Holland, either en route for the south, or as an independent excursion. By embarking in the Batavier this much is gained-that your experiences of the country commence four-and-twenty hours sooner than you had anticipated. Though the British tourist does not greatly affect the noble vessel, she is still popular with the foreigners; and to go on board is in effect to cross by means of a plank from St. Katherine's Wharf to the quay of the Boompjes. The outlandish sailors, Hood remarked, are lowering away the baggage with the aid of windlass and imprecation. Indeed, Low Dutch under any circumstances sounds not unlike colloquial blasphemy. From the picturesque costumes that dot the quarterdeck, it would seem as though a general exodus from the alien quarters about Soho and the Minories was taking place. There are long black coats, secured with loops in front, and ornamented with a jelly-bag and tassel behind. There are cloaks of that cut which always suggests republican principles to a British mind. Hats of every degree of wide-awakeness, caps with peaks which rival that of Teneriffe in prominence, bonnets like gauze-andwire butterflies perched upon the fair heads of the wearers. Here is a compatriot of Sappho, who has done himself up in a bag as if he was a cut-glass chandelier and the family out of town; and there is a gentleman, from Mesopotamia very likely, with a peculiar head-dress which he will not remove under any circumstances, but will eat, drink, retire to his berth, be sick, and, at some future day, die in it. And of course there is Sidonia, proudly conscious of his pure Caucasian blood and mosaic embellishments. The luggage, piled up just abaft the mainmast, is in its way quite as foreign in character; consisting as it does of hairy little trunks strengthened by strips of lath, and secured by locks ingeniously made of brass foil; of theatrical-looking chests like that which formed a part of Iachimo's baggage on his visit to Britain; of bags curiously wrought in worstedwork by some Dutch Penelope to accompany the travels of her commercial Ulysses; of ser

viceable green pasteboard hat-boxes tied with red tape; of strange contrivances, neither bag nor box, but a sort of mongrel, in which the bag, formosa superne, ends in an absurd little black valise. Hard by these there stands on its end, eyeing them superciliously as it were, a British portmanteau. Perhaps there is nothing, in a small way, more characteristic of the nation than this article. There is an ostentatious display of sturdiness, strength, and simplicity about it, as though it said, 'Yes, you may look at me; but I wasn't made for show. You wont find any brass nails or nonsense about me. I'm merely a plain honest English portmanteau, worth

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dozen of those humbugging French malles. My lock is Bramah's patent; and I'm warranted solid leather, and suitable for any climate. Presently things come to a crisis. Wet ropes begin to be dragged across the deck, spreading confusion among the cloaks and wide-awakes. The language gets stronger and stronger; and the paddle-wheels work backwards and forwards in a feeble undecided way, as if bewildered by orders and counter-orders. Then they sulk and strike work altogether, and it is only when the opposite shore of Rotherhithe seems in imminent danger of being carried away by the stern of the vessel, that they consent to return to their duty and get you fairly under way. It is an agitating

moment that. No more Times at breakfast for a season; no more beer or beefsteaks. If you have forgotten anything, there is no help for it now. That strip of unclean water has separated you effectually from all the endearing associations of home. Your favourite bore may call, but you will know nothing of it. Letters that you wot not of may be awaiting an answer. Duns may look across that gulf with sad imploring eyes, but you will be unconscious of their solicitude. reflections give an air of importance to the enterprise, and make you look with a sort of contempt on the people on board the steamer astern, who are only going to Margate. Possibly they entertain a like feeling for the Gravesend passengers, who in their turn despise the

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Woolwich boat: for such is life. Greenwich, where the church bells ring out venomously, as if denouncing the ungodly old bark that goes to sea instead of going to church on a Sunday: Woolwich; the plains made classic by the fistic reporter of Bell's Life; Rosherville, that democratic Versailles; the guns of Tilbury and the shrimps of Gravesend, emblems of peace and war; the Nore and its floating beacon, which was once a buoy :-upon all these you meditate, or if communicative, discourse with your fellow voyagers, until, somewhere about the latter point, you perceive an official come up and whisper something to each passenger which makes him or her dash below immediately. To the inexperienced in nautical matters, the suspicion may occur that the ship has sprung a leak or is on fire, and that these good people are in a hurry to save a portion of their property. But they who go down the Thames in steamers will know that it is only dinner which has broken out in the chief cabin. A strange and not unprofitable study is that repast. The philosopher and frequenter of the Zoological Gardens knows how favourable feeding-time it is for observing the true nature of any animal; and here you have specimens of nearly all the races of Europe, and one or two of those of Asia, assembled together for the purpose of devouring the greatest possible amount of boiled mutton and turnips in the shortest possible time. As for the conversation, it is much of the same character as that which must have prevailed at the last grand Masonic Dinner in the Tower of Babel, when the design of completing the edifice was abandoned and the science of Comparative Philology founded. The polyglot steward (who is believed to know what chicken and ham is in twenty-three different languages) is in great demand. The lady who requested a mere suspicion of fowl has a plate of steaming beef and carrots before her; and the gentleman whose large appetite the latter was to appease has got the liverwing of a pigeon. The owner of the portmanteau inquires in French if there is any pale ale, and is told in English (at which he is delighted)

