open ; but even those few, I was told, would have been closed not many years ago : the observance of religious forms, which had once been very rigorous, beginning to relax. I saw signs of holiday in the dress of the people, especially the men, who — above all, those of the inferior classes — have a mani- fest sympathy for black clothes, and generally wear them on a Sunday : black cravat, black trousers, and a long black surtout reaching to the knee — a costume which, combined with their slow motions and grave faces, gives them rather the look of a village mayor on his way to assist at an official Te Deum. But what astonished me was to see, at that early hour, almost everyone, rich and poor, men and boys, with a cigar in their mouths. This ill-omened habit of " dreaming with the eyes open,^' to quote Emile de Girardin in his attack upon smokers, occupies so large a part in the lives of the Dutcli people, that I must devote a few words to it. The Hollanders are, perhaps, of all the northern peoples, ROTTERDAM. 63 those "who smoke the most. The humidity of their cli- mate makes it almost a necessity^ and the very moderate cost of tobacco renders it accessible to all. To show how deeply rooted is the habit^ it is enough to say that the boatmen of the treschknitj the aquatic diligence of Hol- land^ measure distances by smoke. From here, they say, to such and such a place, it is, not so many miles,, but so many pipes. When you enter a house, after the first salu- tations, your host offers you a cigar; when you take leave, he hands you another, and often insists upon filling your cigar-case. In the streets you see persons lighting a fresh cigar with the burning stump of the last one, with- out pausing in their walk, and with the busy air of people who do not wish to lose a moment of time or a mouthful of smoke. Many go to sleep with pipe in mouth, relight it if they wake in the night, and again in the morning before they step out of bed. " A Dutchman,'^ says Diderot, '' is a living alembic.^^ It really does appear that smoking is for him a necessary vital function. Many people think that so much smoke dulls the intelligence. Nevertheless, if there be a people, as Esquiroz justly observes, whose intellect is of the clearest and highest precision, it is the Dutch people. Again, in Holland the cigar is not an excuse for idleness, nor do they smoke in order to dream with their eyes open ; everyone goes about his business puflSng out white clouds of smoke, with the regularity of a factory chimney, and the cigar, instead of being a mere distraction, is a stimulant and an aid to labour. " Smoke,'^ said a Hollander to me, " is our second breath. '^ Another defined the cigar as tlie sixth finger of the hand. 64 HOLLAND. Here, apropos of tobacco, I am tempted to record tlie life and death of a famous Dutcli smoker; but I am a little afraid of the shrugs of my Dutch friends, who, relating to me the story, lamented much that when foreigners wrote about Holland they were so apt to neg- lect things important and honorable to the country, while they occupied themselves with trifles of that nature. It appears to me, however, to be a trifle of so new and original a type, that I cannot restrain my pen. There was, then, once upon a time, a rich gentleman of Rotterdam, of the name of Van Klaes, who was sur- named Father Great-pipe because he was old, fat, and a great smoker. Tradition relates that he had honestly amassed a fortune as a merchant in India, and that he was a kind-hearted and good-tempered man. On his return from India, he built a beautiful palace near Rotterdam, and in this palace he collected and arranged, as in a museum, all the models of pipes that had ever seen the sun in all countries and in every time, from those used by the antique barbarian to smoke his hemp, up to the splendid pipes of meerschaum and amber, carved in relief and bound with gold, such as are seen in the richest Parisian shops. The museum was open to strangers, and to everyone who visited it, Van Klaes, after having displayed his vast erudition in the matter of smoking, presented a catalogue of the museum bound in velvet, and filled his pockets with cigars and tobacco. Mynheer Van Klaes smoked a hundred and fifty grammes of tobacco per day, and died at the age of ninety- nOTTEUBAM, 65 eight years ; so that^ if we suppose that he began to smoke at eighteen years of age, in the coarse of his life he had smoked four thousand three hundred and eighty- three kilogammes ; with which quantity of tobacco an uninter- rupted black line of twenty French leagues in length might be formed. With all this, Mynheer Van Klaes showed himself, a much greater smoker in death than he had been in life. Tradition has preserved all the particulars of his end. There wanted but a few days to the completion of his ninety- eighth year, when he suddenly felt that his end was approaching. He sent for his notary, who was also a smoker of great merit, and without further preamble, '^ My good notary,'^ said he, ^^fill my pipe and your own; I am about to die." The notary obeyed ; and when both pipes were lighted. Van Klaes dictated his will, which became celebrated all over Holland. After having disposed of a large part of his property in favour of relations, friends, and hospitals, he dictated the following article : — " I desire that all the smokers in the country shall be invited to my funeral, by all possible means, news- papers, private letters, circulars, and advertisements. Every smoker who shall accept the invitation shall receive a gift of ten pounds of tobacco and two pipes, upon which shall be engraved my name, my arms, and the date of my death. The poor of the district who shall follow my body to the grave shall receive each man, every year, on the anniversary of my death, a large parcel of tobacco. To all those who shall be pre- 66 HOLLAND. sent at the funeral ceremonies_, I make the condition, if tliey wish to benefit by my will, that they shall smoke uninter- ruptedly throughout the duration of the ceremony. My body shall be enclosed in a case lined inside with the wood of my old Havana cigar-boxes. At the bottom of the case shall be deposited a box of French tobacco called caporalj and a parcel of our old Dutch tobacco. At my side shall be laid my favorite pipe and a box of matches^ because no one knows what may happen. When the coffin is deposited in the vault, every person present shall pass by and cast upon it the ashes of his pipe." The last will and testament of Mynheer Van Klaes was rigorously carried out; the funeral was splendid and veiled in a thick cloud of smoke. The cook of the defunct, who was called Gertrude, to whom her master had left a comfortable income, on condition that she should conquer her aversion to tobacco, accompanied the procession with a paper cigarette in her mouth ; the poor blessed the memory of the beneficent deceased, and the whole country rang with his praises, as it still rings with his fame. Passing along the canal I saw, with new efi'ects, one of those rapid changes of weather that I have mentioned. All at once the sun vanished, the infinite variety of colors were dimmed, and an autumn wind began to blow. Then to the cheerful, tranquil gaiety of a moment before suc- ceeded a kind of timid agitation. The branches of the trees rustled, the flags of the ships streamed out, the boats tied to the piles danced about, the water trembled, the thousand small objects about the houses swung to and fro. EOTTEEDAM. 6? the arms o£ the. windmills whirled more rapidly; a wintry chill seemed to run through the whole city and moved it as if with a mysterious menace. After a moment, the sun burst out again, and with it came color, peace, and cheer. The spectacle made me think that, after all, Hol- land is not, as many call it, a dreary country ; but rather, very dreary at times, and at times very gay, according to the weather. It is in everything the land of contrasts. Under the most capricious of skies dwell the least capri- cious of peoples ; and this solid, resolute, and orderly race, has the most helter-skelter and disorderly architecture that can be seen in the world. Before entering the Rotterdam Museum, a few observa- tions upon Dutch painting seem opportune, not for " those who know,"*^ be it understood, but for those who have forgotten. The Dutch school of painting has one quality which renders it particularly attractive to -us Italians : it is of all others the most different from our own, the very anti- thesis, or the opposite pole of art. The Dutch and Italian schools are the two most original, or, as has been said, the only two to which the title rigorously belongs; the others being only daughters, or younger sisters, more or less resembling them. Thus even in painting Holland offers that which is most sought after in travel and iu books of travel : the new. Dutch painting was born with the liberty and inde- pendence of Holland. As long as the northern and southern provinces of the Low Countries remained under 68 HOLLAND. the Spanish rule and in the Catholic faith, Dutch painters painted like Belgian painters; they studied in Belgium, Germany, and Italy ; Hemskerk imitated Michael Angclo ; Bloemart followed Correggio, and "II Moro^' copied Titian, not to indicate others ; and they were one and all pedantic imitators, who added to the exaggerations of the Italian style a certain German coarseness, the result of which was a bastard style of painting, still inferior to the first, childish, stiff in design, crude in color, and com- pletely wanting in chiaroscuro, but not, at least, a servile imitation, and becoming, as it were, a, faint prelude of the true Dutch art that was to be. With the war of independence, liberty, reform, and painting also were renewed. With religious traditions fell artistic traditions ; the nude nymphs. Madonnas, saints, allegory, mythology, the ideal — all the old edifice fell to pieces. Holland, animated by a new life, felt the need of ][na,nifesting and expanding it in a new way; the small country, become all at once glorious and formidable, felt the desire for illustration ; the faculties, which had been excited and strengthened in the grand undertaking of creating a nation, now that the work was completed, over- flowed and ran into new channels; the conditions of the country were favourable to the revival of art ; the supreme dangers were conjured away ; there was security, pros- perity, a splendid future; the heroes had done their duty, and the artists were permitted to come to the front ; Holland, after many sacrifices and much suffering, issued victoriously from the struggle, lifted her face among her people and smiled. And that smile is Art. BOTTEBDAM. 69 What tliat art would necessarily be^ miglit liave been guessed^ even had no monument of it remained. A pacific, laborious, practical people, continually beaten down, to quote a great German poet, to prosaic realities by the occupation '. of a vulgar, burgher Life; cultivating its reason at the ex- pense of its imagination; living, consequently, more in clca ideas than in beautiful images ; taking refuge from abstrac- tions; never darting its thoughts beyond that nature with which it is in perpetual battle ; seeing only that which is, enjoying only that which it can possess, making its happi- ness consist in the tranquil ease and honest sensuality of a life without violent passions or exorbitant desires ; such a people must have tranquillity also in their art, they must love an art that pleases without startling the mind, which addresses the senses rather than the spirit, an art full of repose, precision, and delicacy, though material like their lives : in one word, a realistic art in which they can see themselves as they are, and as they are content to be. The artists began by tracing that which they saw before their eyes — the house. The long winters, the persistent lains, the dampness, the variableness of the climate, obliged the Hollander to stay within doors the greater part of the year. He loved his little house, his shell, much better than we love our abodes, for the reason that he had more need of it, and stayed more within it ; he pro- vided it with all sorts of conveniences, caressed it, made much of it ; he liked to look out from his well-stopped windows at the falling snow, and the drenching rain, and to hug himself with the thought, " Rage, tempest, I am warm and safe ! '^ Snug in his shell, his faithful house- 70 HOLLAND, wife beside him^ his children about him_, he passed the long autumn and winter evenings in eating much, drinking much, smoking much, and taking his well-earned ease after the cares of the day were over. The Dutch painters represented these houses and this life in little pictures pro- portionate to the size of the walls on which they were to hang : the bed-chambers that make one feel a desire to sleep, the kitchens, the tables set out, the fresh and smiling faces of the house-mothers, the men at their ease around the fire; and with that conscientious realism which never forsakes them, they depict the dozing cat, the yawning dog, the clucking hen, the broom, the vegetables, the scattered pots and pans, the chicken ready for the spit. Thus they represent life in all its scenes, and in every grade of the social scale — the dance, the conversazione, the orgie, the feast, the game ; and thus did Terbnrg, Metzu, Netscher, Dow, Mieris, Steen, Brouwer, and Van Ostade become famous. After depicting the house, they turned their attention to the country. The stern climate allowed but a brief time for the admiration of nature, but for this very reason Dutch artists admired her all the more ; they saluted the spring with a livelier joy, and permitted that fugitive smile of heaven to stamp itself more deeply on their fancy. The country was not beautiful, but it was twice dear because it had been torn from the sea and from the foreign oppressor. The Dutch artist painted it lovingly; he represented it simply, ingenuously, with a sense of intimacy which at that time was not to be found in Italian or Belgian landscape. The flat, monotonous country had, to the Dutch painter^s ^ ^ pi w H o u EOTTEBDAM. 71 eyes, a marvellous variety. He caught all the mutations of the sky_, and knew the value of the water, with its reflections, its grace and freshness, and its power of illuminating every- thing. Having no mountains, he took the dykes for back- ground; and with no forests, he imparted to a simple group of trees all the mystery of a forest ; and he animated the whole with beautiful animals and white sails. The subjects of their pictures are poor enough — a windmill, a canal, a grey sky; — but how they make one think ! A few Dutch painters, not content with nature in their own country, came to Italy in search of hills, lumin- ous skies, and famous ruins ; and another band of select artists is the result. Both, Swanevelt, Pynacker, Breen- berg. Van Laer, Asselyn. But the palm remains with the landscapists of Holland, with Wynauts the painter oi morning, with Van der Neer the painter of night, with Ruysdael the painter of melancholy, with HofFema the illustrator of windmills, cabins, and kitchen gardens, and with others who have restricted themselves to the ex- pression of the enchantment of nature as she is in. Holland. Simultaneously with landscape art was born another kind of painting, especially peculiar to Holland — animal painting. Animals are the riches of the country; and that magnificent race of cattle which has no rival in Europe for fecundity and beauty. The Hollanders, who owe so much to them, treat them, one may say, as part of the population; they wash them, comb them, dress them, and love them dearly. They are to be seen everywhere ; they are reflected in all the canals, and dot with points X 72 HOLLAND. of black and white the immense fields that stretch on every side^ giving an air of peace and comfort to eveiy place, and exciting in the spectator's heart a sentiment of arcadian gentleness and patriarchal serenity. The Dutch artists studied these animals in all their varieties, in all their habits, and divined, as one may say, their inner life and sentiments, animating the tranquil beauty of the landscape with their forms. Rubens, Luyders, Paul de Vos, and other Belgian painters, had drawn animals with admirable mastery, but all these are surpassed b} the Dutch artists Van der Velde, Berghun, Karel der Jardin, and by the prince of animal painters, Paul Potter, whose famous " Bull,'' in the gallery of the Hague, deserves to be placed in the Vatican beside the " Transfiguration " by Rafael. In yet another field are the Dutch painters great — the sea. The sea, their enemy, their power, and their glor}\, for ever threatening their country, and entering in a hun- dred ways into their lives and fortunes ; that turbulent North Sea, full of sinister colors, with a light of infinite melancholy upon it, beating for ever upon a desolate coast, must subjugate the imagination of the artist. He, indeed, passes long hours on the shore, contemplating its tremen- dous beauty, ventures upon its waves to study the eff'ects of tempests, buys a vessel and sails with his wife and family, observing and making notes, follows the fleet into battle, and takes part in the fight ; and in this way are made marine painters like William Vander Velde the elder, and William the younger, like Backhuysen, Dubbels, and Stork. ROTTERDAM ' 73 Another kind of painting was to arise in Holland^ as the expression of the character of the people and of republican manners. A people which without greatness had done so many great things^ as Michelet says^ must have its heroic painters^ if we call them so, destined to illustrate men and events. But this school of painting — precisely because the people were without greatness^ or^ to express it better, without the form of greatness, modest, inclined to consider all equal before the country, because all had done their duty, abhorring adulation, and the glorification in one only of the virtues and the triumph of many — this school has to illustrate^ not a few men who have excelled, and a few extraordinary facts, but all classes of citizen- ship gathered among the most ordinary and pacific of burgher life. From this come the great pictures which represent five, ten, thirty persons together, arquebusiers, mayors, officers, professors, magistrates, administrators, seated or standing around a table, feasting and convers- ing, of life size, most faithful likenesses, grave, open faces, expressing that secure serenity of conscience by which may be divined rather than seen the nobleness of a life consecrated to one^s country, the character of that strong, laborious epoch, the masculine virtues of that excellent generation; all this set off by the fine costume of the time, so admirably combining grace and dignity ; those gorgets, those doublets, those black mantles, those silken scarves and ribbons, those arms and banners. In this field stand pre-eminent Van der Helst^ Hals^ Govaert, riink, and Bol. Descending from the consideration of the various kinds 74 HOLLAND. of painting, to the special manner by means of which the artist excelled in treatment, one leads all the rest as the distinctive feature of Dutch painting — the light. The light in Holland, by reason of the particular con- ditions of its manifestation, could not fail to give rise to a special manner of painting. A pale light, waving with marvellous mobility through an atmosphere impregnated with vapor, a nebulous veil continually and abruptly torn, a perpetual struggle between light and shadow, such was the spectacle which attracted the eye of the artist. He began to observe and to reproduce all this agitation of the heavens, this struggle which animates with varied and fantastic life the solitude of nature in Holland; and in representing it, the struggle passed into his soul, and instead of representing, he created. Then he caused the two elements to contend under his hand ; he accumulated darkness that he might split and seam it with all manner of luminous effects and sudden gleams of light ; sunbeams darted through the rifts, sunset reflections and the yellow rays of lamp-light were blended with delicate manipula- tion into mysterious shadows, and their dim depths were peopled with half-seen forms; and thus he created all sorts of contrasts, enigmas, play and effect of strange and unexpected chiaroscuro. In this field, among many, stand conspicuous Gerard Don, the author of the famous four- candle picture, and the great magician and sovereign illuminator, Rembrandt. Another marked feature of Dutch painting was to be color. Besides the generally accepted reasons that in a country where there are no mountainous horizons, no EOTTEBBAM. 75 varied prospects, no great covp d'oeilj no forms^ in shorty that lend then: selves to design, the artist's eye must inevitably be attracted by color, and that this mnst be peculiarly the case in Holland, where the uncertain light, the fog- veiled atmosphere, confuse and blend the outlines of all objects, so that the eye, unable to fix itself upon the form, flies to color as the principal attribute that nature presents to it ; besides these reasons, there is the fact that in a country so flat, so uniform, and so grey as Holland, there is the same need of color as in southern lands there is need of shade. The Dutch artists did but follow the imperious taste of their countrymen, who painted their houses in vivid colors, as well as their ships, and in some places the trunks of their trees and the palings and fences of their fields and gardens; whose dress was of the gayest, richest hues; who loved tulips and hyacinths even to madness. And thus the Dutch painters were potent colorists, and Rembrandt was their chief. Realism, natural to the calmness and slowness of the Dutch character, was to give to their art yet another distinctive feature, finish, which was carried to the very extreme of possibility. It is truly said that the leading quality of the people may be found in their pictures, viz. patience. Everything is represented with the minuteness of a daguerreotype ; every vein in the wood of a piece oi furniture, every fibre in a leaf, the threads of cloth, the stitches in a patch, every hair upon an animal's coat, every wrinkle in a man's face; everything finished with microscopic precision, as if done with a fairy pencil, or at the expense of the painter's eyes and reason. Ii 76 HOLLAND. reality a defect rather than an excellence^, since the office of painting is to represent not what is, but what the eye seeS; and the eye does not see everything ; but a defect carried to such a pitch of perfection that one admires, and does not find fault. In this respect the most famous prodigies of patience were Don, Mieris, Potter, Van der Heist, and more or less, all the Dutch painters. But realism, which gives to Dutch art so original a stamp, and such admirable qualities, is yet the root of its most serious defects. The artists, desirous only of repre- senting material truths, gave to their figures no expression save that of their physical sentiments. Grief, love, en- thusiasm, and the thousand delicate shades of feeling that have no name, or take a different one with the diffe- rent causes that give rise to them, they express rarely, or not at all. For them the heart does not beat, the eye does not weep, the lips do not quiver. One whole side of the human soul, the noblest and highest, is wanting in their pictures. More, in their faithful reproduction ol everything, even the ugly, and especially the ugly, they end by exaggerating even that, making defects into defor- mities, and portraits into caricatures ; they calumniate the national type; they give a burlesque and graceless aspect to the human countenance. In order to have the proper background for such figures, they are constrained to choose trivial subjects; hence the great number of pictures representing beer-shops, and drinkers with gro- tesque, stupid faces, in absurd attitudes, ugly women, and ridiculous old men ; scenes in which one can almost bear the brutal laughter and the obscene words. Looking ROTTEBBAM. 11 at these pictures_, one would naturally couclude that Holland was inhabited by the ugliest and most ill-man» nered people on the earth. We will not speak of greater and worse license. Steen, Potter^ and Brouwer_, the great Rembrandt himself, have all painted incidents that are scarcely to be mentioned to civilised ears_, and certainly should not be .looked at. But even setting aside these excesses^ in the picture galleries of Holland there is to be found nothing that elevates the mind, or moves it to high and gentle tliDughts. You admire, you enjoy, you laugh, you stand pensive for a moment before some canvas ; but coming out, you feel that something is lacking to your pleasure, you experience a desire to look upon a handsome countenance, to read inspired verses, and sometimes you catch yourself murmuring, half unconsciously: — "Oh Uafael ! '' Finally, there are still two important excellences to be recorded of this school of painting — its variety, and its importance as the expression, the mirror, so to speak, of the country. If we except Rembrandt with his group of followers and imitators, almost all the other artists differ very much from one another; no other school presents so great a number of original masters. The realism of the Dutch painters is born of their common love of nature ; but each one has shown in his work a kind of love pecu- liarly his own; each one has rendered a different impres- sion which he has received from nature; and all, starting from the same point, which was the worship of material truth, have arrived at separate and distinct goals. Their realism, then, inciting them to disdain nothing as food 78 HOLLAND. for tlie pencil^ has so acted that Dutch art succeeds in representing Holland more completely than has ever been accomplished by any other school in any other country. It has been truly said that should every other visible witness of the existence of Holland in the seventeenth century — her period of greatness— vanish from the earth, and the pictures remain, in them would be found pre- served entire the city, the country, the ports, the ships, the markets, the shops, the costumes, the arms, the linen, the stuffs, the merchandise, the kitchen utensils, the food, the pleasures, the habits, the religious belief and super- stitions, the qualities, and effects of the people; and all this, which is great praise for literature, is no less praise for her sister art. Bat there is one great hiatus in Dutch art, the reason for which can scarcely be found in the pacific and modest disposition of the people. This art, so profoundly national in all other respects, has, with the exception of a few naval battles, completely neglected all the great events of the war of independence, among which the sieges of Ley- den and of Harlem alone would have been enough to have inspired a whole legion of painters. A war of almost a cen- tury in duration, full of strange and terrible vicissitudes, has not been recorded in one single memorable painting. Art, so varied and so conscientious in its records of the countiy and its people, has represented no scene of that great tra- gedy, as William the Silent prophetically named it, which cost the Dutch people, for so long a time, so many different emotions of terror, of pain, of rage, of joy, and of pride 1 The splendor of art in Holland is dimmed by that of BOTTEBDAM. 79 political greatness. Almost all the great painters ^vere bom in the first thirty years o£ the seventeenth century, or in the last part of the sixteenth ; all were dead after the first ten years of the eighteenth^ and after them there were no more; Holland had exhausted her fecundity. Already towards the end of the seventeenth century the national sentiment had grown weaker, taste had corrupted, the inspiration of the painters had declined with the moral energies of the nation. In the eighteenth century, the artists, as if they were tired of nature, went back to my- thology, to classicism, to conventionalities ; the imagina- tion grew cold, style was impoverished, every spark of the antique genius was extinct. Dutch art still showed to the world the wonderful flowers of Van Huysum, the last great lover of nature, and then folded her tired hands, and let the flowers fall upon his tomb. The actual gallery of pictures of Rotterdam contains but a small number, among which there are very few by the first artists, and none of the great chef d^ceuvres of Dutch painting. Three hundred pictures and thirteen hundred drawings were destroyed in a fire in 1864 ; and of what remained the greater part come from one Jacob Otto Boymans, who left them in his will to the city. In this gallery, therefore, one may enter to make acquaint- ance with some particular artist, rather than to admire the Dutch school. In one of the first rooms may be seen a few sketches of naval battles, signed with the name of Willem Van de Velde, considered as the greatest marine painter of his time, son of Willem, called the elder, also a marine 80 HOLLAND. painter. Eatlier and son "had tlie good fortune to live in tlie time of the great maritime wars between Holland, England, and France, and saw the battles with their own eyes. The States of Holland placed a small frigate at the disposition of the elder Van de Velde ; the son accom- panied his father, and both made their sketches in the midst of the cannon-smoke, sometimes pushing their vessel so near as to cause the admiral to order their with- drawal. Van de Velde the younger greatly surpassed his father, and painted, in general, small pictures — a grey sky, a calm sea, and a sail ; but so done, that when fixing your eyes upon them, you seem to smell the briny breezes of the ocean, and the frame appears changed into an open window. This Van de Velde belonged to that group of Dutch painters who loved the water with a kind of fury, and painted, it may be said, npon it. Of these also was Back- huysen, a marine painter of great repute in his own time, and whom Peter the Great, when in Amsterdam, chose for his master. Backhuysen relates of himself, that he went out in a small boat in the midst of a tempest to observe the movement of the waves, and he and his boatmen ran such fearful risks that the latter, more solicitous for their own lives than for his picture, took him back to land in spite of his orders to the contrary. John Griflfier did more. He bought a small vessel at London, which he furnished like a house, and installing his wife and family on board, sailed about in search of views. A tem- pest having wrecked his vessel on a sand-bank and destroyed everything he possessed, he, saved by a miracle with his family, went to live at Rotterdam ; but soon JJ T-JCMin.-i EOTTEEDAM, 81 tiriDg of life on lancl^ Griffier bought another -wretched old boatj recommenced his voyages, and a second time risked his life near Dordrecht j but he still persisted in sailing about as before. In marine painting the gallery of Rotterdam has little to show; but landscape is worthily represented by two pictures by Ruysdael^ the greatest of the Dutch painters ol rural scenes. These two pictures represent his favourite subjects; namely, woody and solitary places, which insjnre, like all his pictures, a vague sentiment of melancholy. The great power of this artist, who stands alone among his brother painters for delicacy of mind and a singular superiority of education, lies in his sentiment. It has been justly said that he makes use of landscape to express his own bitterness and weariness, his own dreams, and that he contemplates his country with a sort of sadness, and creates groves of trees in which to hide it. The veiled light of Holland is the image of his soul; no one feels more exquisitely its melancholy sweetness ; no one repre- sents like him, with a ray of languid light, the sad smile of some afflicted creature. It follows as a matter of course that so exceptional a nature was not appreciated by his countrymen till long after his death. Near one of RuysdaePs pictures is a group of flowers by a woman painter, Rachel Ruysch, the -wife of a por- trait painter of note, born in the second half of the six- teenth century, and dying, pencil in hand, at eighty years of age, after having proved to her husband and the world that a woman may passionately cultivate the fine arts and still find time to bear and bring up ten children. 