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or, when all his voyages are over, receiving the homage of the Venetians on his return, and settling down as a member of the Grand Council. We gaze upon Ignatius Loyola again. and again, passing through the narrow streets of Venice, sometimes begging his bread, and always sowing the seeds of the new doctrines which culminated in the establishment of the Order of Jesus. We see Goldoni writing his immortal comedies in the old Gothic palace near the Frari. We watch the brave Sarpi-Paul the Friar-resisting the wrath <f Rome, personified in Paul the Pope; we see him nearly assassinated by the nuncios of the papal court, but fearfully wounded though he be, recovering so as to fight nobly in the cause of the Republic again.

We enter at the house of Titin, whom kings and emperors delighted to honour, and see him surrounded with a gay and witty throng at one of his famous garden parties, and hear the sarcasm of Sansovino and the wild laughter of Aretino, the profligate poet; or we look in later on, while the plague is raging, and the old man in the agony of death sees his house robbed by ruffians, who are carrying away some of his choicest pictures as the eyes of the painter film in death. We see the first book printed in Italy issuing from the press at Venice, and note the excitement among the Venetians as they hold in their hands the "Gazette" -sold for a gazetta-the first newspaper ever published; or watch the excitement on the Rialto when the first bill of exchange was issued, and the first bank of deposit opened.

We hear Malibran, Pasta, Catalini, Grisi, Rubini singing in the Fenice Opera House; we see Byron meeting Teresa, Countess Guiccioli, for the first time at the palace of Madame Albrizzi; we see Josephine ruling as Queen of Venetian society; we mark old Doge Manin fall senseless as he is about to take the oath of allegiance to Austria; and we hear the ringing shouts of gladness as the Venetians welcome Victor Emanuel, King of Italy.

And so we leave Venice, calling it, as Goethe does, "a grand and reverend work of collective human effort-a glorious monument, not of a ruler, but a people."

Characteristics of Holland-Its Origin-Its Disadvantages - The Waterstaat and its Work-Enemies-Summary of Political History-Site of Amsterdam-The Harbour-History of the City-Commerce-The Great Canals-The Dam-The Palace-The Exchange and its Legend-The Churches of Amsterdam-Monument to De Ruyter-Religious Toleration-The Pilgrim Fathers-Diamond Cutting and Polishing-Dutch Art; its Characteristics-The MuseumManners and Customs in Amsterdam -Charitable Institutions-Environs-Broek-Zaandam-Alkmaar-HAARLEMThe Siege The Groote Kerk-A Tulip Mania-Coster, the Inventor of Printing-The Great Sea of Haarlem.

"Holland is a conquest made by man over the sea- -it is an artificial country. The Hollanders made it. It exists because the Hollanders preserve it. It will vanish whenever the Hollanders shall abandon it."-E. DE AMICIS.

ין.

T is impossible to present anything like a comprehensive view of a Dutch city until the country itself has been described, and therefore it will be necessary, in the first place, to tell how the country came into existence, and how its existence has been maintained.

In some countries the history of great people and great events clusters round one or two of the chief cities. This is not the case with Holland. Obscure little towns have as much historical and biographical interest as the political capital or the commercial capital, and therefore, in our descriptions, while taking Amsterdam and the Hague as the two principal places for consideration, we shall endeavour to bring in some account of famous towns and villages, in order that the story of the lives of great men, and the history of great events, may be told with more completeness than could otherwise be done.

AN AMSTERDAM POLICEMAN.

Holland, at the first, was a wild, desolate land, in the midst of lakes and seas, with here and there a forest of oaks and alders. Hither came adventurous German tribes, who reared their rude mud hovels, and entrenched themselves as well as they could against the approach of wandering rivers and incursions of the sea. Enemies beset them on every hand-winds, rain, and fog; but the brave pioneers held their own, and defied, as long as

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possible, the furious tempests. Sometimes it would happen that their settlements would be covered by the invading waters of the sea that poured into the very heart of the country, in which case they moved away, and pitched their tents elsewhere, living as they could on fish and game, and sea-birds' eggs.

In course of time it became apparent that if ever those wandering tribes should be able to make themselves into a nation, and their land habitable, they must create a spot free from the invasion of waters from the sea, the rivers, and the morasses. To this end they built dykes round their tiny settlements, then they enlarged their borders by driving back the sea, cutting channels for the rivers, and protecting their separate provinces, until finally they were able to protect the whole land. They drained the lakes and morasses, and turned them into valuable tracts of land, where they built their towns and villages; the rivers and canals they pressed into their service as means of easy communication from one place to another, and from time to time they extended their conquest over the sea.

The disadvantages under which the Hollanders laboured are almost inconceivable. "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 sterility. The first elements of manufacture-iron and coal-were wanting; there was no wood, because the forests had already been destroyed by 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. In some places they formed a productive soil with earth brought from a distance, as a garden is made; they spread the silicious 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."

Holland may, in many respects, be regarded as the most wonderful country in the world; her great cities, as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, are built upon piles driven in the sand; the land is lower than the sea, and is protected by dykes, the work of men's hands; the rivers are diverted from their natural courses, and made to pass in beds which men's hands have made, and the whole country is dependent upon the unceasing watchfulness of the inhabitants to prevent its being carried away.