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that there is, in large and small bottles. The gentleman from Mesopotamia asks for sherbet, to which Polyglot makes answer, no doubt in Sanscrit, that they have soda water. At last comes dessert, mainly consisting of walnuts, with one pair of nutcrackers among sixty odd people, succeeded in some cases by coffee tempered with that peculiar and stringy body, lac maris, or steamboat milk, which floats in the cup like potable gun-cotton. However, on the whole it is a sufficient and wholesome repast; and if followed by a modicum-hot, with sugar-of schiedam, which is undeniable on board the Batavier, it enables you to meet your fate with becoming calmness. Of this fate it is unnecessary, indeed undignified, to speak. As old Sir Thomas Browne says, 'In things of this nature silence commendeth history.' The novelist, it will be observed, for the most part paints his hero as rising superior to this as well as other calamities, or at least throws a veil over such epochs in his career; and judiciously, for a hero sensitive to allusions to bacon, and supporting nature by sips of brandy and water, is not to be handled with propriety save by the most consummate realist. The poets, too, who extol the rolling deep,' agree to forget its effects when in that condition; and as they shout on deck about a wet sheet and a flowing sea,' would have us believe they don't think of the damp sheets and the creaking berths in the cabin below. In short, every one admits that man in the state thus delicately referred to is not a part of the Beautiful.

Consciousness being restored, you perceive with satisfaction that the motion of the vessel has subsided into an agreeable tremble, and going on deck find yourself working at half speed over the whitey-brown waters of the Maas. Holland, you observe, is at present represented by two banks of thick fog, which extend on either side as far as you can see. Queer little brown boats, like half cocoa-nuts, are bobbing about on the crisp waves. These are of a decided Dutch build; but it is something of a disappointment to discover that their crews are not

On

like a ladder upon wheels. The broad Maas, no longer sleepy, is as lively as a bright sun and steamers and ferry-boats can make it. the whole, there is a briskness about the entire scene that makes you doubt whether Dutch phlegm may not be as much a myth as the stork's piety. There is, however, a vulgar error about Holland which concerns you more nearly than this, and that is, that passports are not strictly looked after there. The consequences if you are not en régle may be less serious than in other countries, but at Rotterdam, the Hague, and sometimes at Amsterdam, your passport will be as positively demanded, and as scrupuiously written in, as if you were in

Austria or France. While on this subject, it may be as well to touch upon another erroneous notion— viz., that Dutch hotels are extravagantly dear. The fact is, they are not dearer than the average of the Rhine hotels, and infinitely cheaper than those of Paris or Switzerland. It is true they are less splendid in their appointments, but for all that, you can take your ease very comfortably in a Dutch inn, and just opposite the landing place on the Boompjes is a fair specimen in the new Bath hotel.

Why does not some painter who has a good eye for architecture and colour make a picture of the marketplace, in which you will be pretty sure to find yourself before you have been long in Rotterdam ? There is no want of good materials. As is usual in Rotterdam, there is a combination of gables, chimneys, and windows of the quaintest patterns; of quays lined by sturdy elms, and enclosing a placid canal of lightgreen water; of drawbridges and that round-sterned many-coloured shipping which has not changed its character since the days of Van de Velde and Bakhuizen. In the middle of these is the market itself, occupying a sort of bridge over the canal. There are crockery stalls, with piles of those comely blue-andgrey pitchers we see in the pictures of Dutch Bores drinking, by Van Ginnums. There are book-stalls and fruit-stalls and vegetable-stalls all green and gold, where noble pumpkins and marrows lie dozing

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in the sunshine on cool beds of brocoli and Brussels sprouts, sur rounded by huge cucumbers that have writhed themselves into absurd shapes in an agony of ripeness. There are coopers and basketmakers at work, and red-jacketed sailors smoking strange pipes, and women in long cloaks and lace caps affectionately patting the fat stomachs of the aldermanic pumpkins, or peering into the leaves of suspicious cabbages, and shabbylooking students doing the same by the bookseller's quartos. On one side is the famous statue of Erasmus. He is hurrying home with a book in his hand, no doubt just picked up at one of the stalls, and, from the suppressed grin on his keen humorous face, seems pleased with his bargain. Possibly it is the copy of his own Encomium Moria, with Holbein's pen-and-ink illustrations, which we are told tickled him so much. Every time the clock strikes, they say, or at least John Ray the traveller says. he turns over a new leaf, but this no doubt was a tu quoque joke of the parti prêtre, in return for his hints that they would be the better of a little reform. On his right, and not a stone's throw from his elbow, stands the house where he, or rather the little Gerrit Gerritz, who afterwards grew into the great Erasmus, was born, a subdued-looking little mansion, with the heavy brown brick tower of the Groote Kerk frowning down on it, and preaching to it in melancholy chimes, which, as they rise above the buzz of the market, sound like the apophthegm of the Brazen Head set to music.

