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with their deep sombre tones of color, do not in the least remind one of their brilliant Italian cousin.

sea.

The Hague is certainly the pleasantest and most peaceful-looking capital exist ing-" umbrageous" is the only word expressive of it, such is the amount of trees in every direction. "Trim retired leisure" is the general impression of the place, where women have time to squirt water at the fronts of their houses, and where the railway station is so clean that one might almost eat off the bricks. Still there is a busier and dirtier side to the town, connected with the trade to the We looked down canal after canal, with long perspectives of bridges, men punting heavy barges with long poles thrust into the muddy black water or against the brick sides, leaning over so far that, at sharp turnings of the canals, it seemed as if they must overtopple themselves and fall. The boats were full of green cabbages and yellow carrots, baskets, mats hung up in rows, peat in neat little square cakes, the best from Gueldreland. In many of them women and children were living in the small cabins, half under and half upon the deck, and were sitting about in picturesque heaps. Some of the canals are now filled up and turned into streets, but the waterways, with bright lights and chequered shadows from the avenues of trees thrown on the brick houses and the black-green water, are far more pleasant to look at. The stirring of the boats prevents the stagnant look which, in out-of-the-way, little-used corners, appears in a coating of green slime, and seems as if it ought to bring fever, but does not. Here is a very Dutch picture: two women harnessed to a boat by a long rope, pushing against the collar like beasts of burden; a bit of red color on a wherry under the distant bridge; then a green hull and a mass of black barge, and the blue of the men's shirts, punting among the trees with their long poles, carrying the color from a bright sky. Nature gets the blue required for her gamut often from above, and the reflections of the trunks and houses in the water, wherever it was still, doubled and inverted the lines with admirable effect.

Next a more open view out of our windows, where the canal (always a nec

essary foreground here) is backed by the park. The trees, particularly the oaks, grow very straight, showing that there is no stony, gravelly obstacle to their tap roots in the easy soil; peat (of an inferior quality) is reached wherever a foundation is dug or a garden cultivated, even in the best quarters of the town. Endless barrows, with all sorts of produce, are passing by-grapes ; blue, green, and orange faïence; a red box with "Koffee, Thee," on it-the last as national a beverage here as in England; a boy in a blouse and sabots, with two great baskets slung to a yoke, and an enormous cauliflower in each; some women marketing, with queer skull caps of very thin beaten gold, hiding the hair completely, a costume from Zeeland; others with lace lappets, and small curly gold horns projecting four or five inches on the side of the head, heirlooms in a North Holland family, a white jacket, pink apron, and sabots, cold coloring; the peasants looking substantial in every sense; odd, old-fashioned country carts, with a curious horn jutting out in front; two wicked little boys, certainly not twelve years old, smoking; several more in wooden shoes and red stockings, flinging stones to bring down the horse-chestnuts, with an amount of diligence, patience, and skill, which would make them model boys if they do those lessons as earnestly for which they will certainly be too late this morning. No "guardians of order" interfering; apparently order takes care of itself in this well-conducted population. The schools are said to be remarkably good and well attended; the religious education is kept separate from the secular, the hot Protestant and Catholic feuds making any other arrangement impossible, if the children are to be taught together; and there seems to be no difficulty there at least in carrying out the details.

We drove to the "Maison du Bois," through a thick grove of tall trees, remnants of the ancient forest which once girt the whole territory of the Netherlands, another portion of which is still to be found near Haarlem, and which long enabled the savage inhabitants of the quicksands and thickets of Batavia to withstand even the Romans; while the tangled bushes into which the sand was

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blown on the shore of the North Sea are believed to be the origin of the dunes. The trees grow so close as to spoil each other sadly, but if once the sharp sea winds are admitted the destruction is great. Tall beech trunks, here and there, thrust their heads high into the air, pine and elm, hornbeams and horsechestnuts, crossed and mingled their branches, with a great variety of foliage. In the midst of the wood we came upon a dark green clear pool, looking very weird and strange, and one sees where Ruysdael got the black greens, the sombre, sunless shadows, of his pictures. The deep seclusion of the place is very striking, though within a mile or two of the town; the road wound and twisted through the thick forest, closing in on every side and over our heads, when, without any preparation, we came suddenly on the old red brick palace with a high" perron" and steps in front, literally planted in the very heart of the mystery. Certainly this is the very place where the "Belle au bois dormante" must have lived, and probably these are the princes her descendants, only the Queen, one of the cleverest women in Europe, does not look as if much of the sleep had come down upon her. The house is a show place, full of Javanese and Japanese curiosities, and Mr. Motley's portrait figures there, hanging in a room full of the most precious of the monsters. He has certainly merited the rarest place in the kingdom, for his canonization of its heroes and his vivid pictures of the great struggles of its people.

