as a delegate from the English church; and he, good man, never dreamed
of denying the validity of the ordination of his brethren in that
council. We felt interested, as we sailed along this town, in
remembering that here, in 1421, seventy-two villages and more than one
hundred thousand persons were drowned by the incursion of water from the
dike. The river stretches far away, and looks much like a lake.

If any one looks at the face of the country, he will at once understand
why these regions have been termed the Low Countries. We passed, as you
may see on the map, Gravendeel, Willeinstadt, and the far-famed
fortress of Bergen op Zoom, which is one of the strongest places in
Holland. You know that Antwerp stood a long siege in 1831, when it
suffered severely; and, as we passed Fort St. Laurent, we were pointed
out the spot where a most gallant occurrence happened at that time. A
gun boat, belonging to Holland, got on shore, and the Belgians hastened
to capture her, when her captain, a young man named Van Speyk, rushed
into the magazine, put his cigar upon an open keg of powder, and, in the
explosion, perished, with twenty-eight of his crew out of thirty-one. He
was an orphan, who had been educated at Amsterdam. He has a fine
monument next to Admiral De Ruyter's, and a fine ship of the Dutch navy
bears his name. On board our boat we found two young gentlemen, of about
fifteen or sixteen, belonging to Rotterdam, who were going home for
vacation.. They are pupils at a boarding school in Brussels. They spoke
English very well, and gave us a great deal of pleasing information. The
dinner on the boat was very excellent. On reaching Rotterdam, we merely
rode through it to take the cars for the Hague. It is a fine-looking
town, has seventy-five thousand inhabitants, and some noble East
Indiamen were lying at the wharves. Many of the houses were like those
at Antwerp, and told a Spanish origin. I here noticed looking-glasses
at the windows, so that any one in the parlor can see the reflection up
and down the streets. I was glad to be able to see the bronze statue of
Erasmus, who was born here in 1467. We were delayed by the absence of
the authorities to sign our passports, but were in time to reach the
ears, and then started for the Hague, which is thirteen miles from
Rotterdam; and we were forty minutes on the way. The road is excellent.
We passed through Delft, and here we could not fail to admire the
gardens and country-houses