ith flashes of
light mingling with ominous darkness, with scudding clouds and
changing forms, which seemed to be trying to reproduce the busy
activity of the earth.

Rotterdam, with the exception of Amsterdam, is the most important
commercial city in Holland. It was a flourishing commercial town as
early as the thirteenth century. Ludovico Guicciardini, in his work on
the Netherlands which I have already mentioned, tells, in proof of the
riches of the town, that in the sixteenth century within a year it
rebuilt nine hundred houses which had been destroyed by fire.
Bentivoglio, in his history of the war of Flanders, calls it "the
greatest and the most important commercial town that Holland
possesses." But its greatest prosperity dates only from 1830; that is
to say, after the separation of Holland from Belgium, which brought to
Rotterdam all that prosperity of which it deprived her rival, Antwerp.
Her situation is most advantageous. By means of the Meuse she
communicates with the sea, and this river can carry the largest
merchantmen into her ports in a few hours; through the same river she
communicates with the Rhine, which brings her whole forests from the
mountains of Switzerland and Bavaria--an immense quantity of timber,
which in Holland is changed into ships, dykes, and villages. More than
eighty splendid ships come and go between Rotterdam and India in the
space of nine months. From every port merchandise pours in with such
abundance that it has to be divided among the neighboring towns.
Meanwhile, Rotterdam increases in size: the citizens are now
constructing vast new store-houses, and are now working on a huge
bridge which will span the Meuse and cross the entire town, thus
extending the railway, which now stops on the left bank of the river,
as far as the gate of Delft, where it will join the railway of the
Hague.

In short, Rotterdam has a more brilliant future than Amsterdam, and
for a long time has been feared as a rival by her elder sister. She
does not possess the great riches of the capital, but she is more
industrious in using what wealth she has; she risks, dares, and
undertakes, after the manner of a young and adventurous city.
Amsterdam, like a wealthy merchant who has grown cautious after a life
of daring speculations, has begun to doze and to rest on her laurels.
To briefly characterize the three Dutch cities, it may be said that
one makes a fortune at Rotterdam, one consolidates it in Amsterdam,