The Waterstaat is the official organisation for watching and controlling the water -that great enemy which has so often threatened to destroy the whole country—an enemy which, if left unwatched or unchecked, would soon reduce the country to a state of absolute and hopeless ruin.

The sources of danger are, in the first place, from the "outer water," caused by the "reflux of the Atlantic waves, which after being driven round the north of Scotland into the German Ocean, and thence southward towards the Atlantic again, are unable to find a

sufficient outlet through the Straits of Dover, and are thus thrown back against the lowlying coast of Holland ;" and secondly, the "inner waters," consisting of "the numerous rivers laden with all the drainage of the highlands in Central Europe, which make their way northwards to the sea."

In some parts of Holland the people live below the level of the sea, in other parts they live below the level of the rivers, and the danger from the latter is often greater than from the former, for every year the rivers need the utmost attention, while the sea once conquered remains as a rule a conquest. Among the causes which render the rivers such formidable enemies is the breaking-up of the ice along the upper course of the Rhine and the Meuse, before the ice in the lower parts is sufficiently melted to give it an outlet. The <langer of the accumulated water bursting the artificial banks and swamping the country -as it did in 1861-is then very great. Another cause of apprehension is that the mud deposited by the river should choke up the beds, for in proportion as the bed of the river is raised is the danger of the pressure on the banks being too great for them to sustain it. It is a curious fact that in some parts through which the Rhine passes the inhabitants live below the bed of the river, although that river may have twenty feet of water in it.

As we have said, the very existence of the country depends upon the unrelaxing vigilance of the people. The Waterstaat is therefore obviously the most important organisation in the country; it takes the place of first importance in the public service, and every person in the land is subject to its mandates. Should an alarm be given of a threatened inundation, the people of the district, and of the districts surrounding, are summoned by ringing of bells and booming of cannon. No one is exempt from service; old and young, rich and poor, soldiers and public servants generally, all are bound to gather together and fight the common foe.

Of course a large sum of money has to be devoted to the purposes of the Waterstaat, and it is stated in an official report of its operations that during the last 200 years an aggregate capital of over £300,000,000 has been so appropriated, and that the annual cost of repairs and superintendence amounts to £1,000,000 more.

It is under the superintendence of the Waterstaat that so much of the land has been reclaimed; lakes have been drained, morasses and waste lands have been made fit for habitation, and on these fertile spots people have eagerly settled, notwithstanding that the taxes for the support of the Waterstaat have been proportioned to the fertility.

It is not only from the rising of waters and the bursting of dams that the safety of the country is threatened. In the Museum of Leyden there are exhibited some pieces of wood full of holes like a sponge; these were once portions of piles and sluice-gates, and they are memorable in the eyes of all Hollanders, for they call to mind a danger which in the middle of the last century threatened to destroy the whole country.

A little shell-fish (the bivalve mollusc, Teredo navalis) was brought, it is supposed, by some ship returning from the tropics. With marvellous rapidity it bred, and increased and multiplied to such an extent, that when the threatened danger was discovered every inhabitant of the land was in terror lest the defences of the country should be destroyed and the enemy let loose upon them. Night and day an immense body of men were at work; neither labour nor expense was spared; they lined the sluice-gates with

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copper, restored the perforated dykes, built up masonry around the piles, and partly by these means, but more by the severity of the climate which eventually destroyed the pestilent mollusc, the danger was averted. But "a 'worm' had made Holland tremble."

If the physical history of Holland has been wonderful, her political history has not been less so, and in closing these general remarks we cannot give a more comprehensive glance at that history than in the graphic words of Edmondo de Amicis :-" 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 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 founds a Republic which becomes the ark of salvation to the liberties of all the world, the adopted country of science, the Exchange of Europe, the station for the commerce 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 on equal terms with the greatest nations, and is for a time one of the three Powers that decide the fate of Europe."

"If Amsterdam could be turned bottom upwards, it would present the appearance of a vast forest of trees without branches or leaves." So says a modern writer, having in his mind at the time most probably the old joke of Erasmus, who said he "knew a city whose inhabitants dwelt on the tops of trees like rooks."

The city lies at the influx of the Amstel into the Y, or Ij-pronounced "eye"-and is built upon ninety islands, almost all of rectangular form, and connected by means of about 350 bridges. The city is in the form of a semicircle; the fosse surrounding the walls and girdling the city from one end to the other is in the shape of a tightlybent bow of which the Ij is the string. The entire circumference is about nine miles, and four great canals-the Prinsen, Keizers, Heeren, and Singel Gracht-follow the course of the outer fosse, circle within circle. Other canals, to the number of seventy, or it may be more to look at them from a height they seem countless-run at various angles to these main canals like the threads of a spider's web.

The population of Amsterdam in 1880 was 317,021, including 70,000 Roman Catholics, 30,000 German and 3,500 Portuguese Jews. It contains 30,000 houses, and almost all of them are built upon piles. The thought of the enormous difficulties in the construction of such a city bewilders the imagination, while at the same time it kindles the warmest admiration for a people who could grapple with such difficulties and by patient unrelaxing industry overcome them. The foundation of Amsterdam is sand, and before a house could be built a substructure must be established on which to lay the foundation of the house. Millions of solid beams, whole forests of sturdy trees and closely-driven piles, driven through many feet of superincumbent bog-earth into the sand, form the supports on which the city stands. It would be impossible to calculate the enormous sums of money spent in building that portion of the city which lies below the surface, for each