82 HOLLAND. And since I have mentioned the wife of one artist,, it may be here noted, en passant, that a pleasant book might be written upon the wives of the Dutch painters, as well for the variety of their adventures as for the important part which they take in tlie history of art. INIany of them we know by sight from their portraits, made in company with their husbands, their children, their cats, and their hens ; and biographers speak of them, denying or confirming reports concerning their conduct. Some even venture to hint that the greater part of these ladies did great wrongs to painting. To me it appears that there were faults on both sides. As for Rembrandt, we know that the happiest period of his life was that between his first marriage and the death of his wife, the daughter of a burgomaster of Leuwarde; posterity, therefore, owes this lady a debt of gratitude. We know, also, that Van der Heist married, when already advanced in life, a lovely young girl against whom there is nothing to be said ; and posterity has to thank her as well, for having cheered the declining years of that great artist. It is true that all the wives of the Dutch painters cannot be spoken of in the same terms. The first of the two wives of Steen, for example, was a frivolous woman who left the beershop which she had in- herited from her father to fall into ruin ; and the second, if all is true that is said of her, was unfaithful to him. The second wife of Heemskerk was a swindler, and her husband was obliged to go about making excuses for her misdeeds. The wife of Hondekocter was an odd, ill-tempered woman, who obliged him to pass his evenings at a tavern in order to be rid of her. The wife of Berghem was an insatiable BOTTEBDAM. 83 miser, who would wake him abruptly when he fell asleep over his brushes, and make him work to gain money, while the poor man was constrained to resort to subter- fuge in order to retain a little of his own earnings, to buy himself an engraving or two. On the other hand we should never have done were we to attempt to exhaust the misdeeds of the gentlemen. The painter Griffier forced his wife to go about the world in a boat ; the painter Veenir got leave of his spouse to go and spend four months in Rome, and stayed four years ; Karel du Jardin married a rich old woman to pay his debts, and wdien they were all paid, left her ; Molyn had his wife murdered that he might marry a Genoese. We leave in doubt whether poor Paul Potter was betrayed or no by the wife he loved so madly ; and whether the great flower-painter, Huysum, who was devoured by jealousy in the midst of riches and honors, for a wife no longer young or handsome, had any real cause for jealousy, or was merely driven wild with suspicion by the man(Buvres of his envious rivals. As an appropriate finish, let us honourably record the three wives of Eglon van der Neer, who crowned him with twenty-five children, which did not, however, prevent him from painting a great number of pictures of every kind, from making numerous journeys, and from culti- vating many tulips. There are in the gallery of Rotterdam a few small pic- tures by Albert Cuyp, who ''gave a part of himself ^^ to Dutch art, and who in the course of a very long life painted portraits, landscapes, animals, flowers, -winter scenes, moonlight, marine subjects, figures, and left on 84 HOLLAND, them all t"he stamp of original genius; nevertTieless, lilve all the Dutch painters of his day, he was so unfortunate^, that up to 1750^ or more than fifty years after his deathj his best pictures sold for one hundred francs, pictures which are now valued, in England, not in Hol- land, at one hundred thousand. Almost all his works are now in England. I should not say a word about Heemskerk's ^^ Christ at tlie Sepulchre,''^ if it were not that it gives occasion to make known the artist, who was one of the most singular beings that ever walked the earth. Yan Veen, for that was his name, was born in the village of Heemskerk, at the end of the fiitcenth century, and flourished during the period of Italian imitation. He was the son of a peasant, and although he showed some disposition towards paint- ing, seemed destined to remain a peasant. He became an artist, like many others, by an accident. His father was a man of violent temper, and the son was terribly in fear of him. One day poor Van Veen threw down the jug of milk, his father rushed at him, and he took to flight and passed the night in hiding out of doors. In the morning his mother found him, agreed with him that it would not be prudcjnt to brave the paternal wrath, gave him a small store of linen and a little money, and sent him off to seek his fortune. The boy went to Harlem, obtained entrance into the school of a painter of note, studied, succeeded, and went to Home to perfect himself. He did not become a great artist, for imitation of Italian art was injurious to him. He treated the nude stiffly and had a mannered style; but BOTTEEDAM. 85 he was a productive painter and was well paid, and never had reason to regret his peasant life. But here comes in his peculiarity : he was, according to his biographers, incredibly, morbidly, madly timid ; inso- much, that when he knew that the arquebusiers were going to pass by, he fled to the roofs and the steeples, and shook with terror even there at the distant gleam of arms. And if anyone doubt this, there is a fact re- corded of him which cannot be questioned : that finding himself in the city of Harlem when the Spaniards laid siege to it, the magistrates, knowing his weakness, gave him leave to quit the city before the fight began, per- haps because they foresaw that if he did not do that, he would die of fright; and he fled to Amsterdam, leaving his fellow-citizens at their greatest need. Other Dutch artists — since I am speaking of the men and not of their works — like Ileemskerk, owed to an accident their success as painters. Everdingen, a land- scape painter of the first rank, ovved it to a tempest which threw his ship on the coast of Norway, where he remained and, under the inspiration of the grand natural features there, created an original type of landscape. Cornelius Vroom also owed his fortune to a shipwreck. He had sailed for Spain with some religious pictures; his ship was wrecked off the Portuguese coast; the poor artist was saved with others on an uninhabited island. They remained two days without food, and gave themselves up for lost, when they were succoured by some monks of a convent on the coast, to whom the sea had carried, with the carcass of the ship, the pictures that were in it, and 86 HOLLAND, the monks had found them admirable ; and so Cornelius was saved^ sheltered^ and encouraged to paint ; and the profound emotions experienced in his shipwreck gave a new and powerful impulse to his genius^ and made him a true artist. And another^ Hans Fredeman, the famous painter of deceptions — he who painted in so masterly a manner the doors of a hall in imitation of columns, that Charles V. turned back after entering, thinking that the wall had closed behind him by enchantment; the same Hans Fredeman who painted palings that turned aside the passenger, and doors which people tried to 023en — OAved his fortune to a treatise on architecture by Vitruvius, which he received by chance from a carpenter. There is a fine little picture by Steen, representing a doctor pretending to perform the operation for the stone upon a man wdio imagines himself ill. An old woman receives the stone iu a basin, the patient yells at the top of his lungs, and some laughing spectators look in at a window. When we say that this picture makes you burst into a shout of laughter, we have said all that need be said. This Steen is, after Rembrandt, the most original of the Dutch figure-painters; he is one of the few artists who, once known, whether we class him as great, or place him only in the second rank, remains a fixture in our minds for ever. After having seen his pictures, you can- not meet a druidicn man, a buffoon, a cripple, a dwarf, a deformed visage, a ridiculous grimace, a grotesque atti. tude, without instantly remembering one of his figures. BOTTEBDAM. 87 All the gradations^ all the stupidity of drunkenness^ all the coarse license of an orgie^ all the frenzy of the basest pleasures^ the cynicism of the lowest vice^ the buffoonery of the maddest ruffianism, all the most bestial emotions, all the most ignoble aspects of tavern life,, he has i:ortrayed with the insolence and brutality of a man without scruples^ and with a comic force and fire, a very madness of inspiration, which cannot be expressed in words. Many volumes have been written upon him, and many diverse judgments pronounced. His warmest admirers have attributed to him a moral intention — the purpose of making low vices hateful^ by painting them in all their naked hideousness, as the Spartans showed the drunken Helots to their sons. Others see nothing in his pictures but the spontaneous and instinctive expression of the tastes and disposition of the artist, represented with coarse vulgarity. However that may be^ it is beyond a doubt that Steen^s pictures are to be considered as satires upon vice ; and in this he is superior to almost all the other Dutch painters, who restricted themselves to a simple naturalism. Hence he is called the Dutch Hogarth, the jovial phi- losopher, the profoundest student of the manners of his countrymen; and among his admirers there is one who said that if Steen had been born in Rome instead of Leyden, and had had Michael Angelo instead of Van Goyen for a master, he would have been one of the greatest artists in the world ; and there is another who has discovered I know not what analogy between him and Eafael. Less general is the admiration for the technical 88 HOLLAND, qualities of his pictures, in wliicli the delicacy and vigor of other artists, such as Ostade, Mieris, and Dow, are not to be found. But considering even the satirical character of his work, it may he said that Steen often overshot his mark, if mark he had. His hurlesque fury often over- powered his sentiment of reality ; his figures, instead of being only ridiculous, became monstrous, hardly human, resembling rather heasts than men ; and he multiplied such figures in a way to excite nausea rather than laugh- ter, and a feeling of anger that human nature should be so outraged. There has always heen much question as to his manner of life. Volumes have heen written to prove that he was a drunkard, and other volumes to prove the contrary ; and, as usual, there are exaggerations on both sides. He kept a beershop at Delft, and did badly ; he then set up a tavern, and came to grief. It is said that he was himself the most assiduous customer of the latter, that he drank up all the wine, and, when the cellar was empty, took down the sign, closed the doors, set himself to painting in hot haste, then sold the pictures, bought more wine, and began again as before. It is also said that he paid directly with the pic- tures, and that consequently most of his work was in the possession of the wine merchants. It is difficult, truly, to explain how, being always in difficulties, he could have painted so large a number of admirable pictures ; but it is not less difficult to understand why he loved such sub- jects if he were leading a sober and orderly life. Certain it is, that, especially in the last years of his life, he com- mitted all sorts of extravagances. He studied at first ii! BOTTEBDAM. 89 tlie school of Van Goyen, a landscape-painter of note; but genius worked in him far more than study ; he di^dned the rules of his art; and if he sometimes painted too blackj as one of his critics declares^ the fault probably lav in some bottle too much at dinner. Steen is not the only Dutch artist who is accused of drunkenness. There was a time when almost all of them passed a good part of the day at the tavern^ drinking, and coming to blows^ and issuing forth all bruised and bloody. In a poem upon the works of Karel van Mander^ the first who wrote the history of painting in the Low Countries^ there is a passage against the vice of drunkenness and the habit of fighting, which says, among other things : ^^Be sober, and act so that the ill-omened proverb of ^de- bauched as a painter-* shall be changed into ^temperate as an artist/ " Mieris, to cite only the most famous^ was a great drinker ; Van Goyen a sot ; Francis Halz, Brouwer's master, a wine sponge ; Brouwer an incorrigible haunter of taverns ; William Cornells and Hondekoeter both de- voted to the bottle. Of the minor lights, some died of drink ; and in their deaths the Dutch painters saw strange vicissitudes. The great Rembrandt died in straitened circumstances, almost unknown to all; Hoffema died at Amsterdam in the poor quarter ; Steen died in misery; Brouwer in the hospital ; Andrea Both and Henry Vers- churing were drowned ; Adrian Bloemaert was killed in a duel ; Karel Fabritius was blown up in a powder-mill ; John Scotel died, brush in hand, of apoplexy; Paul Potter died of consumption ; Luke of Leyden was poi- soned. So what between sudden death, debauchery, and 90 HOLLAND. jealousy, many o£ the Dutch painters cannot be said to have had a very happy lot. There is in the gallery at Rotterdam a fine head by Rembrandt j a brigand scene by Wonvermaus, the great horse and battle painter; a landscape by Van Goyen, the painter of dead sands and leaden skies ; a sea- piece by Backhuysen^ the painter of storms ; a Berghem, the painter of smiling landscapes; an Everdingen, the painter of cascades and forests ; and other works^ Flemish and Italian. Coming out of the museum I met a company of sol- diers, the first Dutch soldiers I had seen, dressed in dark uniforms, without visible ornament, blonde from first to last, with long fair hair, and an air of good humour that made their arms seem incongruous. At Rotterdam, a .city of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants, there are three hundred soldiers in garrison ! And Rotterdam has, among the cities of Holland, the reputation of being the most turbulent and dangerous ! Not long ago, indeed^ there was a popular demonstration against the city govern- ment, in the course of which a few windows were broken ; but in a country that goes by clock-work, as this does, it seemed a great affair, the State was much excited, and cavalry came from the Hague. It is not to be concluded, however, that the people are all sugar ; on the coritrary, the inhabitants of Rotterdam themselves acknowledge that the lower orders (what Carducci calls the Santa Caraglia) are, as in other places, of the worst possible re- putation ; and the scarcity of the garrison is rather a provocation to license than a proof of public morals. EOTTEBBAM. 91 Rotterdam is notj as I have said^ a literary or artistic city ; indeed, it is one of the few Dutch cities that have never produced any great painter; a sterility which it shares with the interior of Zealand. But Erasmus is not its sole literary glory. In a small park which lies to the right of the city on the shore of the Meuse, stands a marble statue of the poet ToUens^ born towards the end of the last century, and who died not long since. This Tol- lens, rather audaciously called by some the Dutch Beran- ger, was a popular poet of the country ; one of those poets, simple, moral, full of good sense, with rather more good sense than inspiration, treating poetry very much as a matter of business, never writing a word that could give umbrage to their wise relations and friends, singing their good God and their good king, expressing the character of their tranquil, practical, fellow-citizens, and aiming to say just things rather than great things ; and, above all, cultivating poetry at an advanced age, like prudent fathers of families, without abstracting a moment from the duties of their profession. Like many other Dutch poets (but of another nature and another genius than his), as, for example, Vandel, who was a hatter, Ilooft, governor of Muyden, Van Leunep, procurator- fiscal, Gravenswaert, Councillor of State, and others, Tollens was an apothecary at Rotterdam, and passed his days in his drug-shop. He was a loving father to his children, as he has demonstrated in numerous verses celebrating the cutting of their first, second, and third teeth. He wrote " Canzoni,-'^ and odes upon familiar and patriotic subjects,, among them the national hymn of 92 HOLLAND. Holland — a very mediocre afFair^ whicli is, however, sung about the streets and in the schools — and a little poem, which is, perhaps, his best, upon the expedition attempted by the Dutch, towards the end of the sixteenth century, to the Polar seas. The people have all his verses by heart, and consider him their most faithful friend and inter- preter. But for all that, Tolleus is not considered, even in Holland, a poet of the first order; and some even refuse him the sacred laurel altogether. For the rest, if Rotterdam is not a literary or artistic city, she has instead an extraordinary number of philan- thropic institutions, splendid reading-rooms where all the journals of Europe can be found, and all the con- veniences and amusements of a rich and prosperous city. On the morning that I left Rotterdam, I saw a new and very Dutch spectacle in the street through which I passed to go to the Delft railway-station. The house- cleaning that goes on twice a week in the early morning was in progress. All the maid-servants in the city, in lilac-cotton gowns, white caps, white aprons, stockings, and sabots, were busy, with their sleeves turned up, washing doors, walls, and windows. Some courageously seated upon the window-sills, half in, half out, were cleaning the panes with sponges ; others, kneeling on the step, rubbed the pavement with a cloth ; others, with syringes, and long flexible tubes such as we use to water gardens, directed vigorous jets of water against the second-floor windows, that fell again in heavy showers; some, with sponges and rags tied on the ends of long canes, mopped the upper windows ; some polished the BOTTEBDAM. 93 knobs and Tnetal plates upon tte doors^ soine cleaned the stairs^ some the furniture, brought out into the street for the purpose ; the door-steps were encumbered with buckets, pans, brushes^ brooms_, and benches; water dripped from the walls, ran into the gutters, and splashed and sparkled everywhere. And, what is singular, whilst labour in Hol- land is slow and deliberate in all other forms, in this one it is quite different. All these women have flushed faces, they go in and come out, spring and push about with a sort of fury, taking acrobatic attitudes, with startling results sometimes, unheeding of the passer-by, except in so far as it may be necessary to drive him off, with jealous looks, from the pavement. In short, there was a rage and fury of cleanliness, a sort of general ablation of the city, that had a sort of festive puerility about it, and might have been some strange religious rite, prescribed to purge the place from the infection of unclean spirits. 94 HOLLAND. DELFT In going from Rotterdam to Delft I saw for the first time the open country of Holland. It is all one plain^ a suc- cession of green and flowery meadows^ crossed by long files of willows^ and sprinkled with groups of poplars and elders. Here and there are seen tops of steeples^ whirling wings of windmills, scattered herds of large black and white cows, with their herdsmen, and immense tracts that are completely solitary. There is nothing to strike the eye, nothing salient, nothing sloping. Every now and then, in the distance, the sail of a ship glides by, and being in a canal invisible from that distance, it seems to be gliding over the grass of the meadows, appearing and disappearing behind the trees. The pale light gives to the country a certain soft and melancholy aspect. A slight mist makes every object appear afar off. There is a kind of visible silence, a peace of line and color, a repose of all things, looking on which the eye grows dreamy and the imagination is lulled. IT) b O O 2 Q Pi o >-) ►-) Q 2 DELFT. 95 At a short distance from Eotterdam is the to^vn of Scliiedam^ surrounded by very lofty windmills that give it the look of a fortified place crowned with towers ; and in the distance appears the village of Vlaardingen^ which is one of the principal stations for the great herring-fishery. From Schiedam to Delft I gave myself up to the study of windmills. The Dutch mills do not at all resemble those decrepit objects which I had seen the year before in La Mancha^ that stretched their meagre arms as if im- ploring succour from earth and heaven. The Dutch mills ^ are large^ strong, and full of life ; and Don Quixote would have thought twice before attacking them. Some are made of stone, round and octagonal, like mediaeval towers ; others are of wood, and present the form of a box stuck upon the apex of a pyramid. The greater part have thatched roofs, a wooden gallery running round the middle, windows with white curtains, green doors, and the use they serve inscribed upon the door. Besides the absorption of water, they do a little of everything : they grind flour, wash rags, crush lime, break stone, saw wood, crush olives, pulverise tobacco. A mill is equivalent to a farm ; and to build it, provide it with grain, colza, flour, oil, to keep it going, and send its product to market, requires a considerable fortune. Consequently, in many places, the wealth of proprietors is measured by the number of their mills ; hereditary property is calculated by mills. They say of a girl that she has one or two windmills for a dowry, or two steam-mills, which is better; and speculators, who are everywhere, marry the girl iu order to get her mills. This myriad of winged 96 HOLLAND, towers scattered over the country give it a peculiar aspect and animate its solitude. At night, among the trees^ they have a fantastic appearance^ like fabulous birds watching the heavens; by day, in the distance they look like enor- mous frames for fire-works ; they whirl round, stop, go fast, go slowly, breaking the silence with their low, mono- tonous tic-tacj and when they catch fire, which they do sometimes, especially the grain-mills, they make a wheel of flame, a tempest of burning meal, a whirl of fiery clouds, which is quite infernal in its tumultuous splendor. In the carriage, although there were many passengers, no one spoke. All were men of mature years, with grave faces, who looked at one another in silence, and emitted clouds of smoke at regular intervals, as if they were measuring time by their cigars. When we reached Delft I bowed as I got out, and one or two responded by a slight motion of the lips. " Dclft,^^ says Messer Ludovico Guicciardini, ''is so called from the ditch, or water-canal, which leads to it from the Meuse — a ditch being vulgarly called delft. It is two leagues distant from Rotterdam, and is truly great and beautiful in every part, with large and handsome edifices, and streets wide and cheerful. It was founded by Godfrey, surnamed the Gobbo (hunchback), Duke of Lotharingia, who for nearly four years occupied the country of Holland.^' Delft is the city of misfortune. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century it was almost entirely destroyed by fire; in 1654 the blowing-up of a powder-magazine ruined more than two hundred houses; and in 1742 DELFT. 97 anotlier catastrophe of the same kind occurred. "William the Silent was assassinated at Delft in 1584. And here decayed and almost disappeared an industry that was its riches and its glory — the manufacture of majolica, in which the Dutch artisans had begun by imitating the forms and designs of Chinese and Japanese porcelain, and had succeeded in producing admirable work, uniting the Asiatic with the Dutch character, and extending it all over northern Europe ; and even now these objects are sought for eagerly by amateurs of the art, and almost as highly prized as the finest Italian work. Delft now is no longer a manufacturing or commercial city ; its twenty-two thousand inhabitants live in profound peace. But it is one of the prettiest and most Dutch of the cities of Holland. The streets are broad, crossed by canals shaded by two rows of trees, flanked by houses, red, crim- son, and rose color, picked out with white, which look glad to be so clean ; and at every crossing meet and join two or three bridges of stone or wood, with white railings ; here and there a large boat lying motionless as if enjoying its idleness ; very few people, closed doors, and no noise of any kind. I directed my steps towards the new church, looking about me for the famous storks' nests ; but I could not see any. The tradition of the storks of Delft is, how- ever, still alive, and no traveller writes about the city without remembering them. Guicciardini calls it " a memo- rable thing, and such as there is no similar record of, antique or modern.^' The fact occurred at the time of the great fire which ruined almost all the city. There 98 HOLLAND. were in Delft innumerable storks' nests. It must be understood that the stork is the favorite bird of Holland ; the bird of good fortune, like the swallow ; welcome to all, because it makes war upon toads and frogs; that the peasants plant poles with round pieces of wood on top to attract them to make their nests ; and that in some towns they may be seen walking in the streets. At Delft then they were in great numbers. When the fire broke out, which was on the 3rd of May, the youug storks were fledged, but could not yet fly. Seeing the fire approach, the parent storks attempted to carry their young ones out of danger, but they were too heavy; and after having tried all sorts of desperate eff'orts, the poor birds were forced to give it up. They might have saved themselves and have abandoned the little ones to their fate, as human creatures often do under similar circumstances. But they stayed instead upon their nests, gathered their little ones about them, covered them with their wings as if to retard as long as possible the fatal moment, and so awaited death, and so remained in that loving and noble attitude. And who shall say if, in the horrible dismay and flight from the flames, that example of self-sacrifice, that volun- tary maternal martyrdom, may not have given strength and courage to some weak soul who was about to abandon those who had need of him ! In the great square where the new church stands I saw again those shops which had attracted my attention at Kotterdam, where every object that can possibly be at- tached one to the other is suspended in long garlands within and without^ sometimes completely hiding the back DELFT. 99 of the shop. The signs arc the same as in Rotterdam — a bottle of beer hung on a nail_, a paint-brushy a box, a broom^ and the usual carved head with wide-open mouth. The new church, founded in the latter part? of the four- teenth century, is for Holland what Westminster Abbey is for England. It is a large edifice, dark without and naked within ; a prison rather than the House of God. My eyes were at once attracted by the splendid mauso- leum of William the Silent; but the custodian stopped me at the simple tomb of Ugo Grotius_, Prodigium Europce, as he is called in his epitaph, the great jurisconsult of the seventeenth century ; that Grotius who at nine years of age wrote Latin verses, at eleven composed Greek odes, at fourteen philosophic theses, and three years later accompanied the illustrious Barneveldt in his embassy to Paris, where Henry IV. _, presenting him to the Court, said : " Behold the miracle of Holland ! " that Grotius who at eighteen was distinguished as poet, theolo- gian, commentator, and astronomer, and had written a prose epic on the city of Ostend, which Casaubon trans- lated into Greek, and Malesherbe into French verse ; that Grotius who, in his twenty-fourth year, exercised the office of Advocate-General of Holland and Zealand, and wrote a celebrated treatise on the "Liberty of the Seas-*'; who at thirty was Councillor of the city of Rotterdam ; then partisan of Barneveldt, persecuted, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and shut up in the Castle of Loevesteen, where he wrote the treatise of the " Right of Peace and of War,'^ which was for a long time the codex of all the publicists of Europe; then saved 100 HOLLAND. miraculously by his v/ife^ who caused herself to he intro- duced into his prison in a box believed to contain books, which box went out again with the prisoner in it_, while the wife remained a prisoner in his stead ; then the guest of Louis XIII., and sent ambassador from Erance to Christina of Sweden ; and finally returning triumphantly to his o\\n country, where he died, at Rostock, full of years and honors. The mausoleum of William the Silent is in the middle of the church. It is a sort of small temple in black and white marble, loaded with ornament, and sustained by columns, between which are four statues representing Liberty, Prudence, Justice, and Religion. Upon the sarcophagus lies the figure of the prince, in white marble, and at his feet the effigy of the little dog that saved his life at the siege of Malines, waking him by its barkings one night in his tent, when two Spaniards were creeping upon him to assassinate him. At the feet of this figure rises a fine bronze statue of Victory, with outspread wings, and supported only upon the toes of the left foot ; and opposite, on the other side of the little temple, another bronze statue, representing William, seated, dressed in his armour, with uncovered head, the helmet lying at his feet. A Latin inscription sets forth that the monument was raised by the States of Holland, '' to the eternal memory of that William of Nassau, whom Philip II., scourge of Europe, feared, and never overcame or conquered, but killed by atrocious guile." His sons are sepulchred beside him, and in the crypt below lie al] the princes of his dynasty. DELFT. 101 In tlie presence of this monument tlie liglitest and most frivolous mind feels itself constrained to stop- and ponder, recalling the tremendous struggle whose hero and conqueror lies below. On one side is Philip II., on the other Wilh'am of Orange. Philip, shut up in the gloomy solitudes of the Escorial, lord of an empire that embraced all Spain, the north and south of Italy, Belgium, and Holland; in Africa, Oran, Tunis, the Cape de Yerde and Canary islands; in Asia, the Phillipine islands; in America, the Antilles, Mexico, Peru ; married to the Queen ofEiiglaud ; nephew of the Emperor of Germany, who obeyed him almost as a vassal ; sovereign, it may be said, of Europe, since his nearer neighbors are all weakened by political and religious dissensions; having under his hand the best soldiers in Europe, the greatest captains of the time, the gold of America, the industry of Flanders, the science of Italy, an army of iuformers chosen from all nations, fanatically devoted to himself, the blind instruments of his will ; the most astute, the most mysterious of the princes of his time ; having on his side everything that enchains, corrupts, terrifies, and moves the world : arms, riches, glory, genius, religion. Before this formidable being, around whom all creatures prostrate themselves, rises William of Orange. This man, without a kingdom and without an army, is more powerful than he. Like Philip, he has been a disciple of Charles Y. and has learned the art of founding thrones, and the art of overturning them as well. Like Philip, he is astute and impenetrable ; but he sees more clearly 102 HOLLAND. witli tlie eyes of his intellect^ into the future. He pos- sesseSj as does liis enemy^ the faculty of reading the souls of men; but he has also what his enemy has not, the power of gaining their hearts. He has a good cause to sustain ; but he knows how to make use of all the arts by which bad ones are supported. Philip, who spies out and reads all men_, is himself spied out and read by him. The designs of the great king are discovered and circumvented before they are put in action ; mysterious hands search his caskets and his pockets, and mysterious eyes read his secret papers; William in Holland reads the thoughts of Philip in the Escorial; foresees, unravels, overturns all his plots; mines the earth under his feet, provokes, and flies before him, but returns again perpetually, like a phantom that he sees but cannot clutch, or clutching can- not destroy. And when at last he dies, victory remains with him dead, and defeat with his living enemy. Hol- land is without her head, but the Spanish monarchy is shaken to its fall, and never will recover. In this prodigious struggle, in which the figure of the king becomes smaller and smaller until it finally disap- pears, that of the Prince of Orange grows and grows, until it becomes the most glorious figure of the century. On that day when, hostage with the King of France, he dis- covered the design of Philip to establish the Inquisition in the Low Countries, he consecrated himself to the defence of the liberties of his country, and never in his life did he hesitate for one moment in the path he had chosen. The advantages of noble birth, a royal fortune, the peaceful and splendid existence that he loved bv PA<1UIEB 0. il.GUILLAUM£ S. William the Silent. {Page 103.) DELFT, 103 nature and "habit_, he sacrificed all for his country ; pro- scribed and reduced to poverty, he constantly rejected the ofiers of pardon and favor that were made to him, under a thousand forms and a thousand ways^ by the enemy who hated him and feared him. Surrounded by assassins^ the mark for the most atrocious calumnies, accused even of cowardice before the enemy, and of the murder of the wife whom he adored ; looked upon sometimes with sus- picion by the very people whom he was defending : he bore all with calmness, and in silence. He went about his chosen work, confronting infinite peril with tranquil courage. Nev^er did he flatter or bend before the people, never was he blinded by their passion ; he was their guide, their chief, their leader always ; he was the mind, the conscience, and the arm of the revolution : the beacon- fire whence irradiated the heat by which his country lived. Great in audacity as in prudence,, he preserved his integrity in the time of perjury and perfidy ; calm in the midst of violence, he kept his hands immaculate when all the courts in Europe were stained with blood. With an army gathered up here and there, with allies weak and doubtful^ harassed by the internal discords of Lutheran and Calvinist, noble and burgher, magistrates and people, with no great captains under him, he had to struggle against the municipal spirit of the provinces that scoffed at his authority and slipped from under his hand, and he triumphed in a cause that seemed above human control ; he tired out the Duke of Alva, he tired out Requescens, he tired out Don John of Austria^ he tired out Alex- ander Farnese ; he brought to nought the plots of foreign 10^ HOLLAND. princes wlio wished to succour Lis country in order to subjugate it; lie conquered sympathy and aid from every part of Europe; and completing one of the most splendid revolutions in history, founded a free state in spite of an empire that was the terror of the universe. This mauj so tremendous and grand a figure before the worldj was also a loving husband and father, a kind friend and affable companion, fond of gaiety and festivals, a magnificent and polished host. He was accomplished ; knowing, besides the Flemish tongue, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin ; and could discourse learnedly of most things. Although surnamed William the Silent (more for having kept so long the secret discovered at the French Court than because he was habitually taciturn) he was one of the most eloquent men of his day. He was simple in his manners, plain in his dress'; loved, and was beloved by, the people. He frequently walked in the streets of the city alone, and with his head uncovered ; conversing with the workmen and the fishermen, who offered him drink in their own cups ; he listened to their grievances, settled their diffe- rences, and entered their houses to re-establish peace in families, and they called him Father William. He was, indeed, the father, rather than the son of his country. The sentiments of admiration and gratitude that still live for him in the hearts of the Hollanders, have all the inti- mate and tender character of filial affection; his venerated name may still be heard in their mouths ; his greatness, despoiled of every veil or ornament, remains eiitire, clear^ firm, and solid, like his work. DELFT. 