un shone;
the boats swam continually down the Old Rhine and the New; and the sea
at Katwyk and Noordwyk sent a call across the intervening meadows. Some
day perhaps I shall find myself at Leyden again, when the sky is grey
and the thirst for information is more strongly upon me. Ethnography,
comparative anatomy, physiology--there is nothing that may not be
learned in the Leyden museums; but such learning is not peculiarly
Dutch, nor are the treasures of these museums peculiarly Dutch, and I
felt that I might with a clear conscience leave them to others. Have
we not Bloomsbury?

I did, however, climb the Burg, which is a circular fortress on a
mound between the two rivers, so cleverly hidden away among houses
that it was long ere I could find it. It is gained through an ancient
courtyard full of horses and carriages--like a scene in Dumas. From
the Burg one ought to have a fine view, but Leyden's roofs are too
near. And in the Natural History Museum I walked through miles of
birds stuffed, and birds articulated, until I felt that I could give
a year's income to be on terms again with a living blackbird--even
one of those that eat our Kentish strawberries at sunrise.

I did not penetrate to the interior of the University, having none to
guide me, but I was pleased to remember that Oliver Goldsmith had been
a student there not so very long ago. Indeed, as I walked about the
town, I thought much of Goldsmith as he was in 1755, aged twenty-seven,
with all his books to write, wandering through the same streets,
looking upon the same houses and canals, in the interval of acquiring
his mysterious medical degree (ultimately conferred at Louwain). His
ingenious project, it will be remembered--by those whose memories
(like my own) cling to that order of information, to the exclusion
of everything useful and improving--Goldsmith's delightful plan for
subsistence in Holland was to teach the English language to the Dutch,
and in return receive enough money to keep him at the University of
Leyden and enable him to hear the great Professor Albinus. It was
not until he reached Holland that those adorable Irish brains of
his realised that he who teaches English to a Dutchman must first
know Dutch.

Goldsmith, who spent his life in doing characteristic things--few
men have done more--when once he had determined to go to Holland,
took a passage in a vessel bound for Bordeaux. At Newcastle-on-Tyne,
however, on going ashore to be merry,