of the finest organs in the world, and there are few travellers in Holland who have not heard the celebrated public recitals on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the organist plays a singularly descriptive piece, commencing with the gentlest movements and most zephyr whispers, and ending in the terrors of whirlwinds and thunderstorms.

The church, white and bare, and covered by a high vaulted roof lined with cedarwood, dates from the fifteenth century. In a wall of the church may still be seen a cannon-ball, a reminiscence of the siege of 1573. In the middle of the church is a monument to the memory of Conrad, the builder of the mighty sluice-gates at Katwijk, and his colleague Brunings, "protectors of Holland against the fury of the sea and the power of the tempest." Near the choir is the tomb of Bilderdijk, the poet, and near the pulpit rests the body of Coster, of whom we shall say more by-and-by. Suspended from one of the arches are several small models of ships-of-war, commemorating the Fifth Crusade, which was led by Count William I. of Holland.

In the Picture Gallery established in the Town Hall, which was originally a palace of the Counts of Holland, there is a small but excellent collection of paintings, among them eight of the chefs-d'œuvre of Franz Hals, "the greatest colourist of the Dutch painters next to Rembrandt." There are several museums in Haarlem of considerable value-an Industrial Museum; a Colonial Museum, containing a large collection of the products of the Dutch colonies; and Teyler's Museum, founded by Peter Teyler van der Hulst, containing chemical, physical, optical, and hydraulic instruments, and the most powerful electric batteries in Europe, besides a geological cabinet, and a collection of pictures and drawings.

The most interesting time to visit Haarlem is about the end of April or the beginning of May, when the country is all ablaze with the glories of hyacinths, tulips, crocuses, anemones, and lilies, for which it is famous. From the nursery-gardens here all the principal gardens of Europe are supplied. The story of the tulip mania is one of the most curious in the history of speculations. It was in the years 1636 and 1637 that bulbs were traded in as railway and other shares are to-day. Enormous prices were given for rare bulbs, and everybody in Holland, whether ignorant or learned in floriculture, speculated in them. It is on record that a "Semper Augustus Semper Augustus" fetched 13,000 florins, a fetched 13,000 florins, a "Viceroy" 4,500 florins, and so on. One Dutch town realised ten millions of florins by the sale of tulip roots in one year, and a speculator at Amsterdam made 68,000 florins in four months in the same season. It was not possible, however, that this state of things could last, and the bubble was burst by the Government declaring that all such contracts were illegal. Ruin followed as a matter of course, and prices assumed their proper level.

In the large market-place in Haarlem there is to be seen an ugly bronze statue of Coster, the "inventor" of printing. His name was Lawrence Jansen, but he was called Coster, which is Dutch for "sacristan," the occupation he followed. Many legends are afloat in Holland concerning this Coster and his claim to immortality. It is said that towards the end of the fourteenth century, when walking in a leafy grove, he pulled down a branch of a tree and amused himself and his children by cutting upon it with his knife some letters in relief, and on dipping these in ink on his return home, conceived the magnificent idea with which Gutenberg is generally accredited. In the Town Hall of Haarlem is shown a book printed in German, in double column, and Gothic characters,

Haarlem.]

THE INVENTION OF PRINTING.

177

bearing the date 1440. It is the "Speculum Humanæ Salvationis." Now, if this book were printed in 1440 it would be the most remote date for printing with movable type, as this is partly printed, and would put Gutenberg's claim in the background. Unfortunately for the claim of the Dutchman, there is no proof whatever that the "Speculum" was the work of Coster. The only argument-if it may be so called-to support it, is that there is a legend attributing it to Coster, and that one Christmas night while he was in prayer "one of his workmen, who had sworn never to betray the secret of his invention, carried off his instruments, types, and books, which poor Coster discovering on his return home,

he died of grief. According to the legend, this sacrilegious thief was Faust of Maganza, or the elder brother of Gutenberg, and this is the explanation both of the glory of the invention and how it passed from Holland to Germany." For ages the controversy raged, but it is now almost universally admitted that no faith can be attached to the legend of Coster.

To the Dutch, however, remains the honour of holding the field in the matter of typography, "the incontestable glory of the Elzevirs and the enviable honour of having printed almost all the great writers of the age of Louis XIV., of having diffused throughout Europe the French philosophy of the eighteenth century, of having gathered up, defended, and propagated human thought when proscribed by despotism and denied by fear." Haarlem still possesses a type foundry celebrated especially for Hebrew and Greek types cast

in it.