105 After visiting tlie tomb, I went to see tlie place where the Prince o£ Orange was assassinated. But after having related how he lived, it is necessary to tell how he died. In the year 1580, Philip II. had published an edict by which he promised a reward of twenty-five thousand gold crowns, and a title of nobility, to anyone who should kill the Prince of Orange. This infamous edict, which stimu- lated at once both cupidity and fanaticism, had caused assassins to swarm on every side about the prince, conceal- ing themselves under false names, and hiding their arms and their purpose, while they waited their opportunity. A young Biscayan, named Jauregny, a fervent Catholic, to whom a Dominican monk had promised the glory of martyrdom, was the first to make the attempt. He pre- pared himself with fasting and prayer, heard mass, took the Communion, covered himself with sacred relics, pene- trated into the palace of William of Orange, and, ap- proaching the prince under pretext of presenting a petition, fired a pistol-shot at his head. The ball passed through the jaw, but the wound was not mortal, and the prince recovered. The assassin was struck down in the act, with blows of swords and halberds ; and afterwards quartered in the public square, and his limbs were put up over one of the gates of Antwerp, where they remained until the Duke of Parma took that city, when the Jesuits gathered them together and presented them as relics to the veneration of the faithful. A little while afterwards another conspiracy was dis^ covered against the life of the prince, A French gentle^ 106 HOLLAND. man, an Italian, and a Walloon, who had been following him for some time with the intention of killing him, were discovered and arrested. One of them stabbed himself and died in prison, the second was strangled in France, and the third succeeded in escaping, after having con- fessed that all three were acting under the orders of the Duke of Parma. In the meantime Philip^s agents were going about the country instigating persons to become assassins with promises of large reward, and priests and monks were encouraging fanatics with the promise of aid and recom- pense in heaven. Other attempts were made. A Spaniard, discovered and arrested, was quartered at Antwerp ; a rich merchant, by name Hans Jansen, was executed at Flushing. Several persons had offered their arms to Alexander Far- nese, and had received money and encouragement from him. The Prince of Orange, who knew everything, nourished a vague presentiment of his approaching end, spoke of it to those in his intimacy, and refused to take any measures to preserve his own life, saying* to those who advised him to do so : " It is useless. God knows the number of my years. He will dispose of me according to His will. If there be a wretch who fears not death, my life is in his hands, however I may seek to guard it.^' Eight attempts to murder him were made before the successful one. At the time when the last was consummated, in 1584, four villains, each unknown to the other — an Englishman, a Scotchman, a Frenchman, and a native of Lorraine — Bere at Delft, where the Prince of Orange then was, all DELFT. 107 awaiting tlieir opportunity to assassinate him. Besides these, there had been there for some time a young man of twenty-seven years, from Franche Comte, a Catholic, but passing for a Protestant, Guyon by name, son of Peter Guyon, who had been executed at Besan9on for having embraced Calvinism. This so-called Guyon, whose real name was Balthazar Gerard, gave out that he had fled from tlie persecution of the Catholics; he led an austere life, and assisted at all the exercises of the Protestant faith ; in a short time he was regarded as a saint. Saying that he had come to Delft to obtain the honor of being admitted into the service of the Prince of Orange, he was presented to him through the recommendation of a Pro- testant minister; the prince had faith in him, and appointed him to accompany M. de Schouewalle, envoy from the States of Holland to France. A little while after he returned to Delft to bring to William of Orange the news of the death of the Duke of Anjou, and pre- sented himself at the convent of Saiut Agatha where the prince and his court were then sojourning. It was the second Sunday in July. William received him in his chamber, being then in bed. They were alone. Baltha- zar Gerard was then tempted to kill him ; but he had no arms, and concealing his impatience, quietly answered the questions put to him. W^illiam gave him a small sum of money, told him to prepare to return to Paris, and ordered him to come back the following day for letters and pass- ports. With the money given him by the prince, Gerard bought two pistols from a soldier (who afterwards killed himself when he knew the use to which thev had been 108 HOLLAND. put), and tlie next day he again presented liimself at tlie convent of Saint Agatlia. The prince, accompanied by- several ladies and gentlemen of his family, was coming downstairs to dinner on the ground- floor, and the Princess of Orange, his fourth wife, was leaning on his arm; she was that gentle and unfortunate Louisa de Coligny, who on the night of St. Bartholomew had seen the Admiral her father and the Sieur de Teligny her husband mur- dered before her eyes. Gerard advanced to meet the prince, stopped him, and asked him to sign his passport. William told him to come back later, and passed on into the hall. Not a shadow of suspicion had crossed his mind ; but Louisa de Coligny, made cautious and suspi- cions by experience, was disturbed. That pale-faced man, wrapped in a long mantle, had made an unpleasant im- pression upon her ; it seemed to her that his voice was agitated and his visage convulsed. During the dinner she spoke to "William of her suspicions, and asked him who was this man, " who had the worst countenance that she- had ever seen." The prince smiled, told her that it was Guyon, reassured her, was cheerful as usual throughout the meal, and when it was over passed quietly out to go upstairs again. Gerard was lurking under a dark archway beside the staircase, hidden by the shadow of a door. The moment the prince appeared, he came out, sprang upon him as he placed his foot upon the second step, dis- charged a pistol loaded with three balls into his chest, and took to flight. The prince staggered and fell into the arms of an attendant; everybody rushed. He said in a faiut voice, " I am wounded. My God, have mercy on JDELFT, 109 me_, and on my poor people ! '' He was covered with blood. His sister, Catherine of Schwartzburg, said to him, " Do you recommend your soul to Jesus Christ ? ^* He answered faintly, ''Yes/^ It was his last word. They placed him sitting on a step of the stairs, and asked him some questions; but his senses were gone. He was carried into a room near by, and there expired. Gerard, meanwhile, had passed through the stables, left the convent, and reached the city 1)astion, where he in- tended to jump down into the moat and swim over to the opposite shore, where a saddled horse was waiting for him. But in his flight he dropped his hat and his second pistol. One of the prince^'s servants and a halberdier, seeing these traces, started in pursuit. At the very moment when he was about to take the leap from the bastion they seized him. " Infernal traitor ! " they cried. He answered calmly, '' I am not a traitor ; I am the faithful servant of my lord.''^ ^^ Of what lord ? " they demanded. '^ Of my lord and master the King of Spain,'^ answered Gerard. Other halberdiers and pages now came up, and they dragged him into the city, striking him as they went with fists and sword-hilts. Believing from what he heard that the prince was not dead, the wretch exclaimed with gloomy tranquillity, ^^ Accursed be the hand that missed its stroke ! " This deplorable security of soul never abandoned him foi a moment. Before the tribunal, under long inter- rogations, in his dungeon, loaded with irons, he main- tained the same unalterable calm. He bore the torture without a groan. Between the torments, while the jailors 110 HOLLAND. were resting^ he spoke quietly and without ostentation. Whilst on the rack_, lifting now and then his bloody head, he said, '^Ecce Homo/' He thanked his judges for the food that they permitted to be brought him, and wrote his confession with his own hand. He was born at Yuillafaus, in Burgundy, had studied law under an advocate of Dole, and had there for the first time manifested a desire to kill William of Orange, strik- ing a dagger into a door, and saying, " Thus would I like to plant a poignard into the breast of the Prince of Orange ! ^' Three years later, hearing of Philip^s edict, he went to Luxembourg with the intention of committing the murder, but was stopped by a false report of the death of William after the attempt of Jauregny. A little while after, learning that the prince was still alive, he resumed his purpose, and went to Malines to ask counsel of the Jesuits, who encouraged him in his design and promised him that, if his attempt succeeded, and he lost his life, he should have the glory and the honors of a martyr. Then he went to Tournai, was presented to Alexander Farnese, received a confirmation of Philip^s promise, was approved and encouraged by the confidants of the Prince of Parma, and the ministers of God ; forti- fied himself with readings of the Bible, and with fasting and prayer, and so, seized with a divine exaltation, dream- ing of Paradise and the angels, he departed for Delft, and there fulfilled " his duty as a good Catholic and a faithful subject.^^ He repeated his confession more than once before his judges ; pronounced not one word of regret or repentance, DELFT, 111 boasted of Ms deed ; called himself a new David who had slain a new Goliath; and declared that if he had not already killed the Prince of Orange, he should be ready to do it j his courage,, his calmness, his profound convic- tion of having accomplished a holy mission and a glorious death, amazed his judges, who believed him to be possessed of an evil spirit.; an examination was made; he himself was interrogated, but he always insisted that he had never had any relations other than with God. The sentence was read to him on the 14th of July. ^' It was a crime,^'' says an illustrious historian, " against the memory of the great man whom it purposed to avenge; a sentence to strike into insensibility anyone without the superhuman fortitude of the prisoner. ^^ He was condemned to have his right hand encased in a case of red-hot iron ; his arms, legs, and thighs torn with hot pincers ; his chest cut open, his heart torn out and thrown in his face ; the head severed from the body and stuck on a pike ; the body quartered, and each part placed over a gate of the city. Listening to the reading of this horrid sentence, the wretched man never changed color, or gave any sign of terror, or grief, or astonishment. He only opened his doublet, laid bare his chest, and in a firm voice, fixing his eyes steadily on the face of his judges, repeated the words : *' Ecce Homo ! '' What was this man ? Only a fanatic, as many believed, or a monster of wickedness, or both together, with the addition of an insatiable ambition ? The sentence was executed on the following day. The 112 HOLLAND, preparations were made uncler the eyes of tlie prisoner, "who looked on with indifference. The executioner's assistant began by crushing the pistol, instrument of the crime, with blows of a hammer. At the first blow, the head of the hammer flew off and wounded another assis- tant in the ear ; the people laughed, and Gerard laughed also. When he appeared on the scaffold, his body was horrible to see. Whilst his hand crackled and smoked in the burning tube, he stood mute ; nor did he utter a cry while the red-hot pincers tore his flesh ; when the last act came, he dropped his head, murmured some incomprehensible words, and expired. The news of the death of the Prince of Orange had ' spread consternation throughout the country. His body was exposed for one month on a bier, around which the people flocked, kneeling and in tears. His funeral was worthy of a king ; there came the States General of the United Provinces, the Council of State, the States of Holland, the magistrates, the ministers of religion, the princes of the house of Nassau. Twelve gentlemen carried the body ; four great nobles held the cords of the pall ; the princess horse followed, splendidly caparisoned, and led by a groom ; and there was seen, in the middle of the cortege of nobles, a youth of eighteen years, whose hands were to receive the glorious heritage of the dead, who was destined to humiliate the Spanish armies, to con- strain Spain to plead for truce and recognise the inde- pendence of the United Provinces. That youth was Maurice of Orange, the son of William, under whom a short time after his father's death, the States of Holland con- DELFT. 113 ferred the dignity of Statholder, and confided to him the supreme command of the forces by land and sea. Whilst Holland wept her loss,, in all the cities subject to the King of Spain the Catholic clergy glorified the murderer and his deed; the Jesuits exalted him as a martyr ; the university of Louvain published his apology ; the canons of Bois-le-Duc chanted a Te Deum, Some years afterwards^ the family of Gerard received from the King of Spain a title of nobility, and the confiscated lands of the Prince of Orange in Burgundy. The house where the Prince of Orange was assassinated still exists ; it is a gloomy-looking edifice, with arched windows and a narrow door, forming part of the cloister of the ancient church of St. Agatha, and it still bears the name of Prinsenshof, although it now serves as a cavalry barrack. I asked leave of entrance from the soldier on guard ; a corporal, who knew a little French, accompanied me; we crossed a court full of soldiers, and reached the memorable spot. I saw the staircase, the dark corner where Gerard crouched, the door of the room where William dined for the last time, and the traces of the balls on the wall, isolated in a white space, with an inscription in Dutch setting forth that here the father of his country died. The corporal pointed out the way by which the murderer had fled. Whilst I looked about with that thoughtful curiosity that one feels under such circumstances, soldiers went up and down ; they stopped to look at me, and went off whistling and singing ; loud laughter rang from the courtyard; and all that youthful life and gaiety contrasted 114 HOLLAND. touchingly with tlie sad and solemn memories of the place, like tlie frolic of children in a room where some dear parent died. Opposite the Prinsenshof is the oldest church in Delft, which contains the tomb of that famous Admiral Tromp, the veteran of the Dutch navy, who saw thirty- two sea- fights, scattered the English fleet under Blake at the battle of the Dunes, in 1652, and returned into port with a broom fastened to his mainmast, to indicate that he had swept the English from the seas. There is the tomb of Peter Hein, who, from a simple fisherman, rose to be Grand Admiral, and made that memorable haul of Spanish ships that carried in their sides more than eleven millions of florins. There is the tomb of Leuwenhoek, the father of the science of the " infinitely little,^' he who, as Parini says, '^ saw with his investigating glass the embryo man floating in the genital sea.'^ The church has a tall steeple, surmounted by four small conical towers, which leans like the tower of Pisa, in con- sequence of the sinking of the ground. In a cell in this tower Gerard was confined on the night following the assassination. At Rotterdam they had given me a letter for a citizen of Delft, requesting him to show me his house. " He desires," said the letter, ^^ to penetrate the mysteries of an old Dutch house : lift for a moment, for his benefit, the curtain of the sanctuary .'' I had no difficulty in finding the house, and when I saw it, I exclaimed : ^^ This is what I want." It was a small house at the end of a street opening on DELFT, 115 the fielclsj of one storey only, red, with a pointed fa9ade, planted on the edge of the canal as if looking at itself in the water, with a fine spreading linden-tree before it, and a drawbridge directly in front. There were the white curtains, the green door, the flowers, the little mirrors ; it was a small model of a Dutch house. The street was deserted ; before knocking at the door I stood a moment to look and muse. That house gave me a better idea of Holland than I could sret from any book. It was at once the cause and the effect of the family affec- tion, the modest desires, the independent character of the Dutch people. In my own country the real home does not exist ; there is nothing but an apartment, a portion of a great barrack, in which one lives concealed, but not alone, hearing a thousand noises of strange people, who disturb our grief with echoes of their joy, or our joy with rumours of their grief. The true house and home is in Holland, the personal house, distinct from others, modest, discreet, and, precisely because it is distinct from others, inimical to mystery and intrigue; cheerful when the family that inhabits it is cheerful, and sad when they are sad. In these houses, with the canals and drawbridges before them, every modest citizen feels a little of the solitary dignity of the castellan, or the commander of a fortress, or a ship ; and sees, indeed, from his windows, as from the deck of a vessel at anchor, a uniform and boundless plain, which inspires him with the same senti- ments and thoughts, grave and free, as are inspired by the sea. The trees surrounding his habitation, almost like a garment of verdure, allow only a broken and discreet 116 HOLLAND, liglit to penetrate it; the bark laden with merclianrlise floats before his door ; he hears no sound of horses^ feet, nor crack of whip, nor songs, nor shouts ; around him all the movements of l.fe are slow and silent ; everything breathes peace and gentleness ; and the neighbouring steeple announces the hour with a flood of harmony sweet and constant as his affections and his labor. I knocked ; the door was opened by the master of the house in person, who, having read my letter, gave me a scrutinising glance, and invited me to enter. Dutchmen, as a rule, are diffident. With us, the first comer who brings a letter of introduction is received with open arms, as if he were our most intimate friend ; and very often we do nothing for him. The Hollanders, on the contrary, receive you coldly, so much so as to be sometimes rather mortifying ; but then they offer you all sorts of service, with the best will in the world, and without the least appearance of laying you under an obligation. The inside of the house corresponded perfectly with the outside ; it seemed like the interior of a ship. A winding staircase of wood that shone like ebony led to the upper rooms. Mats and carpets covered the stairs and landing-places, and lay before all the doors. The rooms were as small as cells ; the furniture exquisitely clean ; all the knobs and bolts and ornaments of metal shone as if they had just been made ; and on every side there were quantities of china jars, vases, and cups; lamps, mirrors, little pictures, brackets, toys, and objects of every use and form, attesting the thousand small needs created by a sedentary life, the provident activity, the INTERIOR OF A HOUSE IN HOLLAND. {^Page Il6.) DELFT. 117 constant care^ the love of small tilings, the taste for order and the economy of space ; the residence, in short, of a quiet, home-loving woman. The goddess of this temple, who did not or would not speak French, was hidden somewhere, in ^ome penetralia which I could not guess at. We went down to see the kitchen ; it was splendid. When I returned to Italy and gave a description of it to my mother and the servant, who piqued herself on her neatness, they were annihilated. The walls were as white as untouched snow; the saucepans reflected objects like mirrors; the mantelpiece was ornamented by a species of muslin curtain, like the canopy of a bed, without a trace of smoke ; the fire-place beneath Avas covered with china tiles that looked as bright as if no fire had ever been lighted there; the shovel, tongs, and poker, and the chain-s and hooks, seemed made of polished steel. A lady in a ball-dress might have gone into every hole and corner of that kitchen and come forth without a smirch upon her whiteness. The maid- servant, meanwhile, was cleaning up, and her master commented thus : " To have an idea of what cleanliness is with us, you should watch one of these women for an hour. Here a house is soaped, and sponged, and rubbed, like a person. It is not cleaning, it is making a toilette. She blows in the cracks between the bricks, pokes in the corners with finger and pin, makes a minute supervision enough to fatigue the eye as well as the arm. It is truly a national passion. These girls, who are in general phlegmatic enough, become quite frantic on 118 HOLLAND. deaninff da^vs. We are not masters in our own houses then. They invade the chambers, and turn everything upside down; they are real cleaning Bacchantes; they Bxcite themselves in washing and sweeping/"* I asked him whence this mania for which Holland is remarkable was supposed to come. He gave me the same reasons that are given by others : the atmosphere of the country, which injures wood and metal; the dampness_, the smallness of the houses, and the multiplicity of small objects favoring dust; the superabundance of water; a certain need of the eye, that eventually finds beauty in simple cleanliness; and finally, that emulation which pushes things to extremes. " But this is not/^ he added, *^ the cleanest part of Holland : the excess, the delirium of cleanliness is to be found in the northern provinces.'^ We went out for a turn through the city. It was not yet noon ; and the servant-maids were out on all sides as at Rotterdam. It is a singular thing that all over the country, from Rotterdam to Groningen, and from Harlem to Nimegnen, they are all dressed exactly alike — in a lilac print gown, with a white cap and white wooden shoes. I thought at first that they formed a sort of national corporation and wore a uniform. They are gene- rally very young, middle-aged women not being able to endure the fatigues that they go through, blonde and plump, with the posterior curves (to quote Diderot) enor- mous, and an appearance of perfect health shown in their clear white and red complexions. All at once T remembered a certain entry made in my note-book before leaving Italy^ and I asked my compa-. DELFT. 119 nion : " Are servants in Holland the eternal torments of their mistresses ? '* Here comes in a parenthesis. It is acknowledged that ladies not too highly placed to have to do directly with their female servants generally talk, in their visits to each other^ of nothing but these servants. It is always the same complaint of insupportable defects^ of insolence endured^ of profiting on their purchases^ of shameless pretensions, and of other similar calamities, which all end with the same refrain : that honest and faithful servants, such as once gained the affection of the family and grew old in their service, are no more to be found ; that one must change continually, and that there is no way of remedying the evil. Is this true, or is it not true ? Is it a consequence of the liberty and equality of classes, rendering service harder and servants more exacting? Is it an effect of the relaxation of manners and public discipline, felt also in the kitchen ? However it may be, it is a fact that in my own house I heard the same ever-recurring complaint, until one day, whsn I was about to leave for Madrid, I said to my mother : '* If anything in Madrid can console me in my absence from my family, it will be that I never shall hear this question discussed.^' On my arrival at Madrid, the very first thing my land- lady said to me was that she had been obliged to change her servants three times in one month, that it was really a desperate state of things, and that she did not know which way to turn, and every day there was the same lamentation. 120 HOLLAND. At home again I related this anecdote^ and my mother, laughing, said that it was probably an annoyance which existed in all countries. ^'No/^ I answered, ^'in the north it cannot be so/"* I went to Paris, and asked the first acquaintance tbat 1 met, whether there, as in Italy and Spain, ladies^ lives were made miserable by their servants. ^^ Ah I mon cher Monsieur ! '^ she replied, with clasped hands and upturned eyes ; " do not speak of it ! '* and then followed a long and lamentable story. Let us see in London, I thought. Entering into conversation with an English lady, and asking the same question, she covers her eyes with her hands, and responds with em- phasis : " They are flagellum Dei ! " Some hope still remained to me in Holland, and I questioned my cicerone at Delft ; and awaited with anxiety his reply. " Sir,"*' he answered, after a moment^s reflection, '^ we have in Holland a proverb which pro- nounces that servants are a cross sent from God.^' My last hope was annihilated. " Fir it of all,^^ he continued, " there is the trouble that if your house is of any size you must keep two women-servants, one to cook and one to clean, it being impossible, with the mania which pos- sesses them for washing the very air, that one can serve for both. Then they are all mad for liberty ; they choose to stay out until ten o^ clock in the evening ; to have one day in the seven completely free. Then their betrothed lover must be tolerated as a visitor ; and they must be allowed to dance in the streets, and to go and raise the very devil at the Kermesse. More, when you dismiss the in, you must wait until they find it convenient to gOj DELFT. 121 and often that is not for months. Their wages amount to ninety or one hundred florins a year ; and besides this, so much percentage on all the house expenditure; pre- sents, rigorously exacted, from all invited guests; extra presents of money and clothes ; and always and above all, patience, patience, and agam patience/' Passing through a quiet side-street, I saw two ladies, one after the other, stop and read a placard appended to a door, make a gesture of sorrow, and pass on. My com- panion explained, in answer to my question, a singular custom of the country. Upon that bit of paper was written that such or such a sick person was r/orse. When any one of a family is ill, a bulletin is affixe4 every morning to the door, so that inquiring friends may not have to knock and enter. The same sort of announcement is made on other occasions. In some towns the birth of a boy baby is made known by hanging to the door a pink silk ball covered with lace, which is called in Dutch " a proof of birth,''^ If the baby is a girl, there is a small bit of paper attached above it ; if twins, the lace is double ; and for several days after the birth there is a written paper setting forth that the child and mother are doing well, that they have passed a good night, or the contrary, as the case may be. At one time the announcement of birth over a door kept off the family creditors for nine days ; but I think this custom is fallen into disuse, although it must have been conducive to an increase of population. In that short walk about Delft, I met again certain funereal figures which I had seen in Rotterdam, without 122 HOLLAND, being able to tell wlietlier they were priests^ or magi- strates^ or undertakers, for tliey had a look of all three. They wore three-eornered hats, with a long black weeper, a black swallow-tailed coat, black small-clothes, and stockings, black cloaks, pumps with ribbons, white cravats and gloves, and a black-edged paper always in their hands. My companion informed me that they were called aanspreckerSj and that their ofUce was to carry the announcement of death to parents and friends, and to proclaim it in the streets. Their dress is modified in different cities, or according to whether they be Protestant or Catholic. In some places they wear an enormous hat a la Don Basillo. They are in general very carefully dressed and are got up with a certain elegance which contrasts irreverently with their character of announcers of death, or, as some traveller calls them, living mortuary letters. We saw one standing in front of a house, and my comnanion called mv attention to the fact that the shut- ters were half closed, which was a sign that someone was dead in the family. I asked who. ^^ I do not know,'' he answered, "but judging by the shutters it cannot be a vcrv near relative." This argument puzzling me somewhat, he explained that in Holland when anyone died in a family, they closed one, or two, or three of the folding shutters, ac- cording to the degree of relationship of the deceased. Each fold of the shutter denoted a degree. For a father or mother, they closed all save one ; for a cousin, one only ; for a brother, two ; and so on. This custom is apparently an ancient one, still enduring because in this country DELFT 123 changes are slow and difficultj only occurring when they are unavoidable.* I should have liked to see at Delft the house where the beer-sliop of the painter Steen once existed, but my host assured me that tliere was no remembrance of it remaining. Apropos of painters, however, he gave me the agreeable intelligence that I was then in that pa^t of Holland which is comprised between Delft, the Hague, the sea, the town of Alkmar, the gulf of Amsterdam, and the ancient lake of Harlem, which may be called properly the country of Dutch painting, both because the great artists were born there, and because, being singularly picturesque, they loved it and studied it much. I was therefore in the bosom of Holland, and leaving Delft should enter her very heart. Before my departure I took a hasty glance at the mili- tary arsenal, occupying a large building which served first as a storehouse to the East India Company, and com- municates with an artillery-barrack and a large powder- magazine placed outside the city. There is also at Delft the great Polytechnic School of Engineering, the true military school of Holland, whence issue the officers for the army of defence against the sea, and it is these youth- ful warriors of the dykes aud cataracts, about three hun- dred, who give life to the quiet city of Grotius. Whilst I was going on board the vessel that was to take me to the Hague, my Dutchman was describing to me the last * A custom analogous to this existed in Philadelphia twenty-five years ago, aud perhaps exists still. — Trans. 