A poetic little garden behind, full of roses, was framed with wreaths of Westeria as we looked out of a central hall, the cupola and walls of which are paint ed by scholars of Rubens in memory of the great deeds of some Prince of Orange, by order of his wife, who sits at the top and admires her own work in her husband's honor.

The gallery at the Hague is very small, but full of pictures of great interest not by any means, however, those which are most talked about. The big Bull is a disappointment; we have been satiated with beast-painting, and the

*There is a short prosaic way to the straight bare high road on the other side the palace, but this may be quite ignored.

hairs of his head and the droppings from his nose, wonderful as they are, are too realistic and prosaic to excite any great warmth of enthusiasm. The sleepy sheep, too, are so poorly painted that they seem as if not by Paul Potter's own hand. Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair" is a far higher kind of art.

Here, too, is a fine portrait of Prince Maurice, by Mireveldt, in armor, with a high narrow forehead and peaked bead. There is more even than his father's statesmanlike power in the face, but far less of the benignity. The features of the family of the Nassaus are well worth study. William the Silent and his three brothers had already laid down their lives for the sake of their country, and his son and nine more of the race were devoting their blood, their property, and every energy and talent they possessed to the service of the cause at the time this picture was painted. Few lands, indeed, owe more to one great family than Holland to the race of William.

The bevy of doctors surrounding a subject about to be dissected, foreshortened in a marvellous manner, is not so unpleasant as it sounds, and is a splendid effort of portrait-grouping, natural and life-like, and of light and shade, but it is not a picture on which one can like to dwell. The portraits of Rubens' first and second wives are full of color, life, and brilliant light; "But I don't know which I should like least for my own wife of those two coquettish ladies," said our companion. There is no good picture of William the Silent; probably he was far too busy with greater interests to remember to be painted; but though the omission seems to be in character with the man, it is not the less to be regretted. The statue on the Plein is not bad, but it is only a late production; by his side the little dog is immortalized which saved his life, when lying asleep in his tent, by barking so violently that it awakened the Prince, on one of the many occasions when his assassination was attempted by order of Philip II.

Two or three lovely little landscapes, full of air and sunshine and distance, with much sky, make one feel as if a hole in the wall were opened admitting the real view. One of these gives that mixture of ships and trees common in Holland, and another the distant sight

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of a town amidst formal trees and wide meadows, whose realization we soon came upon in Leyden itself, near a small branch of the Rhine, where a great church rising among the trees and red houses has a sort of simulated look of the hull of a ship reversed, very characteristic of its position.

Leyden is now the quietest and most stagnant of learned universities, but with a story to it of the siege by the Spaniards in 1573, than which nothing more moving has happened in the story of our race. The heroic manner in which the inhabitants held out long after any wholesome provisions had been consumed, how they ate horses and dogs, and cats and rats were luxuries; how they dug up the very weeds in the market-place; and even when pestilence broke out from the privations endured by the inhabitants, and carried off thousands of them, still the remainder held out; is not this written in Mr. Motley's great chronicle of their race?

At length, as the last chance of relieving the city, William the Silent resolved upon opening the great dykes to the sea, and flooding the country so as to drown out the Spaniards and send food to the besieged. The damage to the fields, standing crops, and villages, in July, was enormous; it was a measure only to be taken as a last resort, but the danger was imminent, and if Leyden fell the rest of the country must follow. The Estates consented to the risk: "Better a drowned land than a lost land," cried the patriots, and a large capital was subscribed to carry out the work of destruction, as if it had been a commercial enterprise, while the ladies gave their plate and jewellery towards it. The besieged had written to the Prince that everything was gone but the malt-cake, and that after four more days nothing but starvation would be left to them. William was lying at Rotterdam so ill with a violent fever, brought on by fatigue and anxiety, that his life was despaired of, but he caused letters to be sent off, which, without mentioning his illness, told them that the dykes were already pierced and that the water was beginning to rise. Great rejoicings took place within the wretched town, cannon were fired, and the Spaniards were surprised at the sounds of music; but Leyden was fifteen miles

from the sea dyke, and the flotilla of 200 vessels, with guns and 2,500 veterans on board, was only able to get as far as a second dyke, still five miles from Leyden. Within this lay a chain of sixtytwo forts, occupying the land held by the Spaniards, who were four times the number of those coming to the rescue; a sanguinary and desperate action took place, but after breaking through these obstacles a third dyke still kept out the water. At length after a series of violent "amphibious skirmishes" this defence was carried and the dyke broken down; but again they were doomed to disappointment, the wind was east, and the water spreading] over so large a surface was reduced to a mere film of nine inches, too shallow for the ships-which required from eighteen to twenty-to sail over, and the fleet remained motionless.