Between Haarlem and Leyden is the cultivated land which only a few years ago was covered by the Great Lake or Sea of Haarlem. It was literally an inland sea; on it fleets of seventy ships had fought, over it great storms had raged and many vessels had been wrecked. As early as 1640, Leeghwater, a Dutch engineer, had conceived the idea of draining this vast lake, which threatened to destroy the country; but the war with Spain prevented his scheme from being commenced, and when the idea was revived after the peace of 1648, wars with France and England came to mar the project. In 1836, however, a fearful gale drove the waters of the Haarlem Lake over the dykes as far as to the very gates of Amsterdam. Then the Dutch bestirred themselves in earnest. In 1840 they commenced the construction of a water-tight double dyke round the whole lake, and a ring canal to carry off the water to the sea; in 1849 three enormous pumping engines were at work, and at the end of four years the great Haarlem Lake had ceased to be. Its average depth was thirteen feet, its area 45,230 acres, and the estimated weight of water to be pumped out, a thousand millions of tons. But the work was done, and now the bed of the lake is covered with crops and smiling homesteads, maintaining a population of about 8,000 inhabitants, besides 2,000 horses, 6,000 horned cattle, and 9,000 sheep and pigs.

MELBOURNE AND THE GREAT TOWNS OF VICTORIA.

The Oldest Inhabitant-Early Explorers and Settlers-"The Settlement"-Small Beginnings-Steady Progress-The Great Gold Rush-What came of it-Melbourne as it is-Its Main Streets and Thoroughfares-Monument to Burke and Wills-Story of their Expedition-The Government of Victoria-Government House-Education in Victoria-The University-Museum-Public Library-The First Public Religious Service in Melbourne-The Churches and Chapels of To-day-Benevolent Institutions-Markets-Cheap Mutton-Botanical Gardens-Suburbs of Melbourne-The Great Reservoir. GEELONG-The Wool Trade-The Harbour. BALLARAT Its Disfigurements -First Discovery of Gold-Stories of "Lucky Finds"-The Present Modes of Working for Gold-In the Quartz, Alluvial Loam, Surface Soil-The Ballarat Riots of '54. SANDHURST-Mining Operations-General Appearance-"Advance, Australia!"

OHN PASCOE FAWKNER died at Melbourne on September 4th, 1869, the undisputed oldest inhabitant in a vast city that had no existence when he sailed up the Yarra-yarra in the schooner Enterprise, in the summer of 1835. Where in the midst of the wilderness he had ploughed his land and grown his first crop of wheat, a city had arisen which with its suburban townships numbered nearly 170,000 souls. Long lines of carriages followed the veteran pioneer to his grave, and the people in their thousands lined the spacious streets as the cortége passed on.

Cook, Flinders, and Grant did little more than name the prominent headlands along the southern shores of Australia. Lieutenant Murray, R.N., in 1802 discovered Port Philip Bay, and in the following year Colonel Collins, with soldiers and convicts to the number of 402, attempted to form a settlement on its shores. A bad site was chosen; the expedition was a failure, and in 1804 the settlement was transferred to Van Diemen's Land. One man named Buckley ran away into the bush and lived for thirty years among the natives. In 1824 Messrs. Hume and Howell, two cattle-owners in New South Wales, came in search of new pasture-grounds along the Murray River and across the Australian Alps to the present site of Geelong, but returned without accomplishing any result beyond exploring the district. The first successful attempt to colonise the territory now known as Victoria was in 1834, when Mr. Thomas Henty, with a few free settlers, located themselves at Portland Bay, 234 miles from where Melbourne now stands. In the following year John Batman led a party to Port Philip Bay and made a remarkable treaty with the blacks, by which they ceded to him 600,000 acres for a quantity of blankets, and tomahawks, or, as one account states for, "three sacks of glass beads, ten pounds of nails, and five pounds of flour." The English Government subsequently annulled this contract, but the representatives of Batman received £7,000 in compensation. Three months after Batman and his helpers had got to work, John Fawkner's schooner sailed past their settlement and up the Yarra-yarra, and was made fast to a eucalyptus-tree on the bank, opposite to where the Melbourne Custom House now stands.

The news of the discovery of rich pastures in the neighbourhood of Port Philip Bay soon spread far and wide. In spite of some opposition from the British Government,

emigrants flocked thither from New South Wales and Tasmania, taking with them their sheep and cattle. At the end of a few months the settlement contained a population of 224, of whom 38 were women; the possessions of the colonists included 75 horses, 555 head of cattle, and 41,332 sheep. It was at this period that William Buckley the convict, who had escaped from the disastrous expedition of Collins in 1803, returned to his compatriots. He had been thirty-three years among the blacks, and had quite forgotten his own language.

There was little in "The Settlement," as infant Melbourne was for some time called, to suggest its future wealth and vastness. In January, 1838, there were a couple of wooden houses serving as hotels for the country settlers when they brought up their wool to send off by ship, or for new arrivals on their way to the "bush." "A small square wooden building" (says Mr. George Arden, an eye-witness) "with an old ship's bell suspended from a most defamatory-looking, gallows-like structure, fulfilled the duty of church or chapel to the various religious denominations, whence, however, the solemn voice of prayer and praise sounding over the yet wild country had an effect the most interesting and impressive."