124 HOLLAND. festival celebrated by tbe students of Delft; one of tliose festivals peculiar to Holland^ a kind of historical masque- rade,, like a reflection of past grandeur, which serves to maintain alive in the minds of people the traditions of illustrious personages and events of others times. One great cavalcade represented the entrance into Aruhem in 1492 of Charles d^Egmont, Duke of Gueldres and Coun!; of Zuften ; of that family of Egmont which gave in the noble and unfortunate Count Lamoral the first great victim for the liberty of Holland to the Duke of Alva's axe. Two hundred students on horseback, in armour, with gilded and emblazoned coats of arms, with tall plumes and long swords, formed the cortege of the Dake of Gueldres. Then came halberdiers, archers, and lans- quenechts, dressed in all the showy splendor of the fifteenth century; the bands played, the city glowed with lights, and an immense crowd from all parts of Holland thronged the streets and looked on at that splendid vision of a past age. THE HAGU The vessel lay near a bridge^ in a little basin formed by the canal that goes from Delft to the Hague, and shaded by trees like a garden lakelet. The boats which carry passengers from one city to another are called trekschuyten. The treckshiiyt is the tra- ditional bark, emblematic of Holland, as the gondola is of Venice. Esquiroz calls it the genius of old Holland floating on the water. And, in fact, whoever has not travelled in a trechshuyt does not know the most original and most poetic side of Dutch life. It is a large boat almost entirely occupied by a sort of house, in the form of a diligence, divided into two com- partments : that at the prow for second-class passengers, and that at the poop for the first. Upon the prow is planted an iron bar with a ring through which is passed a long cord, which is fastened at one end near the helm, and at the other is attached to a horse ridden by one of the boatmen. The windows of this little house have their 126 HOLLAND. white curtains ; the walls and doors are painted ; in the first-class compartment there are cushioned seats, a table with a few books, a closet, a looking-glass; everything shining with polish. As I put down my valise I dropped some cigar-ash under the table; when I came in again a moment after, it was gone. I was alone, and had not long to wait j the helmsman gave a sign, the horseman mounted, and the treckschiiyt moved quietly through the water. It was about one o'clock in the day and the sun was shining brilliantly, but the boat was in the shade. The canal was bordered by two rows of lindens, elms, and wil- lows, and high hedges that hid the country. We seemed to be sailing through a wood. At every turn we saw a deep distance, green, and closed in, and a windmill on the bank. The water was covered with a carpet of marine plants, in some places studded with white star-flowers, lilies, and the marsh-lentiL The high verdant wall that bordered the canal was open here and there, and we could see as through a window the distant horizon, hidden again in an instant. At intervals we came to a bridge. It was fine to see the rapidity with which the manoeuvre of passing the bridge was performed, and to watch two treckscMiyten meet and pass, without a word or smile being exchanged between the two conductors, as if gravity and silence were obligatory. All along the water-way we heard no sound save the rustle of the sails of windmills. We met large boats loaded with vegetables, with peat, with stones, with casks, towed by a man with a long rope, THE HAGUE. 127 sometimes assisted by a large dog. Some were tov»^ed by a man^ a woman, and a cliild, one bcliind the other, with the cord attached to a sort of leathern or linen belly- band — all three bending forward at such an angle that it seemed a miracle how they kept their feet at all. Other large boats were towed by one old woman alone. On some there was a woman with a child at her breast, at the elm ; other children about her, a cat seated on a sack, a dog, a hen, flower-pots, and a bird-cage. On others the woman was rocking a cradle with her foot while her fingers were knitting a stocking, or cooking the dinner; and in others, the whole family was assembled eating and chattering, while one steered. No words can describe the air of peace and tranquillity that seemed to surround these people, in their aquatic homes, with their animals, become, as one may say, amphibious; the placidity of that floating existence, the apparent security and freedom of those wandering families. Thousands of people in Hol- land have no other home than their boats. A man takes a wife, between them they buy a boat, and installing them- selves on board, live by carrying goods to and from the markets. The children are born and grow up on the water; the boat carries all their small belongings, their domestic afi'ections, their past, their present, and their future. They labor and save, and after many years they buy a larger boat, selling the old one to a family poorer than themselves, or handing it over to the eldest son who in his turn instals his wife taken from another boat, and seen for the first time in a chance meeting on the canal. And sO; from boat to boat, from canal 1l8 HOLLAND. to caual^ life flows on mild and tranquil as the wan- dering house that shelters it or the silent water that accompanies it. For a time there was nothing to be seen on the banks but some small peasant-houses; then we began to sec villas^ summer-houses^ and cottages half hidden among the trees ; and in a shady nook some blonde lady, seated,, dressed in white, and with a book in her hand ; or some stout gentleman enveloped in a cloud of smoke, bearing the satisfied air of a wealthy merchant. All these villas are painted rose-color or blue, and have varnished roofs, terraces supported by columns, little gardens in front and around them, with tiny alleys and walks ; miniature gar- dens, clean, smooth, and dainty. Some of the houses are on the edge of the canal with their feet in the water, which reflects the flowers and vases and shining toys in the windows. Almost all have an inscription over the door — a sort of aphorism of domestic felicity, the fo mula of its master's philosophy — such as ; " Peace is money," '^ Repose and pleasure," ^' Friendship and society," ^^ My desires are satisfied," " Without annoyance," ^' Tranquil and content," '^ Here are enjoyed the pleasures of horti- culture," &c. Here and there a handsome black and white cow lay couched on the grass, her muzzle projected over the water, turning her head placidly as the boat glided by. We met flocks of ducks that parted to let us go by. At intervals on our right and left opened small canals whose high green hedges sent out branches that met overhead, form- ing an arch of verdure under which we could see peasants' THE HAGUE. 129 boats vanishing in tlie distance. Here and tliere^ in the midst of the greenery^ started forth a group of houses — a small many-colored village — with mirrors and tulips in the windows; without a living soul; but the profound silence at times broken by a lively air from the bells of some unseen steeple. It was a pastoral paradise, an idyllic landscape, full of freshness and mystery ; a Chinese Arcadia, with small surprises, innocent artifices and prettinesses, affecting one like the low sound of voices of invisible people, murmuring ^^ We are content.''^ At a certain point the canal branched off, one part lead- ing to Leyden, while the other continued on to the Hague. Beyond this point the treckschuyt began to make short halts, now at a house, now at a garden-gate, to receive packages, letters, and messages for the Hague. An old gentleman came aboard from one of the villas. He seated himself by me; and we fell into con- versation in French. He had been in Italy, knew a few words of Italian, had read the " Promessi Sposi ^' ; he asked me for some particulars of the death of Alles- sandro Manzoni. In ten minutes I adored him. From him I had much information about the trecJcschuyten. To understand all the poesy of the national boat, one should make a long voyage in company with the native people. Then everyone instals himself as if in his own house, the women work, the men sit and smoke on the top ; people become intimate and form one family. Night falls; and the treckschuyt glides like a shadow through the sleeping villages, skimming the canal in the silvery moonlight, hiding herself in the dark shadows, emerging into the 130 HOLLAND, open country, grazing solitary houses in which shines the peasant's lamp, and meeting fishermen's barks which fleet by like phantoms. In that profound peace, in that slow and equal motion, the voyagers fall asleep side by side, one after the other, and behind the boat follow the confused murmur of the water and the sound of deep-drawn breathings. More and more numerous as we advanced grew the gardens and the villas. My companion pointed out a distant steeple and named the village of Ryswijk, where, in 1697, the famous treaty of peace was signed between England, France, Spain, Germany, and Holland. The castle of the Prince of Orange where the signers met is no longer in existence, and an obelisk has been erected on its site. Suddenl}?" the treckschuyt came out from among the trees, and I saw a vast plain, a great wood, and a city crowned with towers and windmills. It was the Hague. The boatmen asked and received my passage-money in a leathern bag. The horseman touched up his steed. In a few minutes we arrived, and I soon found myself esta- blished in a brightly-shining chamber in the Hotel Turenne. Who knows ? perhaps the very room where the great marshal slept when he was a lad and in the service o£ Holland. The Hague — in Dutch, s'Gravenhage, or s'Hage — the political capital, the Washington of Holland, Amsterdam being the New York — is a city half Dutch and half French, with broad streets and no canals ; vast squares full of trees, elegant houses, splendid hotels, and a popu- lation mostly made up of the rich, nobles, officials, artists. TEE EAGUE, 131 and literati, the populace being of a more refined order than that of the other Dutch cities. In my first turn about the town what struck me most were the new quarters, where dwells the flower of the wealthy aristocracy. In no other city, not even in the Faubourg St. Germain at Paris, did 1 feel myself such a very poor devil, as in those streets. They are wide and straight, flanked by palaces of elejrnnt form and delicate color, with large shutterless windows, through which can be seen the rich carpets and sumptuous furniture of the first floors. Every door is closed ; and there is not a shop, nor a placard, nor a stain, nor a straw to be seen if you were to look for it with a hundred eyes. The silence was profound when I passed by. Only now and then I en- countered some aristocratic equipage rolling almost noise- lessly over the brick pavement, or the stiff'est of lackeys stood before a door, or the blonde head of a lady was visible behind a curtain. Passing close to the windows and be- holding my shabby travelling dress ruthlessly reflected in the plate-glass, I experienced a certain humiliation at not having been born at least a cavalier e^ and imagined I heard low voices whispering disdainfully : '^Who is that low person ? '■* Of the older portion of the city, the most considerabl part is the Binnenhof, a group of old buildings of different styles of architecture, which looks on two sides upon vast squares, and on the third over a great marsh. In the midst of this group of palaces, towers, and monumental doors, of a mediaeval and sinister aspect, there is a spa- cious court, which is entered by three bridges and three 132 HOLLAND. gates. In one of these buildings resided the S tad th ciders, and it is now the seat of the Second Chamber of the States General ; opposite is the First Chamber, with the ministries and various other offices of public administra- tion. The Minister of the Interior has his office in a little low black tower of the most lugubrious aspect, that hangs directly over the waters of the marsh. The Binnenhof, the square to the west, called the Binten- liof, and another square beyond the marsh, called the Plaats, into which you enter by an old gate that once formed part of a prison, were the theatres of the most sanguinary events in the history of Holland. In the Binnenhof was decapitated the venerated Van Olden Barneveldt, the second founder of the republic, the most illustrious victim of that ever-recurrinsj struggle between the burgher aristocracy and the Statholderate, between the republican and the monarchical principle, which worked so miserably in Holland. The scaffold was erected in front of the edifice where the States General sat. Opposite is the tower from which it is said that Maurice of Orange, himself unseen, beheld the last moments of his enemy. In the prison between the two squares Cornelisde Witt, unjustly accused of having plotted against the life of the Prince of Orange, was tortured. In the Plaats, Cornells and the grand pensionary John de Witt were dragged by the furious populace, and there, all bloody and torn, were spat upon, beaten, and at last killed with pike and pistol ; after which their corpses were insulted and mutilated. In the same Plaats, Adelaide de Poelgest, mistress of Albert, TEE HAGUE. 133 Count of Hollands was stabbed to death on tlie 22nd of September 1392 ; and they still show the stone where she fell and breathed her last. * These dismal memories, these low and massive doors, these disorderly groups of gloomy buildings, which at night, when the moon shines on the waters of the stag- nant pool, present the aspect of an enoi'mous and inac- cessible citadel, standing in the midst of the gay and pleasant city, awake a sentiment of solemnity and sadness. In the evening the court is lighted by only a few dim lamps j the few passengers hasten their steps as if in fear ; there are no lighted windows, no sounds of life and move- ment; you enter with a vague feeling of anxiety, and come out with a sense of relief. Excepting these, the Hague has no considerable monu- ments either modern or antique. There are a few mediocre statues of different Princes of Orange; a vast and bare cathedral, and a modest royal palace. On many of the public buildings is sculptured the image of a stork, which is the heraldic crest of the city. Several of these birds walk about at liberty in the fish-market, maintained at the expense of the municipality, like the bears of Berne and the eagles of Geneva. The finest ornament of the Hague is its forest ; a true wonder of Holland, and one of the most magnificent pro- menades in the world. It is a wood of alder-trees, oaks, and the largest beeches that are to be found in Europe, on the eastern side of the city, a few paces from the last fringe of houses, and measuring about one French league in circuit; a truly delightful oasis in the midst of the 134 HOLLAND, melanclioly Dutch plains. As you enter it, little Swiss chalets and kiosks, scattered here and there among the first trees, seem to have strayed and lost themselves in an endless and solitary forest. The trees are as thickly set as a cane-l)rake, and the alleys vanish in dark perspective. There are lakes and canals almost hidden under the verdure of their banks ; rustic bridges, deserted paths, dim recesses, darkness cool and deep, in which one breathes the air of virgin nature, and feels oneself far from the noises of the world. This wood, like that of Harlem, is said to be the remains of an immense forest that covered, in ancient times, almost all the coast, and is respected by the Dutch people as a monument of their national history. Indeed, in the history of Holland may be found numerous refe- rences to it, proving that there has always been a jealous care for its preservation. Even the Spanish generals respected the national feeling, and preserved the sacred wood from the soldiery. On more than one occasion of grave financial distress, w^hen the government showed a disposition to decree its destruction in order to sell the timber, the citizens saved it by voluntary subsidies. A thousand memories are bound np in this delicious grove; recollections of frightful hiiriicanes, of princely loves ; celebrated festivals, and romantic adventures. Some of the trees bear the names of kings or emperors, others of the German Electors; a beech has the fame of having ])een planted by the Grand Pensionary and poet, Jacob Katz ; other three, by the Countess of Holland, Jacque- line of Bavaria ; and the spot where she used to repose is TEE HAGUE, 135 still pointed out. Even M. de Voltaire 'has left his re- cord in the legend of some gallant adventure with the daughter of a barber. In the very heart of the wood^ where the smaller vege- tation seems seized with a sort of fury of conquest, climb- ing the trees, weaving bowers overhead_, and stretching its tendrils over . the water, as if it would draw a verdant veil over the abode of some sylvan divinity, is hidden a roya] palazzetto called the " Forest House/' built in 1647 by the Princess Amelia de Solens, in honor of her hus- band the Stadtholder Frederick Henry. When I went to visit this palace, whilst seeking for the entrance gate, I saw a lady of a noble and benevolent presence come out and get into her carriage, whom I took for an English traveller, sight-seeing like myself. I raised my hat as the carriage passed, and received a bow in return. A moment after I learned from the housekeeper who showed the place that my English traveller was no other than Her Majesty the Queen of Holland. In the Forest House there is, among other notable things, an octagon hall, covered from floor to ceiling with pictures by the most celebrated artists of the Rubens school, among them an enormous allegorical work by Jordoens, representing the apotheosis of Frederick Henry. There is a room full of precious presents from the Em- peror of Japan, the Viceroy of Egypt, and the East India Company ; and an elegant little room decorated in chiar- oscuro in admirable imitation of bas-reliefs, by Jacob de Witt, a painter who acquired renown in the beginning of the last century. The other rooms are small, pretty but 136 HOLLAND. witliout pretension, and full of treasures tliat do not nialie much show, as befits the great and modest house of Orange. It seemed to me singular to allow the entrance of strangers into the palace so immediately upon the exit of the queen ; but it astonished me no longer when I became acquainted with other customs and popular traits, the characters, in short, of the royal family of Holland. The Ivkig is considered rather as stadtholder than king. There is in him, as was said of the Duke d^Aosta^ by some Sj3anish republican, "the least quantity of king possible.'''' The sentiment which the Dutch people nourish towards the royal family is not so much devotion towards the monarch as affection for that house of Orange which participated in all its triumphs, as in all its misfortunes, and lived, it may be said, in the life of the nation for the space of three centuries. The nation, at bottom, is republican, and its monarchy is a sort of crowned presi- dency, without royal state. The king makes speeches at banquets and public festivals as our ministers do; and he enjoys the fame of an orator, because he speaks ex- tempore, with a powerful voice and a certain soldierly eloquence that excites immense enthusiasm among the people. The hereditary prince, William of Orange, studied at the University of Leyden, passed a public exa- mination^ and took the laureate of advocate. Prince Alexander, the second son, is now a student in the same university, and a member of a students' club, where * The second son of Victor Emmanuel, who filled the Spanish thx'one for a few months. THE HAGUE. 137 Le invites his professors and fellow -students to dinner. At the Hag'ue^ Prince William enters the cafes, talks with his neighbors, and goes about with his young men friends. In the forest the queen often sits down on the same bench with some poor woman. And it cannot be said that these things are done to gain popularity, for the family of Orange can neither gain nor lose it, there not being among the people, who are by nature and tradition republicans, a grain of the spirit of faction. On the con- trary, this people, who love and venerate their king, and on holidays insist that everybody shall wear an orange cockade in homage to his family name, in general never trouble themselves about him or his doings. At the Hague I had some difficulty in getting information as to the rank the Prince of Orange holds in the army ; nobody seemed to know or care. • The seat of the court is at the Hague ; but the king passes a great part of the summer at his castle in Guel- dres, and goes once every year to Amsterdam. The people say that there is a statute which obliges the king to pass ten days in every year at Amsterdam, and for those ten days the municipality is obliged to pay his expenses j but when the clocks strike the hour of noon on the eleventh day, his majesty lights a match for his cigar, and this is at his own charge. Returning from the royal villa to the city, the day being Sunday, I found the forest all animation ; music, carriages, a crowd of ladies and children, and the cafes open everywhere. Then for the first time I had an opportunity for observing the fair sex in Holland, 138 HOLLAND. Beauty is a rare flower here as everywhere ; but in one turn about the wood of the Hague, I saw more pretty women than I had seen in all the picture galleries in Holland. There is not among these ladies either the sculpturesque beauty of the Roman, nor the brilliant com- plexion of the Englishwoman, nor the vivacity of expres- sion of the Andalusian ; but there is a fineness of feature, an innocent, tranquil grace and prettiness, which is very pleasing. They are rather tall than short, and plump ; their features are irregular, their skin smooth and of a clear red and white ; their cheek-bones rather pro- minent ; clear blue eyes, sometimes so light in color as to appear glassy, and without expression. It is said that they have bad teeth, but of that I cannot speak, for they smile seldom. They walk less lightly than the French, and less stiffly than the English; wear dresses from Paris, better chosen than at Amsterdam ; and display with par- donable vanity their wealth of blonde hair. It looked odd to see great girls, who with us would have the dress and airs of women, still in short dresses and regarded as children. But here a young girl is seldom married before twenty years of age. In Holland the natives of more southern lands who marry at fifteen, are regarded as most surprising creatures. Here girls of that age are going to school, with their hair flowing or braided down their backs, and nobody dreams of looking at them. Here I may remark that that equivocal society known in Paris under the name of the demi-monde does not, to all appearance, have any existence here. *' Take care,'^ said THE HAGUE. 139 certain DntcTi free-thinkers to me, ''this is a Protestant country, and there is a great deal of hypocrisy/'' It may be so, but that cannot be a very marked feature of society which can be so easily hidden. There is not a shadow of it in public, nor an idea of it in their literature ; the language itself is rebellious against the translation of the infinite forms of expression which belong to that society in the countries where it exists. And again, parents do not shut their eyes to the conduct of their sons, even after they are come to man^s estate ; family discipline makes no exceptions even for the bearded ones ; and this discipline is aided and abetted by a cold temperamentj the habit of economy, and respect for public opinion. To presume to speak authoritatively of the character and life of the women of Holland, after having passed a few months in their country, would be not only ridiculous, but impertinent; I shall therefore content myself with quoting from books and the opinions of friends. ]\Iany writers have spoken discourteously of the Dutch women. One calls them childish puppets; another apa- thetic housewives ; an anonymous writer of the last century pushes impertinence so far as to say that, as men in Hol- land generally prefer to choose their mistresses am.ong the servant-maids, so the women (that is the ladies) do not look higher in their aspirations. But this is probably the judgment of some disappointed suitor. " Daniel Stern/^ who, as a woman, has peculiar authority in the matter, says that they are proud, loyal, active, and chaste. Someone emits a doubt as to the pretended placidity of their affections. "They are still waters/-' says 140 HOLLAND. f9 EsquiroZ; " and we know what is said of still waters. "They are frozen volcanoes/'' says Heine^ "and when they thaw-— — '^ But of all that has been written^ the words of Saint Evremont seem to me the most noticeable: " that the Dutch women are not sufficiently vivacious to trouble any man's repose ; that there are some among them who are pleasing ; yes, but either their wisdom or their coldnesL stands them instead of virtue/' One day in a company of young men, a certain rather ridiculous personage being under discussion, Tasked in the sacramental phrase, " Does he disturb the repose of fami- lies ?'' " Che I" was the reply, '^to disturb the repose of families in Holland would be to undertake one of the twelve labors of Hercules/^ "The Datch woman/' said another, ^^docs not marry a husband, she espouses matrimony." It may be thought that T wish to have it understood that I know the Dutch language. I hasten to say that I do not know it, and to excuse my ignorance. A people like the Dutch, grave and taciturn, richer in hidden qualities than in those that shine on the surface, who live more within than without, who act more than they speak, and are worth more than they spend, can be studied without knowing their language. Also, in Hol- land, French is almost universally known. In the great cities there is no person of culture who does not speak French fluently ; there is not a shopkeeper who cannot express himself more or less easily in that tongue; there is scarcely a lad, even among the lower orders of the people, who does not know ten or twenty words of it, enough to help a stranger out of a difficulty. This diffu- THE HAGUE. 141 8ion of a language so different from their own, is the more to be admired wlien we know that it is not the only foreign tongue that is spoken in Holland^ English and German are almost equally well known. The study of all three of these languages is obligatory in the middle- class schools. The Dutch have a peculiar facility for languages, and an extraordinary frankness in conversation. We Italians, before attempting to speak a foreign lan- guage, must know enough of it not to make gross mistakes we blush when they escape us ; we remain silent rather than converse unless we are sure of being complimented ; and so we prolong for ever the period of our philological noviciate. In Holland there are quantities of people who speak French with a capital of a hundred words or so, and twenty phrases ; but they talk and keep up a conver- sation without showing the least anxiety as to what you may think of their mistakes and their audacity. Porters, servants, lads, questioned as to their knowledge of French, answer with perfect security, " Oid,^' or " Un pen'' and have a hundred ways of making themselves understood, the first to laugh at their own linguistic contortions, and rounding out every sentence with a " S^il vous plait, ^' or a " Pardon, Monsieur'' often so drolly out of place that it is impossible not to laugh. As for the Dutch language, for those who do not know German it is impenetrable; and even knowing German, vou may understand a little in reading it, but to hear it spoken it is utterly dark. If I might describe its eflfect upon the ear of a foreigner, it sounds like German spoken by a man with a hair in his throaty which is due to the 142 HOLLAND. frequency of a guttural aspirate, sometliing like the Spanish 7o/«. The Dutch themselves do not think their language harmonious, and will often ask a foreigner what he thinks of it, with an air expecting an unfavorable reply. And yet a book was once written to demonstrate that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch in the terrestrial para- dise. But although they are so accomplished in other tongues, the Hollanders hold fast to their own, and are very indignant when a stranger, as not unfrequently happens, betrays his belief that it is a German dialect. It is almost superfluous to recall the history of the lan- guage. The first settlers of the country spoke the Teu- tonic dialects. These were fused together and formed the ancient Netherlandish tongue, which, like the other languages of Europe in the middle ages, passed through the different German, Norman, French phases, and came out in its present form, the primitive idoms still re- maining in the foundation, with some influences of Latin. Certainly there is a great resemblance between the Dutch and German tongues, and particularly there are a number of radicals in common ; but the syntax is diffe- rent, being much more simple in Dutch. The pronuncia- tion also differs. And because of this very resemblance, the Hollanders speak both French and English better than German. But it is time to go to the picture gallery, the finest jewel of the Hague. Immediately upon entering, the visitor finds himself in front of the most celebrated of painted beasts : Paul TEE HAGUE. UB Potter's ^^ Bull ^^ ; that immortal bull which, as we have said, at the time when there was a mania for classifying pictures in a sort of hierarchy of celebrity, hung in the gallery of the Louvre side by side with the " Transfigura- tion '^ of Raphael, the " St. Peter, Martyr '^ of Titian, and the *^ Communion of St, Jerome''^ of Domenichino; that bull for which England would give a million of francs, and Holland would not part with for double that sum ; that bull, in short, about which there have certainly been more pages written than the painter gave strokes of the brush, and which is still discussed and written about, as if instead of an image it was a new creation of some animal not heretofore existent. The subject of the picture is of the simplest : a bull life size, standing, with its muzzle turned towards the spectator, a cow lying down, a few sheep, a shepherd, and a distant landscape. The supreme merit of this bull can be given in one word : he is alive. The grave, astonished eye, expressing such a vigorous vitality and such a savage fierceness, is rendered with a fidelity that at the first aspect makes one inclined to move out of his path, as in a country road meeting the real creature. The moist black nostril seems to smoke and absorb the air with a deep inspiration. The hide is painted with all its wrinkles and the traces of rubbings against trees and earth, so that it looks like reality. The other animals are not inferior : the head of the cow, the wool of the sheep, the flies, the grass, the leaves and fibres of the plants, all are ren- dered with prodigious truth to nature. And whilst you 144 HOLLAND. appreciate tlie infinite care and stii'ly of the artist^ you see no marks of fatigue or patient labor; it seems a work of inspiration^, in wliicli the painter, influenced with a sort of fury, has not had an instant of hesita- tion or discouragement. Many censures were passed upon this "incredible piece of audacity in a youth of twenty-four/' They blamed its great size, and the vulgar nature of the subject ; the absence of luminous effects, the light being everywhere equal and without contrast of black shadows; the rigidity of the bull's legs ; the dry coloring of the plants and more distant animals; the mediocrity of the figure of the shepherd. But in spite of it all, Paul Potter's bull remains crowned with the glory of an acknowledged chef d'ceuvre, and Europe considers it as the most majestic work of the prince of animal painters. "With his buU/^ says justly an illustrious critic, " Paul Potter has written the true idvl of Holland." This is the great merit of the Dutch animal painters, and of Potter above all. He has not only represented the animals, but has made visible, and celebrated in the poetry of color, the delicate, almost maternal affection which is felt for them by the Dutch agriculturist. He has made use of the animals in order to reveal the poetic side of rustic life. With them he has expressed the peaceful silence of the fields, the pleasure of solitude, the sweetness of repose, and the satisfaction of tranquil labor. One would say that he had succeeded in being understood by them, and that they had taken certain attitudes on purpose for him to copy. He has known how to give them all the THE HAGUE. 