Bread, malt

William had by this time somewhat recovered, and as soon as he was able to stand he came on board, when the mere sight of him revived the spirits of the forces. The besieged were now at their last gasp; they knew that the fleet had sailed, and guessed at its progress by the burning villages, but they knew also that the wind was contrary and that it could not advance to their help. cake, and horseflesh had disappeared, even the leaves were stripped from the trees and eaten; mothers dropped down dead with dead children in their arms; a dreadful disorder like the plague carried off from 6,000 to 8,oco persons; yet still the people resolutely held out. At last a party of the most fainthearted surrounded the Burgomaster, Adrian van der Wirt, and demanded a surrender. 'My life is at your disposal," said the heroic chief; "I can die but once, but I tell you I have made an oath to hold the city. It is a fate more horrible than famine to fall into the hands of the Spaniards. Take my body if it can be of any use to you, but expect no surrender while I am alive." The discontent was stayed, but still there seemed no hope of relief. "It were as easy to pluck the stars out of heaven as Leyden out of our hands," cried the Spaniards, jubilantly.

But the Lord sent a great wind, and it blew the waves furiously on the shore and across the ruined dykes, and the floods rose on the panic-stricken Span

iards, a thousand of whom were drowned, and the flotilla of barges sailed in at midnight over the waves amidst the storm and darkness. A fierce naval battle was fought amongst the branches of the great orchards and the chimney stacks of halfsubmerged farm-houses; the enemy's vessels were soon sunk, and on swept the fleet; and when they approached some shallows, the Zeelanders dashed into the sea and by sheer strength shouldered every vessel through. Before they could reach the town, however, there still remained the great fortress of Lammen, swarming with soldiers and bristling with artillery, which could not be left behind, while the town might still be starved before it could be reduced. At dead of night, however, the panic-stricken Spaniards fled, and to the surprise of the patriots, in the morning all were gone; and the fleet rowed in through the canals, the quays lined with the famishing people to whom bread was thrown as they passed along amidst the tears of the population. As soon as the brave Admiral Borson stepped on shore, a solemn procession repaired to the great church, nearly every living soul within the walls joining, where after a prayer had been offered up the whole vast multitude joined in a great thanksgiving hymn. But the emotion was too deep; they soon broke down, and the multitude wept like children. And on the day following the relief, when the north-west wind had done its work, behold, it shifted suddenly to the east, and again a tempest arose and blew back the waves whence they came, so that the land had rest, and the people were able once more to rebuild their dykes and restore the drowned fields. The whole story reads like a chapter in the history of the "chosen people."

The Prince, though still scarcely convalescent, appeared in the town next day; and as one proof of the gratitude of Holland for the heroism of its people, the University was then founded at Leyden.

We had passed the spire of an insignificant village on the right-" Ryswyk, where the Treaty was signed between the Empire, England, France, Holland, and Spain in 1697," said the guide-book oracularly. What was the treaty about? I know that we knew once, but this does not much mend the matter. I feel as if

I were being examined in Russell's "Modern Europe" and my information found very shaky. "What was the treay to settle?" I appeal to the "intelligent man," of whom one is perennially in search in any new place, but here even he is at fault. "Madame, je ne puis vous en rien dire, je n'ai pas été à Ryswyc." What a comfort it would be if the not having been at a place would honorably clear one at an examination ! "What are the dates of the two sieges of Vienna?" Sir, I cannot say; I have never been at Vienna." "What were the bases of the Treaty of Utrecht?" "Mr. Professor, how should I know? I have never visited Utrecht." And with a vague notion that it was something wherein William III. figured" we swept on.

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As Haarlem came in sight we passed over the fields wherein hyacinths, tulips, &c., blue, pink, yellow, and rainbow colored, are grown by the million, and make the country look like a garden parterre in spring. The alluvial soil when the peat is peeled off is found particularly productive for "roots."