There is a choice of two lines of railway from Rotterdam to Amsterdam-one by Gonda and Utrecht, the other by the Hague, Leyden, and Haarlem. As far as scenery goes they are on a par; indeed, as a general rule, there is about the same difference between any two bits of Dutch landscape that there is between eggs of the same nest. Those who do intend to return to Rotterdam, and wish to see as much as possible, will probably take the latter. The Hague, or s'Gravenhage as your ticket or the visa on your passport tells you to call it, is reached after about three-quarters of an hour of very leisurely railway

travelling. The trains on the Hollandsche Spoorweg are above the vulgar hurry and bustle of our Birmingham or Bristol expresses.' They jog along in a way which is in perfect harmony with the unctuous cattle-feeding, cheese-and-buttermaking country they have to cross. They come up to the stations, which occur about every two miles, puffing and wheezing as if they were fat and scant of breath, and never think of stirring until they have had refreshment, and are comfortably coked and watered and greased. It is a line not altogether without the charm of associations. The first station after leaving Rotterdam is Schiedam, before mentioned; the next, Delft, brings the mug of childhood forcibly before you; and a little further on a board with Rijswijk,' which being interpreted signifies Ryswick, painted on it, performs the same office for Lord Macaulay and William III.

The Hague is far more characteristically Dutch than Rotterdam. It has still all those features which old Coryat, in his Crudities, remarks as being so admirable in the towns of Holland:

Euery streete is very delicately paued with bricke, which is composed after that artificial manner that a man may walke there presently after an exceeding shower of raine and neuer wet his shooes. The buildings are all of bricke, of a goodly heigth, and an excellent uniformity in most of the streetes, the toppes rising with battlements. I obserued that these kinde of prety buildings are of a just correspondency on both sides of the streetes, which doe minister notable beauty to the towne.

The beauty of the Hague, however, is after all not very notable. It is neat and smug, and has a sort of retired-tradesman air about it rather than that lordly look one expects to find in a residence of royalty. To the north lies its west end; indeed one of the select streets is called the Noord Einde. Here of course dwell the King and all his ministers, surrounded by a congenial circle of ambassadors. Between them and the simple respectability of the southern portion lie, first, a sheet of stagnant water called the Vijver, a sort of genteel Dead Sea with a woody island in it, which tries hard to look easy and natural, but

cannot, by reason of the company; then a line of places or piazzas, for squares they are not, comprising the Plein, the Binnenhof, and the Buitenhof. South of these, from east to west, runs the Spui Straat, the Fleet-street and Strand of the Hague, abounding in bookshops, printshops, ganteries, and confectioners. In the windows of the latter are mighty slabs of gingerbread, with mottoes in white sugar, from which it would appear that this delicacy is employed by the Dutch gallants as a medium for sentiment. Here is a specimen of this language of gingerbread:

Al is't geschenk ook nog zoo klein, Zal hooge ik naar geneuge zijn. Which may be freely translatedAlthough the gift a trifle be, The giving is a treat to me. The antiquities of the Hague lie about the Binnenhof and Buitenhof, or inner and outer courts. In the former, where the good old Barneveldt was beheaded, is the most remarkable building of the city, the Hoog Geregtshof, or High Criminal Court, an instance of that sparingly ornamented, solid, brown architecture, like Gothic reared on beer, which prevails more or less all over Holland. The Groote Kerk is another specimen with ecclesiastical differences, and a slight infusion of the pagoda. In fact, walking through a Dutch city after the old towns of Belgium, is like drinking brown stout after burgundy. Both buildings and paintings are undeniably solid, and honest, and wholesome; you have nothing to complain of as far as they go, no crudeness or want of finish. But somehow they have a kind of drowsy effect_after the bright rich fancies of the Ghent and Antwerp architects, and of the Hemling, Van Eyck, and Matsys pictures. Strange that it should be so. There can be no great difference as to race between Holland and the part of Belgium which is richest in art; in the physical character of the country there is none whatever. Nor were they differently circumstanced when, for example, yonder opaque edifice and the spire of Antwerp were built. There must be something subtler than we wot of to account for this, and whatever it is it also probably accounts for