145 variety and attraction of personages. Gravity, tlie quiet contentment that follows the satisfaction of some need, the sentiments of health and strength, love and gratitude to man, all the flashes of intelligence and all the varieties of character — he has caught them all, and fixed them with loving fidelity on his canvas, causing the spectator to feel the sentiment that moved him. Paul Potter is the greatest of animal painters. Berghem is more refined, but not so natural ; Van de Velde has more grace, but less energy; Du Jardin is more amiable, but wanting in depth. And to think that the architect, his father-in-law, •would not at first grant him his daughter's hand, because he was a ^* painter of beasts " ! and that, if we are to believe the tradition, his famous bull was painted for a butcher's sign, and sold for twelve hundred francs ! Another chef d'ceuvre of the gallery of the Hague is a small picture by Gerard Dow, the painter of the cele- brated ^^ Dropsical Woman'' in the Louvre, and which hangs between the Raphaels and the Murillos. The pic- ture represents merely a woman seated near a window, with a cradle beside her; but in this simplest of all scenes there is such a sweet and holy atmosphere of domestic peace, a repose so deep, a harmony so perfect, that the most obstinate of earthly bachelors could not fix his eyes upon it long without an irresistible desire to be that one who is evidently expected in the quiet room, or at least to enter it a moment, even with the condition of remaining hidden in a dark corner, in order to breathe a breath of that perfume of innocent and secret felicity. This, like all Dow's works, is painted with that extraordinary minute- 146 HOLLAND. ness wliicli almost reaches an excess, wLicli does reacli it in Slingelandt, who took three years of constant labor to paint the Meerman family; a manner which, still later, degenerated into that smooth and labored style, where the figures were ivory, the skies enamel, and the fields velvet, and of which the painter Van der Werff was the most renowned master. Among other objects in this picture of Dow's, there is a broom-handle, about as large as a pen, upon which it is said the artist worked assiduously for three days ; a thing that does not astonish you when you see that all the minutest veins, knots, stains, and fila- ments are minutely represented. Almost incredible things are related of his superhuman patience. It is said that he occupied five days in copying the hand of a certain Madame Spirings whose portrait he was painting : who knows how much time he spent upon the head ! Those sitters who were so ill -judging as to come to him, were reduced to desperation. It is related of him that he ground his own colors, made his O'wn brushes, and kept everything hermetically closed that no grain of dust might reach it. When he entered his studio he opened the door very carefully, sat down quietly, and waited until every bit of agitation produced by motion was calmed down. In painting he made use of concave glasses to diminish objects j which ended by weakening his sight so that he was obliged to paint with a lens. Notwithstanding all this, however, his coloring never grew weak or cold, and his pictures are as vigorous seen from a distance as near by. They are, with justice, likened to natural scenes dimi- nished in a camera obscura, Dow was one of the many THE HAGUE. 147 disciples of E/erabrandt who divided among them the inheritance of his genius. He had from him his finish, and the art of imitating light_, especially that of candles and lamps, in which he rose to the height of his master. Among the painters of his time he was peculiar in having no pleasure in ngl}^ or trivial subjects. Van Ostade- — called the Ilembrandt of familiar subjects, because he imitated the great master^s cliiaroscura^ his simmature, or delicate blending of colors, the transparency of his shadows, and the richness of his coloring — has two small pictures here, representing the interior and the ex- terior of a rustic house, with figures; both full of poetry, in spite of the vulgarity of the subjects, which he shares in common with the other painters of his school. But he has this peculiarity : that the remarkably ugly young women in his pictures are portraits of his own family, who, it is said, formed a group of little monstrosities whom he has thus pilloried before the world. So have almost all the Dutch painters chosen to paint the least handsome of the women who fell under their notice, as if they had all agreed to discredit the feminine type of their own country. The ^'^ Susanna ''^ of Rembrandt, to instance a subject that absolutely demands beauty, is always an ugly Dutch servant- wench ; and it is not necessary to allude to the women of Steen, Brouwer, and others. And yet their country was not wanting in models of noble and graceful beauty. Francis van Mieris the elder, the first of Gerard Dow's disciples, and, like him, minute and faithful, has three fine pictures, one of which represents the artist and his 143 HOLLAND. wife. Of Steen there is_, among others, one of his favo- rite subject — a physician feeling the pulse of a young gir] sick for love^ with an older woman standing by; an ad- mirable play of mischievous and cunning looks and. smiles which, in the physician, say, ^^I think I understand/^ in the girl, " I want another medicine than yours/' and in the governess, '* I know well enough what she wants/^ In the way of landscapes and marine views there are the finest gems of Ruysdael, Berghem, Van de Velde, Van du Neer, Buckhuysen, Everdingen, beside a good number of pictures by Philip Wonvermaan, the horse and battle painter. There are two by Van Huysum, the great flower painter ; he who, born in a time when Hol- land was seized by a sort of mad love for flowers, and possessed the finest in Europe, celebrated the madness with his pencil, and made it live for ever. No one has so marvellously rendered the infinite secrets of the loveliness of flowers, those pearls of vegetation and chromes of loving nature. The Hollanders carried the w^ondcrs of their gardens to him tliat he might copy them ; all the kings of Europe wanted his pictures, and the sums he received were, for that time, very large. He was jealons of his wife, and of his art, and worked alone, invisible even to his own brothers, that they might not discover the secrets of his coloring ; and so he lived and died, glorious and melancholy in the midst of petals and perfumes. But the greatest picture in the gallery is the celebrated '' Lesson in Anatomy,'' by llembrandt. This picture wg.s inspired by a sentiment of gratitude towards the physician Tulp, prcfessor of anatomy at THIS HAGUE. 149 Amsterdam, who had protected Rembrandt in his youth. Dr. Tulp is represented, with his disciples, grouped about a table on which is stretched a naked corpse, with one arm opened by the anatomic knife. The professor, with his hat on his head, and standing, points out to the students with his forceps the muscles of the body. O: the other figures, some are seated, some standing, some bending over the corpse. The light, striking from left to right, illuminates the faces and one side of the dead body, leaving in obscurity the dresses, the table, and the walls of the room. The figures are life size. It is difficult to express the efPect produced by this picture. The first feeling is that of horror and repulsion from the corpse. The forehead is in shadow, the eyes open with the pupils turned upwards, the mouth half-open as if in astonishment, the chest sunken, the legs and feet stiff, the flesh livid, and looking as if, should you touch it with your hand, it would feel cold. With this rigid body a powerful contrast is produced by the vivacious at- titudes, the youthful faces, the bright, attentive eyes, full of' thought, of the disciples, revealing in different degrees tlie avidity for knowledge, the joy of learning, curiosity, wonder, the strength of intelligence, the suspense of the mind. The master has the tranquil face, the serene eye, and the almost smiling lip of one who feels the com- placency of knowledge. There is in the complexion of the group an air of mystery, gravity, and scientific solem- nity which inspires reverence and silence. The contrast between the light and shadow is as marvellous as that between life and death. It is all done with extraordinary 150 HOLLAND. finish ; one can count the folds of the ruffs^ the lines o£ the faces, the hair of the beards. It is said that the fore- shortening of the corpse is wrong, and that in some points the finish runs into dryness; but universal judgment places the "Lesson in Anatomy '* among the greatest triumphs of human genius. Rembrandt was only twenty-six years old when he painted this picture, w^iich, therefore, belongs to his first manner, in which there are not yet apparent that fire and audacity, that sovereign security in his own genius, which shine in the works of his maturer years ; but there is already that luminous potency, that marvellous chiar- oscurOj that magic of contrasts, which form the most original trait of his genius. However one may be profane in art, and have made a vow never more to offend in too much enthusiasm, when one is in the presence of Rembrandt van Rhijn, one can but raise a little, as the Spaniards say, the key of one^s style. Rembrandt exercised a particular prestige. Fra Angelico is a saint, Michael Angelo a giant, Raphael an angel, Titian a prince ; Rembrandt is a supernatural being. How otherwise shall we name that son of a miller? Born in a windmill, rising unheralded, without master, without examples, without any derivation from schools, he be- came a universal painter, embraced all the aspects of life painted figures, landscapes, marine views, animals, saints in paradise, patriarchs, heroes, monks, wealth and misery, deformity and decrejjitude, the ghetto, the tavern, the hospital, death; made, in short, a review of heaven and earthj and rendered all things visible by a light from the THE EAGUR 151 arcana of his own imagination. He is, at the same time, grand and minute, idealist and realist, painter and en- graver; transfiguring everything and dissimulating nothing; changing men into phantoms, the most vulgar natural scenes into mysterious apparitions ; this world, I. may say, into another world, which seems no more this world and yet is so still. Where did he find that indefinable light, those shafts of electric rays, those reflections of unknown stars, making one muse as over an enigma ? What did he see m the darkness, dreamer, visionary that he was ? What was the arcanum that his genius yearned for? What was he saying with his eternal conflict of light and shadow, this painter of the air ? It was said that the contrast of light and shadow cor- responded in him to diverse movements of thought. Schiller before beginning a work, heard within himself a harmony of indistinct sounds^ which were like a prelude to inspiration; in like manner Rembrandt, when in the act of conceiving a picture, had a vision of rays and shadows, which spoke to his soul before he animated them with his personages. There is in his pictures a life, and what may almost be called a dramatic action, quite apart from the human figures. Vivid rays of light break into the darkness like cries of joy; the darkness flies m terror, leaving here and there fragments of shadow full of melan- choly, tremulous reflections that seem like lamentations ; profound obscurity full of dim threatenings; spurts of light, sparkles, ambiguous shadows, doubtful transpa- rencies, questionings, sighs, words of a supernatural language, heard like music and not understood, and re- 152 HOLLAND, maining in the memory like the vague relics of a dream. And in this atmosphere he plants his figures, of which some are clothed in the dazzling light of a theatrical apotheosis, others veiled like phantoms, others revealed by one stroke of light upon the face ; dressed in habits of luxury or misery^ but all with something strange and fantastic ; without distinctness of outline, but loaded with powerful colors, sculptural reliefs, and bold touches of the brush; and everywhere a warmth of expression, a fury of violent inspiration, the superb, capricious, and profound imprint of a free and fearless genius. For the rest, everyone is free to form his own opinion ; but who knows if Hembrandt, reading the endless page^ that have been written to explain the inner meaning of his works, would not burst into a shout of laughter ! Such is the fate of a man of genius ; everybody, to show that he understands better than the rest, explains him in his own way ; he is a theme given by God, which men turn and twist in a thousand ways ; a canvas upon which human imagination paints and embroiders accord- ing to its bent or fancy. 1 left the museum of the Hague with one desire un- satisfied ; I had found there no picture by Jerome Bosch, born at Bois-le-Duc in the fifteenth century. That dia- bolical brain, that terror of bigots, that great sorcerer of art, had made my flesh shrink in the gallery at Madrid, with a picture representing an army of living skeletons, sprinkled over an immense space, and engaged in a struggle with a various, confused, and desperate crowd of men and women^ whom they were dragging into an abyss THE HAGUE. 153 where death awaited them. Only from the diseased imagination o£ a man agitated by the terrors of damnation could such a monstrous extravagance have issued. Such were the subjects of all his pictures : tortures of the damned^ spectres, abysms of fire, dragons, supernatural birds, filthy monsters, devilish furnaces, sinister land- scapes. One of these terrible pictures was found in the cell where Philip II. breathed his last ; others are scat- tered about Spain and Italy. Who was this chimerical painter ? How did he live ? What strange mania tor- mented him ? No one knoAVs. He passed over the earth wrapped in a cloud, and vanisiied like a vision of hell. On the ground-floor of the museum there is a " Royal Cabinet of Curiosities,^'' which contains, among a great variety of objects from China, Japan, and the colonies of Holland, some precious historical relics. There is the sword of that Ruyter who began life as a rope-maker at Flessingnen, and became Grand Admiral of Holland; there is the cuirass of Admiral Tromp, perforated by a ball ; a chair from the prison of the venerable Barnevelt ; a box containing some of the hair of that Van Spoyk, who in 1831, on the Scheldt, blew up his own ship to save the honor of the Dutch flag. There is besides the complete drCftS worn by William of Orange on the day of his murder at Delft : the shirt stained with blood, the waist- coat of buflalo-skiu pierced by the balls, the wide trousers, the broad felt hat; and in the same glass case, the bullets, with the pistol of the assassin, and the original sentence of death. That more than modest costume, worn in the height of 151 HOLLAND. liis power and glory by the chief of the Republic of the Netherlands, is a fine testimony to the patriarchal simpli- city of Dutch customs. There is not, perhaps, another modern nation that has shown, at an equalheight of pros- perity, less vanity and luxury. It is related that when the Earl of Leicester came to Holland as ambassador from Elizabeth, and when Spinosa was there treating for peace in the name of the King of Spain, their magnifi- cence almost created a scandal. It is said that the Spanish ambassadors sent to the Hague in 1608 to stipulate for the famous truce, saw the deputies from the States of Holland, meanly dressed, seated in a field, and making their breakfast off some bread and cheese which they had brought with them in a bag. The Grand Pensionary John de Witt, the adversary of Louis XIV., had but one servant. Admiral Euyter lived at Amsterdam like a poor man, and swept out his own bedroom. Another very curious object in this museum is a case opening in front like a cupboard, and representing in the minutest particulars the interior of a rich man's house at Amsterdam in the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Czar Peter the Great during his sojourn at Amsterdam had given to a rich burgher of the place the commission for this toy-house, intending to carry it to Russia as a memorial of Holland. The rich burgher, who was named Brandt, did the thing like a brave Dutchman, slowly and well The cleverest workmen in Holland made the furni- ture, the most expert goldsmiths made the plate, the most accurate typographers printed the little books, the most delicate miniature-painters executed the pictures, the linea THE HAGUE. 155 was made in Flanders^ the carpets and hangings at L'trecht. After twenty-five years of labor all the rooms were completed. The nuptial-chamber had everything necessary for the approaching confinement of the little mistress; in the dining-room there was a microscopic tea- service upon a table as big as a silver dollar ; the gallery of pictures was complete; the kitchen contained the utensils necessary for a dinner for a lilliputian company; there was the library, a cabinet of Chinese curiosities, cages with birds, tiny prayer-books, carpets, linen for all the family, with finest lace and embroidery ; nothing was wanting but a conjugal couple, with maids and a cook a little smaller than an ordinary puppet. But there was one great fault : the house cost one hundred and twenty thousand francs. The Czar, who, as all the world knows, was an economical man, refused to take it; and Brandt, to shame the imperial avarice, made a present of it to the museum of the Hague. From the first day of my arrival at the Hague, I had remarked in the streets certain women dressed in so extra- ordinary a manner that I had followed one of them in order to observe the particulars of her costume. At first I imagined that they belonged to some religious order, or that they were hermits, or pilgrims, or perhaps the women of some nomadic people passing through Holland. They wore a preposterous hat of straw lined with printed muslin, a monkish mantle of chocolate- colored serge, lined with red; a short white petticoat also of serge, and set out as if by crinoline; black stockings, and white wooden shoes. In the morning I saw them 156 HOLLAND. going to market, with a basketful of fish on their heads, or with a cart drawn by two great dogs. In general, they were alone, or two women together, but never with a man. They walked in a peculiar manner, with long strides, and a certain heaviness, like people accustomed to walk in sand ; and in their faces and bearing there was something of sadness, which agreed with the cenobitic austerity of their garb. A citizen to whom I applied for information concerning these odd figures, answered simply : " Go to Schevenin- gen.'^ Scheveningen is a village about two miles from the Hague, and approached by a straight road bordered by a double row of beautiful elms that allow no ray of sun to penetrate them. This road, which is gay on either side with villas and gardens, is the favorite promenade of the people of the city, but on other days is almost solitary. You meet no one but one of the figures described above, or a carriage, or the diligence that plies between the city and the village. With its deep shade, rich vegetation, and solitude, it reminds one of the grove of the Alliambra at Grenada, and one forgets that he is in Holland, and thinks no more of Scheven- ingen. But arrived at the end, an instant change of scene dis- sipates the image of Grenada, and nothing remains but a desert of sand ; the salt breeze blows in your face with a low continuous murmur, and if you mount a little hillock, you see spread out before you the North gea. THE HAGUE. 157 For anyone who has never seen any sea but the Medi- terranean the spectacle is a very striking one. The beach is composed of sand as fine and light as ashes, and upon it the spreading waves for ever fold and unfold themselves like a carpet. This sandy beach extends to the feet of the downSj which are composed of little hillocks of sand — steep, broken, and corroded, deformed by the eternal flagellation of the sea. Such is the entire Dutch coast, from the mouths of the Meiise to Helder. There are no moUusks, nor star- fish, nor living shells, nor crabs, nor a shrub, nor a blade of grass. Nothing but water and sand, sterility and solitude. The sea is no less melancholy than the coast, and answers truly to the image we have formed of the North sea, in reading of the supei'stitious terrors of the ancients who fancied it lashed by eternal winds and peopled by gigantic monsters. Near the shore it is of a yellowish color, beyond, a pallid green, and still further off, a dull blue. The horizon is in general veiled in mists which often descend to the shores and hide the sea, like an immense cur- tain, leaving visible only the wave that dies upon the beach, or some specimen of a fisherman^s bark not far distant. The sky is almost always grey, traversed by great clouds which cast dense and moving shadows on the water; at some points it is black with a darkness like night, raising in the mind images of tempest and horrid shipwreck; at others, illuminated by streaks of vivid light, serpentine, and like motionless lightning, or rays from some my^ sterious planet. The wave, always agitated, rushes to bite the shore with impetuous rage, and gives forth a pro- 158 HOLLAND, longed ciy of grief and menace, as from a crowd of lamenting creatures. The sea_, the sky, and the earth turn sinister looks upon each other, like three implacable enemies, and the spectator shudders under the dread of some great convulsion of nature. The village of Scheveningen is posted on the downs, which defend it from the sea, and hide it, so that looking from the beach you can see nothing but the sugar-loaf church- steeple standing like an obelisk in the midst of the sand. The village is divided into two parts. One part is composed of elegant little houses of all' the forms and colors usual in Holland, built for the use of strangers, and having "To Let^^ upon them in several languages ; tho other portion, in which the native popu- lation lives, consists of small black cottages and narrow lanes, where strangers never set their feet. The population of Scheveningen, which counts a few thousand souls, is almost all made up of fishermen, for the most part very poor. The village is also one of the stations for the herring fishery, that celebrated fish to which Holland owes so much of her wealth and power ; but the fruits of this industry go to the owners of the fishing vessels, and the men of Scheveningen, enrolled as mariners, earn hardly enough to live. On the beach in front of the village lie many of these vessels, broad and robust, with one mast and a great square sail ; they lie one beside the other in a row upon the sand, like the Greek galleys on the shores of Troy, safe from the winds and waves. The herring flotilla leaves in the early days of June, accompanied by a steam corvette, and takes its THE HAGUE. 159 course towards the coast of Scotland. The first herrings taken are sent at once to Holland, where thev are con- veyed in a car all decorated with flags to the King, who gives in return five hundred florins. These boats also pursue other kinds of fish, which are in part sold at auction on the shores of the sea, and in part left to the fishermen of Scheveningen, who send them by their women to the market at the Hague. Scheveningen, like all the other villages of the coast — Ratwijk, Wlardingen, Maasluis — is a place fallen from its once flourishing condition, in consequence of the decline of the herring fishery, caused, as everybody knows, by the rivalry of England and by disastrous wars. But poverty, instead of weakening, invigorates the character of this people — without doubt the most original and the most poetic of the inhabitants of Holland. The people of Scheveningen seem by their aspect, character, and cos- tume, like a foreign tribe in their own country. They are at only two miles distance from a great city, and yet pre- serve intact their primitive manners and customs, and their love of solitude. Such as they were centuries ago, such are they now. Not one abandons his native village, and no one who is not born there penetrates it ; they marry among themselves ; they speak a peculiar dialect ; and thev dress in the same fashion and colors as their fathers and grandfathers before them. In the fishing season only the women and children remain in the village : the men are all at sea. When they leave they carry their Bibles with them, and on board there is no drunkenness or profanity, and no laughter. When the tempestuous IGO HOLLAND. seas toss their little boats^ they close every aperture and await death with resignation ; while their women, shut up in their storm-beaten cottages, sing hymns and psalms. Those small habitations, that have witnessed such mortal .mxieties, heard the sobs of so many widows, seen the •!oly joy of return, and the inconsolable grief of parting, represent the freedom and dignified poverty of their inha- ])itants. From those houses come no vagabonds or aban- doned women; no native of Schcveningen has ever deserted the sea, and no young girl has ever disdained the hand of a fisherman. Men and women have in the carriage of the head and the expression of the eye a something of gravity and dignitj'- that imposes respect. They salute without bending the head, looking you straight in the eye, with an expression which implies : *^ We have need of no one." Even in this small village there are two schools, and at certain hours the narrow lanes are alive with children with slate and book in hand. Scheveningen is not only a village famous for the ori- ginality of its inhabitants, which strangers visit and artists paint; there are two great bathing establishments there, where, in the summer, come English, E,ussians, Germans, and Danes; the flower of the northern aristocracy; princes and ministers; half the Almanach de Gotha; and there are balls, fantastic illuminations, and fireworks on the water. The two establishments are on the downs. At every hour in the day, certain carriages in the form of caravans at a fair, each drawn by one strong horse, advance from the beach into the sea, turn round, and TBE HAGUE. 161 ladies with golden locks floating on the breeze issue from thenee and phmge into the sea. At night there is music, the bathers promenade the beach, in festive array, and all the languages as well as all the beauties of Europe are to be heard and seen. The melancholy stranger wanders in the obscure solitudes of the downs, where the music reaches his ear, like a distant echo, and the lights in the fishermen^s houses make him think of home and peace. The first time I went to Scheveningen, I walked over these downs, illustrated by so many painters, the only heights that intercept the view over the immense flats of Holland, rebellious daughters of the sea disputing its advance, and at once prisoners and guardians of the country. There are three ranges of downs which form a triple bulwark against the sea; the exterior ones are the most arid, those in the midst the highest, and the in- terior ones the most cultivated. The average height of these hills of sand is not more than fifteen metres ; and altogether they do not enter more than a French league into the land. But having no greater heights near them or about them, they deceive the eye with the aspect of a mountainous region. Seen from above they present the image of a yellow, angry, and motionless sea. The dreariness and sadness of this desert is increased by a savage vegetation, which seems in mourning for nature dead and abandoned ; a little thin scattered grass, flowers whose petals are almost diaphanous, broom, rosemary, and the like, through which, here and there, one may see the flight of a terrified rabbit. For long distances there is no house, nor tree, nor human being to be seen. 1G2 HOLLAND. From time to time flocks of crows, curlews, and gulls sweep by, and their cries, witli the rnstle of the shrubs tossed by the wind, are the only sounds that disturb the silence of those solitudes. When the sky is black, the dull color of the earth takes on a sort of sinister light, like those fantastic gleams in which objects seen through a colored glass appear. At such times, alone in the midst of the downs, the stranger feels a sense of awe, as one in an unknown land, immeasurably far away from any inhabited country, and looks anxiously round for the shadow of a steeple wherewith to comfort his soul. In all my walk I met only one or two peasants. It is a notable thing in a northern country, that this Dutch peasant almost always salutes the stranger whom he meets by the way. Some touch the hat with an odd gesture, hastily, and as if by mistake; generally they say " Good evening,'^ or '^ Good morning,^^ without looking in your face. If they meet two persons they say, '^ Good even- ing to both of you '' ; if more than two, ^^ Good evening to altogether.^^ I encountered in a path on the downs several of those poor fishermen who pass nearly the whole day in water up to their waists, gathering shells which are used to make a certain kind of cement, or are sprinkled in the garden-paths instead of sand. The operation which they are obliged to go through to remove the enor- mous leather boots which they wear in the water, takes at least half an hour of trouble and fatigue, which would give an Italian a pretext for calling all the saints out of heaven. These, on the contrary, go about it with phlegm- TEE HAGUE. 163 atic patience, allowing no sign of annoyance to escape them, and never lifting tlieir heads until the operation is completed, not even if a cannon were to explode near them. Standing on tlie downs, near a stone obelisk which records tlie return of William of Orange from England after the fall of the Frencli domination, I saw, for the first time, one of those sunsets which are peculiar to this country. The sun, in consequence of the refraction of the vapory mists with which the air of Holland is filled, appears of an extraordinary size, and diffuses through the clouds and over the sea a veiled and tremulous splen- dor like the reflection of a great conflagration. It seemed another sun, unexpectedly appearing on the horizon, and sinking, never to rise again upon this world. In Holland, says the poet, the sun does not set ; he dies. Since I have spoken of my visit to Scheveningen, I will record two other excursions that I made from the Hague during the winter. The first was to the village of Naaldwijk and to the point of the shore where the new canal of Rotterdam is being opened. At Naaldwijk, thanks to the courtesy of a school-inspector who accompanied me, I satisfied my desire to see an elementary school ; and I may say at once that my expectations were more than fulfilled. The school-house, built purposely for that use, stands alone, and has only the ground-floor. We entered a small vestibule, where there was a small mountain of wooden shoes be- longing to the scholars, and which they resumed when they went out. In schools they sit with stockings only, 1G4 HOLLAND. but the stockings are very thick, and the schoolroom is warmed thoroughly. When we came in, the scholars rose and the master came forward to meet the inspector. Even this poor vil- lage schoolmaster spoke French, so that we could enter into conversation. There were about forty scholars pre- sent, half male, half female, and the sexes divided ; all were blonde and plump, with broad, good-tempered faces, and a certain precocious air of fathers and mothers of families that made one smile. The building is divided into five rooms, separated one from the other by a glazed partition; so that if the master of one class is absent, the master of the nearest one can oversee it without leaving his place. All the rooms are spacious and have very large windows extending from floor to ceiling, so that it is as light as in the street. The benches, walls, floors, stores, and glass partitions were all as clean and briglit as in a ballroom. Having a lively recollection of the pestiferous condition of certain retired spots in the schools that I had frequented when a boy, I inspected these places here, and found them in excellent condition. On the walls of the rooms there were small pictures, land- scapes, and figures, and groups of animals, to which the master referred in his teaching ; maps in vivid colors with the names printed large ; sentences, grammatical rules, and moral precepts in large characters. One thing only seemicd to be open to criticism : personal cleanliness. In some schools in Switzerland there are washing-rooms where the pupils are obliged to wash themselves before entering the school, and also when they go away. I TEE HAGUE. 