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Are there any manufactures at Haarlem?" we ask of our last edition of the "intelligent man" on our road to the great organ. "Yes, madame," replied he, "the manufacture of onions" (bulbs).

The siege of this town preceded that of Leyden by a few months, and quite equalled it in heroism, but the end was far more painful. Indeed, the courage of Leyden must be estimated by the fact that she knew of the dreadful fate of her sister-city and yet was not afraid.

The position of the town was a most important one, on a narrow neck of land between the Zuyder Zee and the ocean, scarcely five miles across; with its fall the province would have been cut in two, and the difficulty of resistance greatly increased. On the other side lay the Haarlem Lake, covering seventy square miles of surface, very shallow but liable to great storms. The city was one of the largest and most beautiful in the Netherlands, but also one of the weakest; the walls were low, in bad order, and required a large garrison, instead of which they could only muster three thousand men, while thirty thousand Spaniards were encamped around it. It was winter, which at first gave the Hol

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landers some advantage, by enabling them to fight on their native ice, but after the first "rapid, brilliant, and slippery skirmishes," when, Alva's troops being worsted, he declared that such thing was never heard of till to-day," he ordered seven thousand pairs of skates, on which his soldiers were immediately made to practise their evolutions, and the balance was restored against the Netherlanders.

Again and again the indefatigable Orange sent in men, provisions, and ammunition, across the ice of the Haarlem Lake on sledges, often impelled by women and even children; every citizen became a soldier, and even the women took arms; and a corps of fighting women, all of respectable character, armed with swords, daggers, and muskets, did very efficient service in many fiercely-contested actions, within and without the walls.

The women in Holland have borne a distinguished part in the history of the country ever since the time when "the Gaul was assisted in a struggle by his blue-eyed wife, gnashing her teeth and brandishing her vast and snowy arms," as a soldier who fought under the Emperor Julian describes. But in spite of the desperate resistance of the burghers, "who fought as well as the best soldiers in the world could do," wrote Alva, the iron circle gradually closed in on the devoted city. They repelled three fierce assaults, defeating the enemy with great loss; they sallied forth with brilliant success, bringing in provisions and cannon, and killing almost a man apiece of the Spaniards; they built up the walls again as fast as the cannonade destroyed them, or when they were blown up by mines. Horrible barbarities were committed by the Spaniards on the few prisoners taken, but at length Alva introduced a fleet of war-boats on the lake, and, all the provisions in the town having been exhaust ed, the townfolk could do no more. As they could get no quarter they determined on cutting their way through the camp, with the women and children in the midst of a square. "It was a war such as had never been seen or heard of in any land on earth," wrote Alva to Philip II. The General, Don Frederic Alva, would willingly have abandoned the siege, but his father threatened to re

At last, fear

nounce him if he did so. ing that the desperate citizens would set fire to the town, he offered ample forgiveness to the place, having all the time in his pocket a letter from Alva ordering him "not to let a soldier remain alive,' and to execute a large number of the citizens. Haarlem yielded, and the people laid down their arms. As soon as they were no longer to be feared, the massacre began, and for many days five executioners and their attendants were kept at work till they were exhausted, when the remaining prisoners were tied back to back, two and two, and drowned in the lake. Two thousand three hundred persons were thus murdered in cold blood, including the Calvinist ministers and most of the principal inhabitants of the place. But the heroic resistance had not been in vain; it exhausted the strength of the besieging army to such a degree that "it was clear the Spanish empire could not sustain many such victories." Twelve thousand men had perished of their choicest troops, and the expenditure of treasure had been enormous, while in four years' time the city was once again lost to the Netherlanders, whose constancy nothing could subdue.

What then was the Lake of Haarlem is now green with fields and young trees, and spotted with new red farmhouses, lying twelve feet below the level of the surrounding low country. Another large space is being reclaimed, laid bare by the line of the new great ship canal from Amsterdam to the sea, on the other side of the railroad.

The struggle between man and water in this marvellous country, only protected from being swallowed up in the high tides of every autumn by the line of low dunes and the artificial dykes, which are little more than wattles and sand bound together by the roots of the grass, amost haunts one. It is as if the voice of the sea was ever sounding in their ears, "Watch, work, strengthen your dykes, or you will all be drowned!" "The details of the draining of the Haarlem Lake are extremely curious; a circular canal was first made round the district to be operated on, built up like the "levées" of the Po. Into this the water was (and is) pumped by four great steam-engines; it thence flows into a wider straight canal,

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