free-from-danger air, these slimy canals give to the cities! You forget
that just beyond the dikes the mighty, restless sea lurks, and watches
day and night for a chance to rush in and claim its own. The canals run
in a succession of curves, one within the other, all through the city.
Upon the quays are the dwellings and warehouses. In the narrow streets,
crossing them by means of endless bridges, are the shops and dwellings
of the lower classes. Looking down a street, no two houses present an
unbroken line. They have all settled in their places until they nod, and
leer, and wink at each other, in a decidedly sociable, intoxicated
manner. The whole city, to a stranger, is a curious sight--the arched
bridges over the interminable canals; the clumsy boats (for the canals
are too shallow to admit anything but coasters and river boats); the
antic and antiquated houses with high gables, rising in steps, to the
street; the women of the lower classes, with yokes over their shoulders,
and long-eared white caps on their heads, surmounted by naked straw
bonnets of obsolete fashion and coal-scuttle shape, and out and from
which, on either side, protruded all the wonderful tinkling ornaments of
which the prophet speaks; the long quays and streets utterly bare of
trees; the iron rods thrust out from the houses half way up their
height, upon which all manner of garments, freshly washed, hang over the
street to dry. Down in an open Place stands the dark, square palace,
grand and grim, where Hortense played queen a little time while Louis
Bonaparte was king of Holland. Near the palace is a national monument,
for the Dutch, too, remember their brave. There are old and new churches
also to be seen, but churches bare of everything which clothes
cathedrals with beauty, having been stripped in the time of the
reformation. I suppose one should rejoice; but we did miss the high
altar, the old carved saints, and the pictures in the chapels.

Some of the finest paintings of the Dutch school are in the national
museum here; _genre_ pictures, many, if not most of them, but pleasant
to look at, if not of the highest art; and we visited another collection
of the same, left by a M. Van der Hoop. There are several other private
collections thrown open to the public. But after all, the most charming
picture was the Jews' quarter of the city. I know it was horribly
filthy, and so crowded that we could hardly make our way; I know it was
filled with squal