165 should have liked to see the same thing in Holland, and then there would have heen nothing more to be desired. I said *' poor schoolmaster/^ merely as a common mode of expression, for I learned that he had a stipend of more than two thousand two hundred francs, and a home in a good house in the village. In Holland the minimum for the head master of an elementary school is eight hun- dred francs. But there are masters who have the salary of one of our university professors. The question of instruction in Holland, as in almost all other countries, is a religious question, which, in its turn, is the most serious, if not the only, question which agi- tates the nation. Of the three millions and a half of inhabitants that Hol- land counts, one third are Catholics ; about one hundred thousand Jews, the rest Protestants. The Catholics, who for the most part inhabit the southern provinces of Lim- bourg and Brabant, are not, as in other countries, poli- tically divided, but constitute one solid legion, clerical, papistical, and ultramontane, the most faithful of the Ptoman legions, as the Hollanders themselves say ; among whom they sell the straw on which the Pontiff has slept in his dungeon, and fulminate Italy from the pulpit and through the journals. This Catholic party, not very powerful in itself, is made so by the division of the Pro- testants into seven sects : Orthodox Calvinists ; Protestants who believe in revelation but reject certain dogmas of the Church ; others who deny the divinity of Christ, without separating from the Protestant Church; others believing in God, but belonging to no church ; and others, among 166 HOLLAND, whom are many men of great ability, who make open profession of atheism. In this state of things the Catho- lic party has for its natural allies the Calvinists, who, as fervent believers and inflexible conservatives of the faith of their fathers, are much less divided from the Catholics than from a large part of their co-religionists, and form, as it were, the clerical party of Protestantism. Now, in the States General there are on one side the Catholics and Calvinists, on the other side the Liberal party, and between them a wavering party that consents to the absolute supremacy of neither. The principal field of battle between the extreme parties is the question of pri- mary instruction, reduced, on the part of the Catholics and Calvinists, to the determination that for the so-called mixed schools (where no special religious instruction is given, in order to facilitate the coming together of pupils of all religious sects) should be substituted others where dogmatic instruction should be given, and maintained by the commune under the direction of the State. It is easy to understand the gravity of the consequences that would ensue from such a schism in popular educa- tion, the germs of discord and religious hatred, the per- turbations that would in time result from the dividing the youth of the country into two groups of difterent faiths. At present the principle of mixed schools still prevails, but the Liberals maintain with difficulty their ascendancy; the Catholics and Calvinists olitain conces- sions, and will obtain more ; in a word, the Catholic party, more powerful than the Calvinist, solid, rcsoKite, and united, are gaining ground every day ; and it is not im- TEE EAGUK 167 probable that they will succeed in obtaining a victory, which, although it may be only temporary, will produce a violent reaction in the country. To such a condition is Holland now reduced, which for eighty years carried on a desperate straggle against Catholic despotism, and which no\7 has grave reasons to fear a not distant religious war. Notwithstanding, however, this state of things, which prevents the institution, desired so ardently by the Liberals, of obligatory instruction, and which keeps a large number of Catholic children out of the schools, the state of popular instruction in Holland is so flourishing that many European states might envy it. Proportions con- sidered, there are fewer persons ignorant of the alphabet than in Prussia. " In all Europe,^"* says a Dutch writer (who, in other respects, judges his own country rather severely), "it is the country where the knowledge in- dispensable to a civilised man is most universally diffused/' I once asked a Hollander whether, among the class of women-servants, there were any who could not read. " Oh, yes,^-* he said j '^ I remember about tAventy years ago my mother had a maid who did not know her letters; but it was considered a very unusual thing."" And it is pleasant for a stranger in a Dutch city, and who does not know the language, to find that any street-boy can read a name and tell him where a street is by gestures. Discoursing of Catholics and Calvinists, my friend and I reached the downs, and although we were not a stones- tlu'ow from the beach, we could not see the sea. " Hol- land is an odd country,'* said I, " everything in it seems to be playing at hide and seek. The fajades of the 168 HOLLAND. houses hide the roofs, the trees hide the houses, the city hides the ships, the dykes hide the canals, the fog hides the fiekls, the downs hide the sea/' " And one day or another ,■'' responded my friend, *' the sea will hide every- thing else, and the game will be over/' Crossing the downs we reached the point where the preparatory works for the opening of the Rotterdam canal are in progress. Two dykes, one more than twelve hundred metres in length, the other about two thousand, with the distance of one kilometre between them, advance into the sea in a direction perpendicular to the shore. These two dykes, constructed to protect the entrance of vessels into the canal, are formed of several rows of enormous piles, great blocks of granite, fascines, stones, and earth, and have the width of ten men standing shoulder to shoulder. The sea, which continually beats upon them, and covers them almost entirely at high tide, has clothed the surface with a thick coating of shells, black as ebony, looking at a distance like a velvet carpet, and giving to these gigantic bulwarks a severe and magnificent aspect, as if Holland had hung out a warlike drapery to celebrate her victory over the ocean. At the moment, the tide was rising and the battle raged about the distant extremities of the dykes. The livid waves raged around two granite horns that stretch, as if in mockery, into the bosom of their superb enemy. The piles and masses of masonry were beaten and gnawed and buffeted on every side, over- whelmed by angry billows, spit upon by a vaporous rain which fell about them in powdery clouds ; enveloped as iu THE HAGUE. 169 the folds of furious serpents ; struck, even those farthest from the struggle, by unexpected and lengthened spurts of water like impatient advance guards of that infinite army; and the waters, steadily advancing, drove back the workmen step by step. On the longest of the two dykes, not very far from the beach, they were driving in piles. Some, with tremendous eftbrts, raised the great blocks of granite by means of pulleys ; others, ten or fifteen together, removed the old beams to make room for new. It was fine to see the contrast between the fury of the waves and the calm im- passibility of those men, which seemed almost like dis- dain. A bitter wind waved about their brave Dutch faces the loug locks of their light hair, and covered them with flecks of foam ; foolish provocations which obtained not even a glance. I saw them plant a pile in the middle of the dyke, a monstrous trunk of a tree sharpened at the extremity, and raised between two parallel beams under an enormous steam hammer. The pile had to make its way through several strata of stones and fascines ; but at every blow of that formidable hammer it sank into the dyke as if pene- trating the soft earth. Nevertheless the operation for that one pile alone lasted one hour. I thought of the thousands that had been driven, and of the thou- sands that were yet to be driven, of the interminable dykes that defend Holland, of the infinite numbers of them that have been destroyed and reconstructed, and embracing for the first time in my thought the grandeur? of the workj I stood dumb with amazements 170 HOLLAND. A dear friend of mine at tlie Hague had invited me to dine witli him at the house of a relation^ who had mani- fested a courteous desire to make my acquaintance. In answer to my question as to where the gentlemen livedo I was told " Far from the Hague/' and was directed to be next morning at the railway station^ where my friend would meet me. Having obeyed this direction, we took our tickets for Ley den, and arriving there in due time, did not enter the city, but struck off by a road acrosG country. I asked my companion then to reveal the secret, but he declined to do so. Knowing that when a Dutchman has once said a thing, no power on earth can make him change it, I resigned myself to the inevitable. It was in Feb- ruary. There was a cloudy sky^ but no snow; and a cold, impetuous wind, that in about five minutes made my nose of a fine purple. It was Sunday, and the country was deserted. We went on and on, passing windmills, canals, meadows, houses half hidden in trees, with tall thatched roofs tapestried with moss. We reached a village ; Dutch villages are all closed by a sort of barrier. We entered. Nobody there. The doors all shut, windows with blinds drawn down, not a voice, not a step, not a breath stirring. Going through the village, we passed a church, covered with ivy like a garden-house, in which, through an opening in the door, we could see the Protestant minister, in a white cravat, preaching to a congregation of peasants whose faces were all streaked with gold and green and crimson from the windows of stained glass. Proceeding by a fine brick- paved street, we saw frames for the gtorks' nests, posts planted by the peasants for the cows THE HAGUE. 171 to rub tliemselves against, palings painted- of a celestial blue, small houses with tiles of various colors forming letters and words, basins with little boats, tiny bridges, kiosks of unknown purpose, little chapels Avith great gilded cocks upon the tops of their steeples ; and no living soul far or near. We go on and on. The sky clears a little and relapses into clouds again ; the sun illumines for an instant a canal, glistens on the roof of a house, gilds a distant steeple, flies, returns, promises, and coquets in a hundred ways; and long oblique streaks of rain are seen on the horizon. We begin to meet a few country women with gold bands round their heads, a veil over the band, a hat on that, a bunch of flowers on the hat, and broad floating ribbons; also some carriages of the antique form of the time of Louis XV., with gilded bodies, adorned with sculpture and small mirrors ; peasants in large black coats and white wooden shoes ; boys with stockings of every color of the rainbow. We arrive at another village, like the first, and getting into a carriage, go on in that way. A fine cold rain wets and chills us to the bone. Wrapped in our dripping blankets, we reach the border of a broad canal; a man comes out of a hut, runs our vehicle upon a raft, and ferries us over to the other side. The car- riage goes down a wide road, and we are at the bottom of the old lake of Harlem, the horse trotting where fish once glided, and our coachman smoking where ship- wrecked men breathed their last and naval battles were fought. We catch glimpses of canals, villages, culti- vated fields — a new world, where thirty vears ago there 172 MOLL AND. was a waste of waters. The rain ceased, aud it began to snow with a fury such as I had never seen — a real tempest of snow, hard and thick, which an impetuous wind blew straight in our faces. We pulled over us the oil-cloth cover, opened our umbrellas, and screwed our- selves into the smallest compass, all in vain. The wind blew away all our defences, froze us fio.ii head to foot, and whitened us with snow. After a long time we came out of the basin of the lake, reached a village, when we left the carriage and proceeded again on foot. On and on we went, past bridges, mills, closed houses, solitary roads, immense fields, and not a creature moving. We passed an arm of the Rhine, arrived at another barren and silent village, with here aud there a dim face looking at us through the window-panes, and passing this, came out upon the downs. The sky began to grow dark, and I began to get anxious. I asked my companion where we were going, and he responded, " Wherever chance may lead us.^' '^ But who is this relative of yours V I said, " Where does he live ? AVhat does he do ? What is there under all this devilry ? He cannot be a man like others. Tell me where you are taking me."*^ My companion made no reply, but stopped and looked before him. I looked also, and saw far of£ something that resembled a house, alone in the midst of a desert, and half hidden by a rise in the grouu d. We hastened our steps, the house appearing and disappearing before us like a shadow. Around it were visible tall objects that looked like gallows, but my companion insisted that they were frames for the storks^ nests. When within about a TBE HAGUE, . 173 hundred pnces we came upon a long wooden water-conduit^ which seemed to me to be stamed with blood, but my friend assured me that it was only painted red. The house is small, surrounded by a paling ; the doors and windows closed. "Do not go in ! ^^ I cried ; " we can yet turn back. There is some witchcraft in that house ; take care what you do. Look up ; I never saw so black a sky." My friend paid no heed to me, but advanced courageously, and I follov/ed. Instead of making for the entrance- door, he took a short cut. A ferocious barking of dogs was heard. We ran, breaking our way through a forest of shrubs^ and jumping ov^er a low wrJl, knocked at a door. The door opened ; there was no creature visible. We mounted a small crooked staircase, and entered a room. Oh, pleasant wonder ! The solitary, the sor- cerer, was a gay and gentle youth, and the diabolical house a little villa, full of conveniences, warm, light, and luxurious — a real enchanted palace in miniature, in which our host retired for a few months of every year to make studies for the fertilisation of the downs. We soon found ourselves seated at a table sparkling with crystal and silver, on which smoked a princely dinner, guarded by a small army of gilded and emblazoned bottles. The snow beat against the windows ; the moaning voices of the sea were heard ; the winds raged about the house, which seemed like a ship in the midst of a tempest. We drank to the fertilisation of the downs, to the conquerors of Atchin, to the prosperity of the colonies. But I still had some anxieties. Our host, to call his servant, touched a concealed knob ; to order his coachman to get ready 174 HOLLAND. the carriage, he spoke some words into a hole in the wall ; and these proceedings did not please me. '*" Reassure me/' said I; '^tell me that this house does really exist; promise me that it shall not vanish, leaving nothing but a hole in the ground, and a smell of sulphur in the air ! Will you swear that you say your prayers every night ? " I cannot relate the extravagant talk and the laughter that went on to a late hour of the night, accompanied by the clinking of glasses, and the howling of the winds with- out. But the moment of departure came at last, and we descended, to hide ourselves in a large vehicle and begin our crossing of the desert. The land was covered, with snow, the white outlines of the downs were drawn upon a black and stormy sky ; the carriage rolled silently forward amid strange and indistinct forms, which succeeded each other rapidly in the gleam of the lanterns, and appeared to melt one into the other ; and in those enormous solitudes reigned a mortal silence that prevented speech with us. 0^ ^C #1* #v At last I have seen winter in Holland, not as I had imagined it on leaving Italy, because it was very mild; but still very characteristic of the Holland of my dreams. In the morning early, what first meets the eye in the white and silent streets are the innumerable prints of the wooden shoes of the children going to school — footsteps as of elephants, so large are the shoes — and succeeding each other in a straight line, plainly demonstrating that the scholars take the shortest way to school, like sedate A View of Old Schevingen. {Page 158.) T -'-'^ v^ >r^ TEE EAGUE. 175 and zealous Dutch children. Files of them may be seen, all wrapped up warm, with nothing but the point of a nose or the corner of a book visible in the shapeless bundle, two and two, or three and three, or in close groups like bunches of asparagus. The children all housed, the streets remain deserted for a time, for the Hollanders are not early risers, especially in winter. You may wander about without meeting a soul or hearing the least noise. The snow, among all those red houses, seems of a more brilliant whiteness; and the houses, with all their raised points and ornaments relieved by a pure white line, and the carved wooden heads and images over the shops all decked seemingly in wigs of cotton, and the pendant chains and cords like garlands of white flowers, present a strange aspect. On days when it freezes, and the sun shines bright, evervthing sparkles as if sewn with silver spangles ; the ice accumulated on the edges of the canals glows with the colors of the rainbow; and the trees glimmer with pearls, like the plants in the gardens of the '^Arabian Nights.''"' Then it is pleasant to walk in the forest, about sunset, on the hardened snow which creaks under the foot like marble dust, in the midst of white and leafless branches, presenting the image of a gigantic crystallization ; while the alleys are illuminated by the red rays of the setting sun, and the shadows are azure and violet, sparkling with diamond dust. But nothing equals the spectacle of the open country seen in the morning after a great snowstorm from the heights of some tall steeple. Under a low grey sky there lies an immense Tvhite plain, where there is no trace of road or path, or ] 76 HOLLAND, house or canal^ but only depressions and elevationsjeaving one to divine vaguely the hidden forms^ as under the swathing folds of a great sheet; and the infinite white- ness is unstained unless by some spiralis of smoke issuing timidly here and there from distant houses, as if to announce to anyone who is looking on that even in that snowy desert human life still palpitates. But any mention of winter in Holland would be incom- plete without allusion to that which constitutes the originality and principal character of winter-life 'in that country. Skating in Holland is not only a delightful exercise but an ordinary wav of getting about. To cite an illustrious example, evervbody knows how the Hol- landers made use of it in the memorable siege of Harlem. In times of hard frost the canals are changed into roads, and skates do the office of boats. The peasant skates to market, the laborer to his work, the shopkeeper to his shop ; whole families go from the country to the city with bag and basket on their backs, or upon sleds. Skating is as easy and natural to them as walking, and they do it with a rapidity that makes them all but invisible. In former years bets were made among the best Dutch skaters as to which of them could keep up with the railway train that ran along the edge of the canal ; and in general the skater not only kept even with the train but even outstripped it. There are people who skate from the Hague to Amsterdam and back in the same dav ; university students, who leave Utrecht in the morning, dine at Amsterdam, and get back to college before night. The bet of going from Amsterdam to THE HAGUE. 177 Leyden in a little more than an hour has often been won. And it is not only the speed which is remarkable, but the admirable security with which they traverse im- mense distances on skates. Many peasants skate from one city to another at night. Sometimes walking along the canal you see a human figure pass and disappear like an arrow; it is a peasant girl carrying milk to some house in the town. There are also sleds or sledges of every size and form ; some pushed from behind by a skater, some drawn by horses, some moved by two iron-shod sticks held in the hands of the person seated in the sledge; and quantities of carriages and vehicles of different sorts, deprived of their wheels, and placed on runners, flying along with all the rapidity of the others. On holiday occasions even the boats of Scheveningen may be seen sliding along the streets of the Hague. Sometimes vessels, with all sails set, move on the frozen rivers with such rapidity that persons on board are obliged to cover their eyes, unable to bear the dizzy velocity of their flight. The finest of the festivals of Holland are held upon the ^ ice. At Rotterdam, the Meuse becomes a place of meet- ing for all sorts of diversions. The snow is swept off, so that the ice is as clean as a pavement of crystal ; cafes, eating-houses, pavilions, and small theatres rise on every side; all are illuminated at night; by day there is a throng of skaters of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In other cities, above all in Friesland, which is the classic land of the art, there are societies of skaters who in- stitute public trials of skill for prizes. Masts and banners 178 HOLLAND. are planted along tlie canals, stands and railings are put up j an immense multitude assembles from all the vil- lages round about_, and the flower of the citizens are on the ground ; music sounds ; the skaters are dressed in peculiar costumes^ the women wearing pantaloons ; there are men^s races and women^s races, and then men and women together; and the names of the winners are in- scribed upon the rolls of the society^ and are famous for years after. There are in Holland two schools of skating, which differ completely from each other : the Dutch school and the school of Friesland, each having its peculiar skate. The Frieslanders, older in the art, aim at speed only, while the Dutch are the more graceful. The former dart forward in a straight line, with the body erect and rigid, and the eyes fixed on the goal to be attained ; the Hol- lander goes in a zig-zag, moving from right to left and from left to right, with an undulatory motion of the hips. The one is an arrow, the other a rocket. The Dutch school suits the women best. The ladies of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and the Hague are the most fascinating skaters in all the United Provinces. They begin as babies, and go on as girls and wives ; adding the height of love- liness to the apogee of art, and striking out with the irons of their skates sparks from the ice that light up many a conflagration. There are ladies among them who attain to a high grade of mastery in the art. Those who have seen them say that it is impossible to imagine the grace of the undulations, bondings, dartings, the thousand soft and charming ways in which they turn, and fly, and THE HAGUE. 170 return^ emulating the birds and butterflies, and liow tlieir tranquil beauty is animated by it. But all do not succeed, and many do not presume to show their skill in public, and some who, among us, would obtain the prize, here scarcely attract attention; to such a pitch has the art of skating attained. It is the same with the men, who go through every sort of play and prowess ; some describing on the ice fantastic figures or amorous words, others making rapid pirouettes, and then darting backwards for a long distance on one leg; others twisting and twining in infinite dizzy whirls within one small space, bent, or crouching, or straight upright, like puppets moved by springs. The first day on which the canals and basins present ice sufficiently solid for skating is a holiday for a Dutch city. Early skaters who have been experimenting at sunrise, spread the news; the journals announce it ; groups of boys run about the streets with cries of joy; servants, of both sexes, ask leave to go out, with the air of people resolved to rebel in case of refusal ; old ladies forget their years and pains, and go to the canals to gossip with friends and children. At the Hague, the basin in the middle of the city, near the Binnenhof, is invaded by a crowd of people who elbow each other and press and mingle as if they were all seized with dizziness; the flower of the aristocracy skates on a basin in the midst of the wood; and there, altogether in the snow, glide officers, ladies, deputies, students, old men, boys, and sometimes among them the hereditary prince, and around gathers a throng of spectators; music accompanies the 180 HOLLAND. festival; and the enormous disc of the sun of Ilollnnd;, sinking towards the horizon^ sends them, through tlie branches of gigantic beeches, its dazzling salutations. When the snow is liard comes the turn of the sledges. Every family has one_, and at the usual hour they come out by hundreds. They fly by in a long file^ two and three together; some shaped like shells,, some like swans^ dragons^ boats^ coaches, gilded and painted in different colors, drawn by horses in magnificent trappings of rich furs, their heads ornamented by feathers and tassels, and their harness studded with glittering points ; and carry- ing ladies wrapped in sables, marten, and the skin of the Siberian fox. The horses toss their heads in a cloud of vapor from their bodies, their manes sparkling with frost ; the sleighs leap forward ; the dry snow flies like a silvery £onm ; and the splendid pageant passes and dis- appears like a silent whirlwind over a field of lilies and jasmine. At night, when they are provided with torches, those thousands of little flames chasing and crossing each other through the silent city, and throwing livid reflec- tions upon the snow, present the image of an infernal battle, presided over from the tower of the Binnenhof by the spectre of Philip II. But alas 1 everything changes, even the winter, and with it the arts of skating and sledging. For many years past severe winters in Holland have alternated with winters so mild, that not only do the rivers not freeze over, but even the smaller canals in the towns. It follows that the skaters, remaining too long without practice, no longer risk appearing in public when the opportunity THE HAGUE. 181 presents itself; and so little by little their numbers become smaller^ and the fair sex especially are gro^ying unaccustomed to the ice. In the winter of last year (1873) there was very little skating; and this year there has not been a single competition^ and not one sledge has been seen. May heaven grant that this deplorable state of things may not continue, that winter may return to caress Holland with his frozen Polar beards paw, and that the beautiful art of skating may arise once more with her owy mantle and her crown of icicles. In the meantime let me announce the publication of a work called "The Art of Skating'-' (// Patinamento), upon which a deputy of the States of Holland has been at work for several years, a work which will be the history, the epic, and the codex of the art, and from which all the skaters of Europe and America, male and female, can draw instruction and inspiration. During all the time that I remained at the Hague I frequented the principal club of the city, composed of more than two thousand members, and occupying a pahice near the Binnenhof ; and there I made my observations upon Dutch character. Besides the library, the dining-hall, and the card-room, there is a conversation and readiug room, which is quite full of people from 4 o'clock in the afternoon until mid- night. There are artists, professors, merchants, deputies, clerks, and officers. The greater part of them go there to drink a small glass of gin before dinner, and return afterwards for their coffee and another comforting glass of their favorite liquor. They almost all talk, and yet 182 HOLLAND. one "hears only a slight murmur, so that with one's eyes shut one would fancy only about a third of the number present. You can make a dozen turns about the room without seeing an emphatic gesture or hearing one word a little louder than another ; and at ten paces distance from the groups of talkers you would not notice that conver- sation was going on, but for the motion of the lips. There are many corpulent men to be seen, with large faces, whiskerless, and with beards under the chin, who converse without lifting their eyes from the table, or removing their hand from their glass. It is extremely rare to see among all their broad faces a fine, acute countenance like that of Erasmus, whom many, but not I, consider as the true Dutch type. The friend who opened the doors of the club to me, presented me to several of its members. The diversity between the Dutch and Italian character is shown par- ticularly in introductions. More than once, seeing the person to whom I had been presented make a slight movement of the head, and then remain quite silent, I have thought that my respected visage did not suit his taste, and have felt in my heart an echo of cordial anti- pathy. After a little the introducer would go away, leaving me face to face with my enemy. '^Now," thought I, " I will burst before I speak a word to him ! '^ But my neighbor, after a moment^s silence, said with great gravity : ^' I hope that, if you have no other en- gagement, you will do me the honor to dine with me to- day .'''' I was struck dumb with amazement. We dined together, and my Amphytrion coldly populated the table TEE HAGUE. 183 with bottles of Bordeaux, Champagne, and Hock, and we did not separate without my being constrained to accept a second invitation. Others, of whom I had asked infor- mation about various things, scarcely answered me, as if to make me understand that my questions were importu- nate, whilst I said to myself, " Did ever anyone see such an ill-natured person ! '^ The next day came the answers written out, clear, minute, and satisfactory in a higher degree than I had ever hoped for. One evening I asked a person to look out for me something in that sea of figures which is called a railway guide. For a moment he made no reply, and I was humiliated. Then he took the book, put on his glasses, read, examined, made notes, summed up, and subtracted, with the patience of a saint, for the space of half an hour; and when he had finished, gave me the written reply, and put his spectacles into their case without a word. Many of those with whom I passed the evening were in the habit of going home at 10 o'clock to work, and coming back to the club at half past 11 to remain until 1 ; and when they had said '*" I must go,'' there was no possibility of changing their resolution. When the last stroke of ten was sounding, they were already outside the door; when half-past 11 struck they were on the threshold. It is not surprising that, with this chrono- metrical regularity, they should find time to do so many things and to do them without haste ; or that those who had not given themselves to study as a means of life, had still read whole libraries. French literature in particular they had at the ends of their fingers. And 184 HOLLAND, what is said of literature can be said with more reason of politics. Holland is one of the countries of Europe where there is the greatest affluence of foreign journals, and perhaps the one in which the affairs of other nations are most discussed. The country is small and tranquil; the news in the papers is soon discussed ; after ten minutes the conversation jumps over the Rhine and roams over Europe. I remember that I was much struck by hearing the recent fall of the ministry in Italy discussed as if it had been a family affair. One of my first cares was to scan the religious senti- ments of the people ; and I found, to my astonishment, a great disorder. As a learned Hollander has lately written, ideas subversive of every religious dogma have acquired a great field in that country. It would be an error, however, to believe that while faith grows less, in- difference increases. Those creatures who appeared so monstrous to Pascal, — men, that is, who lived without giving a thought to religion, who are so numerous among us in Italy, — there do not exist. The religious qnestion, which is with us only a question, is there a battle, in wnich everyone brandishes his weapon. Every class of society, men and women, old and young, occupy them- selves with theology, and follow the controversies of the doctors, devouring a prodigious number of writings on religious polemics. This tendency of the country is naiiifested even in Parliament, where it sometimes happens that the members attack each other with Biblical cita- tions, read in Hebrew, translated and commentated, and the discussion degenerates into a theological disquisition, TEE EAGUE, 185 All this goes on, however, iu the mind rather than in the heart ; passion has no part in it ; and the proof of it is til at Holland, which, of all European countries, has the greatest number of religious sects, is also the country in which the sects agree best, and where the greatest tolerance reigns. If this were not so, the Catholic party would not have made so much way as it has made, protected in the beginning by the Liberal party against the only intolerant sect in the country — the orthodox Calvinists. I did not know any orthodox Calviuists, to my great regret. I never believed what I have heard as to their extravagant ideas ; that there are ladies, for instance, who hide the legs of their tables lest they should remind visitors of the legs of their hostess. Eut it is undeniable that they do live with extreme austerity. Many never put foot in a theatre, a ball-room, or even a concert-room. There are families who eat cold meat on Sundays rather than allow the cook to transgress the law of rest. In many houses the master reads the Bible every morning in the presence of his household, and all pray together. For the rest, this sect of orthodox Calvinists, which has almost all its proselytes among the aristocracy and the peasantry, exercises no great influence on the country, as is proved by the fact that in the Parliament it is inferior in number to the Catholics, and can do nothing without them. I have spoken of the theatre. At the Hague, as in the other cities of Holland, there are no great theatres, and no great spectacles. For the most part they represent operas of German music, sung by foreign singerSj and 1S6 HOLLAND. Frencli comedies and operettes. Concerts are much in fashion. In this, Holland is faithful to her traditions, since it has been noted, and Guicciardini also mentions it, that in the sixteenth century her musicians were sought for by all the courts of Christendom. It was also sa^d that the Hollanders were very clever at singing in chorus. And great, indeed, must be the pleasure which they take in singing together, if it is proportionate to the aversion they seem to have to singing alone, for I do not remem- ber to have heard in any Dutch town, at any hour of the night or day, a voice humming a tune in the streets. I have spoken of Frencli comedy and opera. At the Hague, not only the public entertainments, but all public life, is almost entirely French. Hotterdam has the Eng- lish stamp, Amsterdam the German, and the Hague has the Parisian stamp ; so that it is just to say that the people of the great Dutch cities unite and temper the qualities and defects of the three neighboring nations. At the Hague, in many families of the higher society, French is always spoken; in others they affect Frenchified ways, as in some cities of northern Italy ; the addresses of letters are generally written in French ; there is, in short, a portion of society, not a rare thing in small countries, who display rather ostentatiously a certain contempt for the language, literature, and art of their native country, and pay court to an adopted country beyond the Ehine and the Meuse. Sympathies, however, are divided. The elegant and fashionable set lean to- wards France, the learned ones towards Germany, and the mercantile class towards England, The sympathy for THE HAGUE. 187 Prance decreased after the Commune. Against Germany a secret animosity was born and is still fermenting, gene- rated by the fear*that her conqnering gaze might soon be turned on Holland ; but it is tempered by the common interest against Catholic clericalism. V\ hen it is said that the Hague is a half French city^ it is understood that appearance only is meant. At bottom the Dutch character predominates. Although it is rich^ elegant, and gay, it is not a city of scandals, or evil speaking, or dissipation, or duelling. The life in it, how- ever, is more varied and animated than that in the other Dutch cities, and somewhat less tranquil. The duels which occur at the Hague can be counted on the . five finders of the hand from ten vears to ten years, and in those few an officer is generally the cause. Nevertheless, to show how potent is still in Holland the ferocious preju- dice, as Rousseau says, " that honor dwells on the point of the sword,'' I recall a discussion among some Dutch gentlemen, brought about by a question of mine. When I asked whether public opinion in Holland was hostile to duelling, they answered with one voice *' Very hostile '^ ; but when I wished to know if a young man in good society, who should refuse a challenge, would be uni- versally praised, treated by all with the same respect and attention as before, sustained, in short, in public opinion, so as never to repent of his conduct, then the discussion began. One weakly answered Yes, another resolutely No, but the majority said No. From which, I think, I may conclude that if duelling is not frequent in Holland, it is not, as I had thought, because of the universal and IS8 . HOLLAND. absolute contempt for the ferocious prejudice^ but rather from the rarity of cases in which two citizens allow them- selves to be driven by passion to the arbitrament of arras, which depends rather upon nature than education. In public discussion, or in very violent private argument, personalities are rare ; and in the Parliamentary battles, which are sometimes very hot, the members are dryly im- pertinent, but calmly, and without noise ; impertinence, I may say, more in facts, Vv^hich wounds silently, than in words. In the conversations at the club, I remarked that no one talked for the sake of talking. When anyone opened his mouth it was to ask a question, or to give a piece of news, or to make an observation. That art of making a period of every idea, a story of every fact, a question of every trifle, in which Italians, French, and Spanish are masters, is completely unknown to them. Conversation is not an exchange of sounds, but a commerce in things, and no one makes the slightest effort to appear learned, or eloquent, or acute. In all the time of my stay at the Hague, I remember to have heard only one witticism, and that was from a deputy, who, speaking of the alliance between the ancient Batavians and the Romans, said : '^ We have always been friends with the constituted autho- rities.''^ And yet the Dutch language lends itself to puns ; in proof of which I have heard cited the case of a lovely foreign lady, who, wishing to ask the boatman of the tresekuit for a pillow, pronounced the word badly and asked for a kiss, the two words being nearly tlie same in Dutch; and had scarcely time to explain the equivoque^ TEE HAGUE. 189 the boatman -wiping his lips with the hack of his hand. In my stndy of the Dutch character, it did not appear to rae true, what I had read in several hooks, that the Hollanders are fond of talking about their maladies, and that they are avaricious and egotistical. As to the first accusation, they deride the Germans for this very defect. In support of the second, the rather incredible fact has been adduced that during a naval battle "with the English the officers of the Dutch fleet went on board the enemv^s ships, which were out of ammunition, and sold them powder and projectiles at exorbitant prices; after which the battle recommenced. Against this accusation of avarice stand the facts of the wealth and ease of the citizens, and the large sums spent in books aud pictures; and still more in large beneficence, in which Dutch society is incontestably the first in Europe. And it is not official beneficence which in any way receives its impulse from the Government, but spontaneous, and very liberal, exer- cised by a large and powerful community which founds innumerable institutes, schools, prizes, libraries, popular meetings ; which aids and precedes the Government in the work of public instruction ; which extends its wings from the great city to the humblest village, covering all reli- gious sects, all ages, all professions, and all needs; a beneficence, in short, by virtue of which there is not left in Holland one poor person without shelter, or an arm without work. All writers who have studied Holland agree in saying that there is perhaps no other state in Europe in which such copious alms descend from the 190 HOLLAND. wealthy to tlie needy classes, in proportion to the popula- tion. It is not to be said, however, that the people of Hol- land are faultless, for they are not so, if we are to count as faults the want of those qualities which should be like the splendor and softness of their virtues. Their firmness is sometimes obstinacy ; their probity has a touch of niggardliness ; in their coldness is felt the absence of that spontaneity of feeling without which it seems as if there could be no affection, no generosity, no true greatness of soul. But the better we know them, the more we hesitate to pronounce such judgments^ and the more we feel the growth of sympathy and respect for them. Voltaire could say, on leaving Holland, his famous words : " Adieu, canaucc, caiiards canaille '^ j but when he judged Holland seriously, he remembered that in her capital cities he found ^* neither an idle man, nor a poor man, nor a dissi- pated man, nor an insolent man," and that he had seen every where " labor and modesty/^ Louis Napoleon pro- claimed that in no people of Europe were good sense and the sentiments of reason and justice innate as in the Dutch ; Descartes gave them the highest praise that a philosopher can give to a people, saying that in no country did one enjoy greater liberty than in Holland; Charles V. said that they were " the best of su])jects, but the worst of slaves." An Englishman wrote that the Hollanders inspire an esteem that never reaches to affection. Perhaps he did not esteem them enough. I do not conceal that among the causes of my sympathy is that of having found that Italy is much better known THE EAGVE. 191 in Holland than I had dared to hope. Not only did tlie revolution in Italy find there a favorable echo,, as is natural among an independent people^ free, and hostile to the Papacy ; but Italian men and events of late years are not less well known there than those of France and Ger- many. The principal journals, which have correspondents among us, keep the country minutely informed as to affairs in Italy. Portraits of her chief citizens are seen in various places. Nor is literary intelligence less regarded than political matters. Leaving aside the facts that Italian music was sung at the courts of the ancient counts of Holland, that in the bestxentury of Dutch literature the Italian tongue was held in great honor among lettered people, and that some of the most illustrious poets of the' time wrote letters and verses in Italian, or imitated our pastoral poetry, the Italian language is to this day much studied ; it is not rare to find those who speak it, and still less rare is it to find our books upon the tables of the ladies. The " Divina Commedia,''^ which came much into vogue after the year 1830, has two translations, both in terza rima, one of which is the work of Hacke van Mijn- den, who consecrated all his life to Dante. The " Jeru- salem Delivered " has a translation by a Protestant pastor. Ten Kate, and had another, unpublished, and now lost, by Maria Tesseeschave, the poetess of the seventeenth century and intimate friend of the great Dutch poet Vondel, who advised and aided her in the translation. Of the " Pastor Fido" there are at least five translations by different authors ; several of the " Aminta '^ ; and, to make a leap, at least four of Silvio Pellico^s *^ Mie Prigaoni/' and one 192 HOLLAND. very fine one of the " Promessi Sposi/^ a rotnance -which few Hollanders have not read either in their own tongue or another. And to cite yet one more thing that regards ns, there is a poem entitled '' Florence,'^ written for the last centenary of Dante by one of the most distinguished of the Dutch poets of our own day. Here it becomes appropriate to say something of Dutch literature. Holland presents a singular disproportion between the expansive force of her political^ scientific, and commercial life, and that of her literarv life. While under all other forms the works of the Hollanders find their way over the borders of their country, their literary work remains cir- cumscribed within its confines. With a remarkable ferti- lity of literary production, which renders the fact more strange, Holland has not produced, as other small countries have done, a single book which has become European, that is, if we except the works of Spinoza, the one great philosopher of his country, or consider as Dutch literature the forgotten Latin treatises of Erasmus of Rotterdam. And vet if there is a countrv where nature and events have offered subjects apt to inspire some of those poetic works which strike the imagination of every people, that country is Holland. The marvellous transformations of the soil, the immense inundations, the wonderful maritime expeditions, ought to generate an original poem, powerful even when deprived of its native form. Why has it never been done? Various reasons may be adduced. The peculiar character of the Dutch mind, which sees every- thing on the utility side, and often wishes to bend even THE HAGUK 193 literature to some practical purpose ; a tendency, the direct opposite of this^ and perhaps derived from it, to soar too much above human nature in order not to graze the earth ; a certain natural circumspection in their genius, which gives to reason a sovereign superiority over fancy ; the innate love of the exact and the finished, pro- ducing a prolixity in which great ideas are diluted; the spirit of religious sectarianism, which binds within a nar- row circle minds that were born to spread themselves over a vast horizon. But neither these nor other reasons can do away with the wonder that there should not be in all Dutch literature a writer who worthily represents before the world the greatness of his country ; a name to place between those of Rembrandt and Spinoza. It would be wrong, however, to say nothing of the three principal figures in that literature, two of the seventeenth century and one of the nineteenth, three poets of origin- ality, and differing much from each other, who represent a compendium of Dutch poetry : Vondel, Catz, and Bilderdijk. Vondel is the greatest of the poets of Holland. He was born in 1587 at Cologne, where his father, a hatter, had fled from Antwerp to avoid the persecutions of the Spaniards. While still a child the future poet returned to his native country in a cart, with his father and mother following on foot, praying and reciting verses from the Bible. He made his first studies in Amsterdam. At fifteen years of age he already enjoyed fame as a poet; but his most celebrated works date only from 16.20. Up to the age of thirty he knew no language but his own ; 194 HOLLAND, later he learned French and Latin, and gave himself up with ardour to classical studies; at fifty he dedicated him- self to Greek. His first tragedy (he was a tragic poet principally),, entitled "The Destruction of Jerusalem/' had not much success. The second, called " Palaraede," in which was shadowed forth the pitiful and terrible story of Olden-Barneveldt, the victim of Maurice of Orange, drew upon him a criminal prosecution, in consequence of which he fled and remained in hiding until the unex- pectedly mild sentence condemning him to a fine of three hundred florins was pronounced. In 1627 he made a voyage to Denmark and Sweden, where he was received with honor by Gustavus Adolphus. Eleven years after- wards he inaugurated the Amsterdam theatre with a national drama called " Gilbert d^Amstcl,'''' which is still represented once a year in homage to his memory. The last years of his life were very unhappy. The dissipation of his son having reduced him to penury, the poor old man, weary of study and worn with pain, was obliged to ask for a small employment in the Monte di Pieta, or government pawn-broking establishment. A few years before his death he embraced the Catholic faith, and fired by a new inspiration, he wrote his tragedy of "The Virgins,^' and a poem which is one of the best of his works, entitled "The Mysteries of the Altar." He died very old, and was buried in a church at Amsterdam, where, a century later, a monument was erected to his memory. Besides his tragedies, be wrote patriotic war-songs, and others addressed to illustrious Dutch sailors, and to Prince Frederic Henry. But his principal glory is the theatre. THE HAGUE. 195 An admirer of Greek tragedy, lie preserves in his own the unities, the chorus, the supernatural, substituting Providence for destiny, demons and angels for the aveng- ing gods, and introducing the good and bad genii of Christianity. Almost all his subjects are taken from the Bible. His chef d^oeuvre is the tragedy of "Lucifer/' represented twice in spite of the almost insuperable diffi- culties of representation, in the theatre of Amsterdam, and there interdicted by the influence of the Protestant clergy. This tragedy has for its subject the rebellion of Lucifer, and for personages the good and bad angels. As in it, so in others, there are fanciful descriptions, full of splendid imagery, flashes of powerful eloquence, fine choruses, vigorous thoughts, solemn phrases, rich and sounding verses, and here and there flashes and sparkles of genius. On the other side there is a mysticism some- times obscure and cold ; the want of harmony between the Christian idea and the Pagan form ; the lyric over- powering the dramatic ; good taste often off'ended ; and more than all, an exaltation of thought and sentiment, which, aiming at the sublime and rising too far above the earth, leaves the human heart and intellect below. Never- theless, historic precedence, originality, ardent patriot- ism, his noble, suff'ering life, made Vondel great and venerated in his country, where he is considered as the most eminent personification of the national genius, and placed with aff'ectionate audacity by the side of the first poets of other literatures. Vondel is the greatest, Jacob Catz the purest, personi- fication of Dutch genius; and not only is he the most 196 HOLLAND. popular of tlie poets of his nation, hut such is his popu- larity, that it may be affirmed that in no other country, not exclusive of Cervantes in Spain and Manzoni in Italy, is there a writer more generally known or more constantly read than he ; and I may add that there is not, perhaps, another poet in the world whose popularity is more necessarily restricted within the confines of his own country. Jacob Catz was born in 1577, of a patri- cian family in Brouwershaven, a town in Zealand. He studied law, became Pensionary of Middlebourg, went as ambassador to England, was made Grand Pensionary of Holland, and executing with exemplary zeal and rectitude these high offices, cultivated poetry with a loving spirit. In the evening, after having treated of State affairs with deputies from the provinces, he withdrew into his house, and made verses. xVt seventy-five years of age, he asked to be relieved of his offices, and when the Stadtholdcr announced to him in honorable words that his demand was granted, he fell on his knees in presence of the assembly of the States, and thanked God for having always protected him in the course of his long and labo- rious political life. A few days afterwards he retired to one of his villas, where he continued to enjoy a tranquil and honoured old age, studying and writing verses, until 16G0, when he died, more than eighty years old, wept by all Holland. His poetry forms several large volumes. There are fables, madrigals, stories, and mythological tales, sprinkled with descriptions, citations, sentences, and precepts ; full of kindness, honesty, and sweetness, and written with THE HAGUE. 197 ingenuous simplicity and delicate wit. His volume is the book of national wisdom, the second Bible of the Dutch people^ a manual for the teaching of an honest end peaceful life. He gives counsal to all ; to the youth and to the old man, to the merchant as to the prince, to the mistress as to the servant, to the rich man as to the mendicant. He teaches how to spend, how to spare, how to keep a house, how to govern a family, how to educate children. He is at the same time friend, father, spiritual director, master, steward, physician, advocate. He loves modest nature, the gardens, the fields, adores his wife; he works, is content with hiuiself and others, and desires that all should be as happy as he. His poetry is found in every house beside the Bible. There is not a peasant's hut where the head of the family does not read some of his verses aloud every evening. In days of doubt and sadness all seek and find comfort in. their old poet. He is the fire-side friend, the assiduous companion of the infirm or sick; over his book the faces of betrothed lovers first approach each other; his verses are the first to be learned by the child, and the last to be pronounced by the grandfather. No poet was ever more beloved. Every Hollander smiles at the sound of his name, and no foreigner has been in Holland without learning to pro- nounce it with sympathy and respect. The third, Bilderdijk, born in 1756, died in 1831, was one of the most wonderful intellects that has ever appeared ia the world. Poet, historian, philologist, critic, astronomer, chemist, theologian, antiquarian, jurisconsult, draughts- man, engraver; a restless man and a wanderer, capricious^ 198 HOLLAND. violent^ his life was but an investigation, a transformation, a perpetual tattle of his vast genius. Young, and already a famous pcet, he left poetry, threw himself into politics, emigrated io England with the Stadtholder, and taught in London for a living. Tired of England, he went to Germany ; weary of German romanticism, he returned to Holland, where Louis Napoleon loaded him with favours. But Louis descended from the throne, and Napoleon the Great took away BilderdijVs pension, and reduced him to poverty. He asked for a chair in the University of Leyden, and was refused. Finally, he obtained a small subsidy from the Government, and continued to write and study and combat up to the last day of his life. His works are composed of more than thirty volumes of science, art, and literature. He treated every kind of subject, and succeeded in all except the drama. He en- larged the field of historical criticism, writing one of the finest national histories that his country possesses. He wrote a poem, " The Primitive World,^^ a grandiose and obscure work, much admired in Holland. He treated every kind of question, mingling strange paradoxes and luminous truths. Finally, he raised the national litera- ture, which had fallen before his time, and left a phalanx of elect disciples who followed his steps in politics, art, and philosophy. He excited more than enthusiasm in Holland, he excited fanaticism ; and it cannot be doubted that, after Vondel, he is the greatest poet of his country. But he was injured by religious passion, a blind hatred against the new ideas, poetry made the instrument of a sect, theology intermingled with everything, so that he TEE HAGUE, 199 never rose into that rei^ion of serenity and freerlom, out- side of whicli genius gains no enduring victories or uni- versal acknowledgment. About these three poets, Tvho have in them the three principal vices of Dutch literature — to lose itself in the clouds, or to graze the earth too near, or to be caught in the net of mysticism — are grouped numbers of others, epic, comic, satiric, lyric, most of them of the seven- teenth century, very few of the eighteenth; many of whom enjoy great fame in Holland, but none of whom stands out in relief from the rest sufficient to draw the attention of a foreigner. A rapid glance is due to the present day. That criti- cism, despoiling Dutch history of the poetic veil in which patriotic writers have dressed her, has conducted her along the wider and more fertile paths of justice; that philological studies are held in the highest honor, and that almost all the sciences have in Holland professors of European fame — are things that no studious man in Italy is ignorant of, and need only to be hinted at. Of literature properly so called, the most flourishing kind is E/Omance. Holland has had her national romance- writer, her Walter Scott, in Van Leunep, who died only a few years ago, and whose historical novels were received with enthusiasm bv all classes of societv ; a most excellent painter of costume, learned, witty, a master of description and admirable in dialogue; but who is often prolix, and makes use of old artifices, and does not always hide himself sufficiently, while he frequently forces the denoue- ment of his plot. His last novel, entitled " The Adventures 200 HOLLAND. of Nicoletta Zevenster '' — in which^ representing, in a mas- terly manner, Dutch society at the beginning of this cen- tury, he had the audacity to describe an unnameable house at the Hague — was commented upon, discussed, abused, and lauded to the skies ; and the battle still goes on. Other historical romances were written by Schimmel, an emulator of VanLeunep; and one Madame Rosboon Toussaint, a cultivated writer, rich in study and deep genius. Nevertheless, historical romance, even in Hol- land, may be considered as dead. Better fortune attends romances of manners and novels, in which one Beets is first, a poet and Protestant minister, author of a celebrated book called the '^ Dark Chamber.'' There is also Koetsveld, and some young men of talent, who contend with each other in raising up that persecuting demon of the litera- ture of the day — haste. Holland has also a kind of romance quite her own, which may be called Indian romance, and which paints the manners and the life of the people of the colonies; and several of this kind have appeared of late years, which have been received with much applause in the country, and have been translated into various languages ; among others, "The Beau monde of Batavia/' by Professor Ten Briuck, a learned and brilliant writer, whom I wish I could speak of at greater length, in order to attest in some way my gratitude and admiration. But apropos of Indian romances, it is interesting to note how, in Hol- land, you hear and see at every step something to remind you of her colonies ; how a ray of the sun of India seems to penetrate through her fogs and color her life. Besides THE HAGUE. 201 the ships which bring a breath of that country into her ports — besides the birds^ the flowers, the thousand objects, that, like scattered strains of distant music, bring to the mind fancies of another nature and another race — it is not rare to meet in the streets of the Dutch cities, in the midst of the white faces, visages bronzed by the sun, of people born in the colonics, or who have lived there for many years ; merchants who talk with unusual vivacity about brunettes, bananas, groves of palms, and lakes em- bowered in vines; bold young men who risk their lives in the midst of the savages of Borneo and Sumatra; men of science, men of letters, and officers, who tell about the worshippers of fishes, or ambassadors who carry the heads of the vanquished suspended from their girdles, combats between bulls and tigers, the furies of opium-eaters or multitudes baptised with pomp ; or a thousand other strange and wonderful things, which occasion a singular effect when uttered by the cold natives of this most tranquil land. Poetry, after having lost Da Costa, a disciple of Bil- derdijk, and a religious and enthusiastic poet,^and Gene- stel, a satirical poet, who died very young, has but few specimens left of the past generation, who are mostly silent, or sing with faint voices. The theatre is in a worse condition. Dutch actors, declamatory and untrained, act in general only French or German dramas and comedies, which are badly translated, and which high society will not go to see. Dutch writers of talent, like Hofdijk, Schimrael, and the before-mentioned Van Leunep, wrote coniedies which, iu some respects, were admirable, but did 202 HOLLAND. not please enough to keep the stage. Tragedy is in no better condition than comedy or drama. From what I have said it would appear that there is no great literary movement in Holland; but there is, in fact, a great deal. The quantity of books published is incredible; and so is the avidity with which they are read. Every city, every religious sect, every society has its review or its journal. There is, besides, a flood of foreign books ; English novels in every hand ; French works in eight, ten, twenty volumes, translated into the national tongue, an admirable thing in a country where every educated person can read them in the original, and which proves that it is usual not only to read them but to buy them, notwithstandiDg the fact that books in Holland are very dear. But it is precisely this superabundance of publications, and this rage for reading, which injures literature. Authors, in order to satisfy the impatient curiosity of the public, write too fast, and the mania for foreign reading suffocates and corrupts the national genius. Nevertheless, Dutch literature has still a title to the gratitude of the country ; it is fallen but not perverted ; it has preserved its innocence and freshness ; what it lacks in fancy, in originality, in splendor, is made up in good sense, in severe respect for good taste and good manners, in benevolent solicitude for the poorer classes, in effica- cious works for the promotion of beneficence and civil education. Other literatures are great plants covered with odorous flowers; Dutch literature is a little tree loaded with fruit. On the morning that I left the Hague, the second time THE HAGUE. 203 that I was there, some of my clearest friends accompaniefl me to the railway station. The weather was rainy. In the waiting-room I thanked my kind hosts for the plea- sant welcome they had given me; and as I knew I should not probably ever see them again, I expressed my gra- titude in affectionate and melancholy words, which they listened to in silence. One only interrupted me to beji me to be careful against the dampness. " Should anyone belonging to you come to Italy,^' I continued, ^^it would give me the opportunity to show my gratitude. Promise me that someone will come, and I shall depart with a feeling of consolation. I will not go until someone tells me that he will come to Italy.^'' They looked at each other, and one of them answered faintly, "Perhaps/"' Another gave me the advice never to change French gold in the shops. At that moment the bell for departure rang out. '^Farewell, then,^' I said, in a slightly agitated voice, pressing their hands; "until we meet again. I shall never forget the pleasant days I have passed at the Hague. I shall always remember you all ainong the most agree- able memories of my journey ; think of me sometimes/^ " Good-bye," they answ^ered, in the same tone as if they expected to meet me again next day. I entered the car- riage with a heavy heart, and looked out of the window until the train moved on; and they stood there mute, im- passible, with their eyes fixed on mine. Waving my hand for the last time, they responded with a slight nod, and disappeared for ever from my eyes. Every time I think of them, I see them as they stood there, with grave faces 204 HOLLAND. and fixed eyes, and the affection I feel for tliem has something of the austere and sad_, like their own skies^ under which I saw them for the last time. LEYDEN. The country between tlie Hague and Leyden is all one verdant plain^ dotted by the vivid red of the roofs and streaked by the blue of the canals; with here and there groups of trees, windmills^ and scattered herds of cattle. You move onwards and seem still to be at the same point, gazing at the same objects. The train glides on slowly and almost noiselessly through the silent country; in the carriage no one speaks, at the stations no voice is heard, and gradually the mind settles into a sort of doze, in which you forget where you are and whither you are going. " And yet,"*^ says Diderot, travelling in Holland, '* and yet people do sleep in this country ! ^■' The remark came often to my lips as we sped along, until I heard the cry of '' Xjeyden ! '^ and alighted at a station, silent and solitary as a convent, Leyden, the antique Athens of the north, the Saragossa of the Low Countries, the oldest and most illustrious of the daughters of Holland, is one of those cities which 206 HOLLAND. make you thoughtful upon first entering them^ and are remembered for a long time afterwards witli a certain impression of sadness. I had hardly arrived when the chill of a dead city seemed to fall upon me. The old Rhine^ which crosses Leyden, dividing it into many islets joined together by one hundred and fifty stone bridges, forms wide canals and basins which contain no ship or boat_, and the city seems rather invaded by the waters than merely crossed by them. The principal streets are very broad and flanked by rows of old blockhouses with the usual pointed gables, and the few people seen in the streets and squares are like the survivors of a city depopulated by the plague. In the smaller streets you walk upon long tracts of grass, between honses with closed doors and windows, in a silence as profound as that of those fabled cities where all the inhabitants are sunk in a supernatural sleep. You pass over bridges overgrown with weeds, and long canals covered with a green carpet, through small squares that seem like convent courtyards ; and then, suddenly, you reach a broad thoroughfare, like the streets of Paris ; from which you again penetrate into a labyrinth of narrow alleys. From bridge to bridge, from canal to canal, from island to island, you wander for hours seek- ing for the life and movement of the ancient Ley den, and finding only solitude, silence, and the waters which reflect the melancholy majesty of the fallen city. After a long turn, I came out into a vast square where a squadron of cavalry was going through its exercises. An old cicerone who accompanied me, stopped me under LEYDEN. 207 the shade of a trce^ and told me that the square, called in Dutch the Ruin, commemorated a great disaster to the city of Leyden. " Before 1807/' he mumbled in broken French^ and in a schoolmaster's tone peculiar to all Dutch ciceroni^ " this great space was all covered with houses, and the canal that now crosses it ran through the middle of a street. On the 12th of January 1807, a ship laden with gunpowder, which lay here, blew up, and eight hundred houses with several hundred people flew up in the air, and so this square was formed. Among the in- habitants who perished was the illustrious historian John Luzuc_, who was afterwards buried in the church of St. Peter, with a fine inscription ; and among the houses which flew up in the air was that of the Elzevir family, the glory of Dutch typography.'^ ^^The house of the Elzevirs ! " thought I, in agreeable surprise ; and certain bibliomaniacs whom I knew in Italy came to my mind, who would have been but too happy to press with their feet the ground which had once sustained that illustrious house, whence had issued those small marvels of typo- graphy which they sought for, dreamed of, and caressed with such warm affection ; those tiny books that seemed stamped in adamantine characters ; those models of fine- ness and precision, in which a typographical error is a portent which duplicates the value of the prize ; those wonders of polytype, of twists and flourishes, and tail- pieces, which they discuss in low voices and with glisten- ing eyes ! Coming out of the square of Ruin I entered the Breede Straat, the broadest and longest of the Leyden streets, 208 HOLLAND. which crosses the city from one end to the other in the form of an S, and arrived in front of the City Hall^ which is one of the most curious buildings of the sixteenth cen- tury. At first sight it has a theatrical appearance and contrasts unpleasantly with the grave aspect of the city. It is a long, low building, of an ash color, with a bare fagade, along the top of which runs a stone balustrade, ornamented with obelisks, pyramids, and aerial frontis- pieces set off with grotesque statues, the whole forming a sort of fantastic embroidery around the steep roof. Op- posite to the principal entrance rises a bell-tower composed of several stories, onewitbin the other, giving it the aspect of a very tall kiosk, with an enormous iron crown upon the top in form of a reversed balloon, surmounted by a flagstaff. Above the door, which is approached by two flights of steps, there is an inscription in Dutch, com- memorating the famine of 1574^ composed in one hundred and thirty-one letters, corresponding to the number of days of the duration of the siege of Leyden. Going into the palace, I wandered from room to room without encountering a living soul or hearing a sound that indicated habitation, until at last I came across an usher, who placed himself at my side, and making me cross a large room where sat some clerks, as motionless as images, he conducted me to the hall of curiosities. The first object that attracted my attention was a disjointed table, upon which, if the tradition is true, the famous tailor, John of Leyden, worked ; he who, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, tnrned the country upside down, as had been done five centuries before by Tankelyn, of LEYDEK 209 obscene memory ; that Jolin of Leyden, the leader of the Anabaptists^ M'ho held the city of Monster against the Count Bishop of Waldeck, and was there elected king by his fanatical partisans ; that pious prophet, who had a seraglio of women, and who cut off the head of one of them because she complained of hunger; that John of Leyden, in short, who, at the age of twenty-six, died, torn by red-hot irons, and whose body, enclosed in an iron cage on the top of a tower, was devoured by crows. He did not succeed, however, in exciting the fanaticism which was raised by Tankelyn, to whom women prosti- tuted themselves -in the sight of their husbands and mothers, persuaded that they were doing what was grate- ful to God; and men drank, as a water of purification, the water in which he had washed his filthy person. In other rooms there are paintings by Plinck, Francis Mieris, Cornelius Engelbrechsten, and a " Last Judg- ment"'^ by Luca von Leyden, the patriarch of Dutch painting, the first who seized the laws of aerial perspec- tive, a valiant colorist and engraver of great fame, to whom, it is to be hoped, will be forgiven in the next world the ignoble ugliness of the Marys and Magdalens, the burlesque saints and convulsive angels, with which he has peopled his canvas. He also, like almost all the Dutch painters, had a most adventurous life. He tra- velled about Holland in a boat of his own ; in every city he gathered the painters together at a banquet. He was, or believed himself to be, poisoned by some slow poison administered by his rivals. He kept his bed for years, and painted in bed his chef d'oeuvre, "The Blind Man of 14 210 HOLLAND. Jericho cured by Christ/' He died two ycLrs afterwards, on a day memorable for a prorligious heat^ which killed many, and produced much illness. Coming out of the City Hall, I went up to a castle posted upon a small hill which rises in the midst of the city, between the two principal branches of the E-hine; the most ancient part of Ley den. This castle, called by Hollanders the '^ Burg,'' is no other than a great round tower, quite empty, built, according to some authorities, by the Romans; according to others by one Hengist, Duke of the Anglo-Saxons; and recently restored and crowned with battlements. The hill is covered by tall oak trees, which hide the tower and prevent the enjoy- ment of the surrounding view; only here and there, looking through the branches, can glimpses be caught of the red roofs of Leyden, the plain streaked with canals, the downs, and the bell- towers of the distant city. On the top of that tower, under the shadow of the oaks, it is usual for the stranger to evoke the memories of that siege which was " the most dismal tragedy of modern times," and which seems to have left an indelible trace of badness upon the aspect of Leyden. In 1573 the Spaniards, led by Valdez, laid siege to Leyden. In the city there were only some volunteer sol- diers. The military command was given to Van der Voes, a valiant man, and a Latin poet of some renown. Van der Werf was burgomaster. In brief time the besiegers had constructed more than sixty forts in all the places where it was possible to penetrate into the city by sea or land, and Leyden was completely isolated. But the people LEY DEN. 211 of Lcyden did not lose heart. William of Orange liad sent them word to hold out for three months, within which time he would succour them, for on the fate of Lcyden depended that of Holland; and the men of Lcyden had promised to resist to the last extremity. Valdez sent to offer them pardon in the name of the King of Spain,, if they would open their gates. They replied with a Latin verse : '^Fistula dulce canit, volucrem dum decipit anceps/' and began to make sorties and to attack. Meanwhile, within the city provisions began to grow scarce, and the circle of the besiegers grew tighter from day to day. William of Orange, who occupied the fortress of Polder- waert, between Delft and Rotterdam, seeing no other way to succour the city, conceived the design of raising the siege of Leyden by breaking the dykes of the Issel and the Meuse, and driving out the Spaniards by water, since it could not be done by arms. This desperate design was forthwith put in action. The dykes being broken in sixty places, the sluice-gates of Rotterdam and Gonda were opened, the sea began to invade the land, and two hundred barges were in readiness at Rotterdam, at Deftshaven, and other points, to carry provisions into the city as soon as the great rise of the waters should take place which comes with the autumnal equinox. The Spaniards, startled at the first news of the inundation, were reassured when they understood the purpose of the Hollanders, holding it cer- tain that the city must surrender before the waters could arrive at the first fortifications, and pushed on the siege with redoubled vigor. In the meantime, the people of Leyden, who began to feel the pressure of famine, and to 14 * 212 HOLLAND. despair of snccour arrivinG^ in time, sent letters by means of pigeons to William of Orange, who was sick of fever at Amsterdam, to la^^ before him the sad condition of the cit}' ; and William responded, encouraging them to pro- tracted resistance, promising that as soon as he was better he wonld fly in person to their aid. The waters advanced ; the Spaniards began to abandon the lower fortifications; the inhabitants o£ Leyden continually climbed the tower to watch the sea, now hoping, now despairiiig, and never ceased to work at the walls, to make sorties, and to repulse attacks. At last the Prince of Orange got well, and pre- parations for the deliverance of Leyden, which during his illness had gone on but slowly, were now resumed with vigor. On the 1st of September the people of Leyden, from the top of their tower^ saw appear upon the distant waters the first Dutch vessels. It was a small fleet, com- manded by Admiral Boisot, and carrying eight hundred Zealanders, savage men, covered with scars, accustomed to the sea, disdainful of life, fierce in battle, wearing in their caps a crescent on which was inscribed " Rather Turks than Papists,^^ and forming a phalanx of strange and ' terrible aspect, resolute to save Leyden or to perish in the waters. The ships advanced to within five miles of the city, against the outermost dyke, which was defended by the Spaniards. The battle began with the assault upon the dyke^ which was taken, cut, the sea broke in, and the Dutch vessels floated triumphantly through the breach. It was a great step^ but it was only the first. Behind this dyke there was another. Again the battle began; the second dyke was taken and cut, and the fleet passed ou. LEYDEN. 213 All at once the wind changed to the contrary quarter, and the ships were constrained to stop ; it changed again, and they went on ; it shifted once more, and again the fleet was arrested. Whilst this was going on, within the city there began to bo a scarcity even of the disgusting animals on which the citi- zens had been constrained to feed; people threw themselves on the ground to lick up the blood of the slain ; women and children searched for scraps of food among the refuse in the streets; an epidemic broke out; the houses were full of corpses; more than sixteen thousand citizens died; every hope of relief had perished. A crowd of famishing people rushed to the burgomaster Van der WerfF, and demanded the surrender of the city with loud cries. Van dcr WerlF refused. The people broke into threats. Then he made a sign with his hat that he wished to speak, and in the midst of the general silence, cried : *^ Citizens of Leyden ! I have sworn to defend the city unto death, and with the help of God, I will maintain my oath. It is better to die of hunger than of shame. Your threats do not move me. I can die but once. Kill me, if you will, and satiate your hunger on my flesh ; but while I live do njt ask me to surrender Leyden ! " The crowd, moved by his words, dispersed in silence, resigned to death, and thu defence went on. At last, on the night of the 1st of October, a violent tempest of wind burst out ; the sea rose, overwhelmed the ruined dykes, and furiously invaded tl:e land. At midnight, when the tempest was at its height, in profound darkness, the Dutch fleet once more set sail. Some Spanish vessels came to meet them. Then began a 214 HOLLAND. terrible battle among the tops of trees and the roofs of submerged houses, by the light of the cannon-flashes. The Spanish ships were boarded and sunk; the Zealanders jumped overboard and pushed their vessels forward with their shoulders; the Spanish soldiers, seized with terror, abandoned the forts, fell by hundreds into the sea, were killed with daggers and grappling-irons, precipitated from roofs and dykes, destroyed, dispersed. One more fortress remained in the hands of Valdez ; the besiegers wavered yet a little between hope and despair ; then this fortress was abandoned ; the Dutch fleet entered the city. Here a horrible spectacle awaited them. A population of bony spectres, almost dead with hunger, crowded the banks of the canals, staggering, and falling, and stretching out their arms towards the ships. The sailors began to throw bread to them, and then ensued among these dying men a desperate struggle ; many were suffocated ; others died in the act of eating; others fell into the canals. The first rage of hunger satisfied, the most crying need of the city provided for, citizens, Zealanders, sailors, civic guards, soldiers, women, and children, and all that glorious and wasted croAvd rushed to the cathedral, where they sang, in voices broken by sobs, a hymn of thanks and praise to God. The Prince of Orange received the news of the safety of the city at Delft, in church, where he was present at Divine service. He sent the message at once to the preacher, and the latter announced it to the congregation, who received it with shouts of joy. Although only just recovered from his illness, and the epidemic still raging at LETDEK 215 Leydcn. William would see at once his dear and valorous city. He went there ; his entry was a triumph ; his majestic and serene aspect put new heart into the people ; his words made them forget all they had suffered. To reward Leydcn for her heroic defence, he left her her choice between exemption from certain imposts or the foundation of a university. Lcyden chose the university. The festival of the inauguration of the university was celebrated on the 5th of February 1575 with a solemn procession. First came a company of the burgher militia, and five companies of infantry from the garrison of Ley- den, behind whom came a car drawn by four horses, in which was a woman dressed in white, who represented the Gospel, and around the car the four Evangelists. Justice, with her eyes bandaged, followed, carrying the scales and sword, mounted on a unicorn, and surrounded by Julius, Papiiiius, Ulpius, and Tribinius. After Justice came Medicine, on horseback, with a treatise in one hand and in the other a garland of medicinal herbs, and accompanied by the four great doctors — Ilippocratus, Galen, Dioscori- dus, and Theophrastus. Minerva followed, armed with lance and shield, and escorted by four horsemen who represented Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Virgil Between all these came warriors in ancient armour ; and the pro- cession ended with halberdiers, mace - bearers, music, officials, the new professors, the magistrates, and a great crowd. It passed slowly through streets strewn with flowers, under triumphal arches, between hangings and banners, until it reached a small port on the Rhine, where it encountered a large vessel, splendidly decorated,, 216 HOLLAND. upou which^ under a canopy of laurel and orange boughs, sat Apollo^ playing on the lute, surrounded by the nine muses singing, and Neptune, saviour of the city, who acted as helmsman. The vessel approached the shore ; the golden-haired god and the nine sisters landed, and kissed one after another the new professors, saluting them with Latin verses ; after which the procession went onwards to the building destined for the university, where a professor of theology, the Very Reverend Gaspar Kolhas, pro- nounced an eloquent inaugural address, preceded by music and followed by a splendid banquet. How this university answered to the hopes of Leyden, it is superfluous to say. Everybody knows how the States of Holland with their liberal offers drew learned men from every country ; how philosophy, driven out of France, took refuge there ; how Leyden was for a long time the securest citadel for all men who were struggling for the triumph of human reason ; how it became at length the most famous school in Europe. The actual university is in an ancient convent. One cannot enter without a. sentiment of profound respect the great hall of the Academic Senate, where are seen the portraits of all the professors who have succeeded each other from the founda- tion of the university up to the present day. Among them are Lipseus, Vossius, Heinsius, Gronovius, Heras- tuhuys, Kuhiieken, Valckeneer, the great Scaliger, whom the States of Holland invited to Leyden through the intervention of Henry IV. ; the two famous men, Goma- rius and Arminius, who provoked the great definite reli- gious struggle of the synod of Dordrecht ; the celebrated LEY BEN, 217 physician Boerhaave, at whose lessons Peter the Great attended, to whom carae invalids from all parts of Europe, and who received a letter from a Chinese mandarin with the simple direction : " To the illustrious Boerhaave, phy-* sician in Europe.'^ Now this glorious university, although it still has illus- trious professors, is declining. Its students, who in the old time amounted to two thousand, are now reduced to a few hundreds. The instruction which is given there cannot any more rival that of the universities of Berlin, Munich, or Weimar. The principal reason for this deca- dence is to be found in the number of Dutch universities. Besides that at Ley den, there is one at Utrecht, one at Groeuingen, and an Athenscum at Amsterdam ; whence it follows that the libraries, museums, and eminent pro- fessors which gathered in one city would form an excellent university, are now scattered about, and are unequal to their task. Yet Holland is none the less convinced that one single excellent university would serve her better than four inferior ones. And why is it not done ? O reader, all the world is one country. It is the same in Hol- land as elsewhere. The three university towns cry out together, " Let us suppress them ! ^' and each one says to the other, " You begin ^' ; and so they go on. But, although fallen, the Leyden University is still the most flourishing in Holland, more especially for the nu- merous and rich museums which belong to it. Neither of these, however, nor of the libraries, nor of the admir- able botanic gardens, would it be proper to treat, as I should have to do, lightly and hastily. I cannot forget 218 HOLLAND. two very curious ttings in tlie Museum of Natural His- torvj one ridiculous and one serious. The first, which is in the anatomical cabinet (one of the richest in Europe), is an orchestra formed of fifty skeletons of very small mice, some erect, some sitting on a double row of benches, all with tails in the air, and with violins and guitars in their paws, music-books before them, cigars in their mouths, handkerchiefs and snuff-boxes beside them; and the leader gesticulating from an elevated seat. The serious thing consists of some pieces of corroded wood, full of holes like a sponge, fragments of piles and sluice- gates, which recall an immense danger run by Holland towards the middle of the last century. A shell- fish, a species of wood-worm, called taret, brought, it is believed, by some ship returning from the tropics, and multiplying with marvellous rapidity in northern waters, had so cor- roded and gnawed the wood of the dykes, that had it gone on for a short time longer without discovery, the sea would have broken in and flooded the whole country. The discovery of this danger threw Holland into dismay, the people rushed to the churches, and the entire popula- tion set to work ; they lined the sluice-gates with copper, they fortified the injured dykes, they strengthened the piles with nails, with stone, with sea-weed, and with masonry; and partly by these means, but especially by the rigor of the climate, which destroyed the terrible animal, the horrible calamity, feared at first as irreparable, was avoided. A worm had made Holland tremble; triumph denied to the tempests of the ocean and the anger of Philip of Spain. LEYDEK 219 Another precious ornament of Leyden is the Japanese museum of Doctor Sicbold, a German by birth, physician to the Dutch colony in the Island of Detsima ; who_, ac- cording to a romantic tradition, first obtained permission from the Emperor of Japan to enter his mysterious empire in reward for having cured his daughter; or, according to a more credible tradition, he got into the country in disguise,, and did not come out again until he had paid for his temerity with nine months of imprison- ment, and caused the loss of their heads to some man- darins who had aided him in his enterprise. However this may be, Doctor SicbokVs museum, is, perhaps, the finest collection of the kind that is to be found in Europe. An hour passed in the rooms is a voyage to Japan. There yoa can follow a Japanese family through- out the entire day ; from the rcoining toilet to the dinner, from the theatre to visiting, from the city to the coun- try. There are to be found houses, temples, idols, port- able altars, instruments of music, houseliold utensils, agricultural tools, costumes of laborers and fishermen; bronze candle-sticks formed of a stork standing on a tor- toise ; vases, jewels, poignards wrought with exquisite delicacy ; birds, tigers, rabbits, bufl'alocs in ivory, repro- duced feather by feather and hair by hair, with the patience peculiar to that ingenious and patient people. Among the objects which impressed me most, was a co- lossal head of Buddha, which at first made me recoil, and which is ever before me, with its monstrous contraction and inexplicable look between laughter, delinum, and s^)asm, which excites at once both disgust and terror. 220 HOLLAND. Behind this face of Buddha I saw the puppets of the Java theatres, real creations of a delirious brain^ wearying the eye and confounding the mind ; kings, queens, and mon- strous warriors, mixtures of man, beast, and plant, with arms ending in leaves, legs finished with ornaments, leaves spreading into hands, breasts in a state of vegeta- tion, noses opening into flowers, faces full of holes, squinting eyes, eyeballs in the back of the neck, limbs turned hind part before, dragons^ wings. Sirens^ tails, hair like snakes, fishes^ mouths, elephants' teeth, gilded wrinkles, zig-zag necks, and attitudes which no tongue can describe, nor any memory retain. Coming out of the museum, I seemed to awaken from some fever-dream in which I had seen something, I knew not what, continually changing with furious rapidity into some other nameless thing. There is nothing else to be seen at Leyden. The mill where Rembrandt was born is no longer in existence. Of the houses where were born the painters Dow, Steen, Metzu, Van Goyen, and that Otto van Veen who had the honour and the misfortune to be master to Peter Paul Rubens, there is no trace or record. The castle of Endegeest may still be seen, where Boerhaave and Des- cartes sojourned, the last for several years, during which his principal works of philosophy and mathematics were written. The castle is on the road from Leyden to the village of Katwijk. where the old Rhine, uniting its various branches into one, throws itself into the sea. The second time I was at Leyden I went to see the death of the marvellous river. The first time that I LEYDEN. 221 crossed the old Rhine, I had stopped on the bridge, asking myself whether that small and humble stream of water was really the same river that I had seen rushing in thunder over the rocks at Schaffhausen, spreading majestically before Mayence, passing in triumph under the fortress of Elirenbreitstein, beating in sonorous ca- dence at the foot of the Seven Mountains ; reflecting in its course Gothic cathedrals, princely castles, fertile hills, steep rocks, famous ruins, cities, groves, and gardens ; everywhere covered with vessels of all sorts, and saluted with music and song; and thinking of these things, with my gaze fixed upon the little stream shut in between two flat and desert shores, I had repeated^ " Is this that Rhine ? '' The vicissitudes which accompany the agony and death of this great river in Plolland, are such as really to excite a sense of pity, such as is felt for the misfortunes and inglorious end of a people once powerful and happy. From the neighbourhood of Emmerich, before reaching the Dutch frontier, it has lost all the beauty of its banks, and flows in great curves through vast and ugly flats, which seem to mark the approach to old age. At Mil- lingen it runs entirely in the territory of Holland ; a little farther on it divides. The main branch shamefully loses its name, and goes to throw itself into the iVfeuse ; the other branch, insulted by the title of the Dannerden canal, flows nearly to the city of Arnehm, when it once more divides into two branches. One empties into the Gulf of Zuyder-Zee ; the other still called, out of compassion, the Lower Rhine, goes as far as the village of Durstede, where 222 HOLLAND. it divides for the tliird time ; a humiliriion now of old date. One of these branches^ changing its name like a coward; throws itself into the IMeuse near Rotterdam ; the other still called the E/hine^ but with the ridiculous surname of ^^ curved/^ reaches Utrecht with difficulty, where for the fourth time it again divides ; capricious as an old man in his dotage. One part, denying its old name^ drags itself as far as Muiden, where it falls into the Zuyder Zee; the other, with the name of Old Rhine, or simply the Old, flows slowly to the city of Leyden, whose streets it crosses almost without giving a sign of movement, and is finally gathered into one canal by which it goes to its miserable death in the North Sea, But it is not many years since even this pitiful end was denied it. From the year 839, in which a furious tempest had accumulated mountains of sand at its mouth, until the beginning of the present century, the Old Rhine lost itself in the sand before reaching the sea, and covered a vast tract of country with pools and marshes. Under the reign of Louis Buonaparte the waters were collected into a large canal protected by three enormous sluice- gates, and from that time the Rhine flows directly to the sea. These sluices are the greatest monument in Holland and, perhaps, the most admirable hydraulic work in Europe. The dykes which protect the mouth of the canal, the walls, pillars, and gates, present altogether the aspect of a Cyclopian fortress, against which it seems that not only that sea, but the united forces of all seas, must break as against a granite mountain. When the tide rises the gates are closed to prevent the waters from LEY DEN, 223 invading the land; wlien the tide recedes they are opened to give passage to the waters of the Rhine which have accumulated behind them ; and then a mass of three thousand cubic feet of water passes tlirough them in one minute. On days when storms prevail,, a concession is made to the sea, and the most advanced of the sluice- gates is left open ; and then the furious billows rush into the canal, like an enemy entering by a breach, but they break upon the formidable barrier of the second gate, behind which Holland stands and cries, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther ! '^ That enormous fortification which, on a desert shore, defends a dying river and a fallen city from the ocean, has something of solemnity which commands respect and admiration. Again I look upon Leyden as T saw her on the evening of my return from an excursion, dark and silent like a de- serted city, and speak a reverent farewell, with my mind already cheered by the thought of Haarlem, the city of landscapes and flowers. 224 SOLLAND. HAARLEM. The railway from Ley den to Haarlem runs upon a strip of land comprised between the sea and the bottom of that great lake which thirty years ago covered all the country and which lies between Haarlem, Leyden^ and Amsterdam. The stranger travelling on that road with an old map printed before ]850_, looks about him and can find no lake of Haarlem. This happened to myself; and the thing appearing strange, I turned to a neighbor and demanded an account of the vanished lake. My fellow travellers laughed, and my question received the follow- ing odd reply : " We have drunk it up." The story of this wonderful work would be a subject worthy of a poem. The great lake of Haarlem, joined by the meeting of four small lakes, and swelled by the effects of inunda- tions, had already, at the end of the seventeenth century, a circuit of forty-four kilometres, and was called a sea. A sea indeed it was, and a tempestuous one, in which HAARLEM, 225 fleets of seventy ships liacl fought,, and many vessels had been wrecked. Thanks to the downs which stretched along its shores, this great mass of water had not yet been able to join itself to the North Sea, and thus con- vert Southern Holland into an island ; but on the other side, it threatened the country, the towns and villages, and constrained the inliabitants to be continually on the defensive. Already in 1640 a Dutch engineer of the name of Leeghwater had published a book with the design of showing the possibility and utility of draining this dangerous lake; but partly because of the difficulties presented by the method proposed by him, and more because the country was then engaged in the war with Spain, the undertaking found no promoters. The poli- tical events which followed the peace of 1648, and the disastrous wars between France and England, caused Leegh water's project to be forgotten until the beginning of the present century. Finally, towards 1819, the ques- tion was resumed, and new studies and new proposals made; but the execution was still deferred, and, perhaps, would not even yet have been brought to a conclusion, but for an unforeseen event which gave it the final impulse. On the 9th of November 1836, the waters of the Haar- lem sea, driven by a furious wind, overflowed the dykes and reached even to the gates of Amsterdam; and in the following month they invaded Leyden and all the country about the city. It was the final provocation. Holland took up the glove, and in 1839 the States General condemned the insolent sea to vanish from the face of the state. The works were begun in 1840. They 226 HOLLAND. commenced by the construction of a double dyke around tlie lake, and a broad canal destined to receive the waters^, which then, by other canals, would be conducted to the sea. The lake contained seven hundred and twenty-four millions of cubic metres of water, without counting rains and filtration which, during the draining, were found to amount to thirtv-three millions of cubic metres of water per year. The engineers had computed the quantity of water which would pass monthly from the lake through the canal at thirty-six millions two hundred thousand cubic metres. Three enormous steam-engines were sufficient for the work. One was placed near Haar- lem, another between Haarlem and Amsterdam, the third near Leyden. This last was named Leeghwater, in honor of the engineer who had first proposed the scheme. I saw it, for not only is it preserved, but is still in use at times, to absorb and turn into the canal the rain-water and that of filtration. And so with the other two, which equal the last. The engines are enclosed in large, round, battlemented towers, each one of which is encircled by a row of windows with pointed arches, from which project eleven great arms that, rising and falling with majestic deliberation, put in motion as many pumps, capable of raising, each in its turn, the enormous weight of sixty- six cubic metres of water. The first to be set to work was the Leeghwater, on the 7th of June 1849. The other two began soon after. From that time the level of the lake sank one centimetre a day. After thirty-nine months of labor, the gigantic enterprise was completed ; the engines had absorbed nine hundred and twenty-four HAAULEM. 227 million two liundrccl and sixtv-six thousand one hundred and twelve cubic metres of w'ater ; the Haarlem sea was no more. This work, which cost seven million two hundred and forty thousand three hundred and sixty-eight florins, gave to Plolland a new province of eighteen thousand five hunl red hectares of land. Cultivators came from all parts of Holland. They began by sowing colza, which gave a wonderful return ; and then every kind of produce, which succeeded perfectly well. And as the population came from different provinces, there were to be found all the different systems of cultivation rivalling one another, Zealand, Brabant, Friesland, Groningen, and North Hol- land were there, and there were to be heard all the dialects of the United Provinces ; a smaller Holland within Holland. As you approach Haarlem the villas and gardens become more and more numerous; but the city remains hidden among trees, above which appears only the tall bell-tower of the cathedral, surmounted by an iron ornament in the bulbous form of a Muscovite steeple. Entering the town you see on every side canals, windmills, drawbridges, fishing-boats, and houses reflected in the water; and after having walked about a hundred paces you come out into a vast square, at which you exclaim, in pleased wonder : "Oh, this is really Holland ! " In one corner is the cathedral, a bare and lofty edifice, surmounted by a roof in the form of a prism, which seems to cleave the sky like the edge of a sharp axe. Opposite the cathedral rises the ancient City Hall, crowned with battlements, with a roof like a ship bottom upwards, and 228 HOLLAND. a little balcony like a bird-cage stuck over the door; one part of the fa9ade is hidden by two little houses of stran