tected from being flooded by the sea by embankments called dykes. The surface of the embankments is covered with branches of willows, intertwined and filled in with clay so as to make it compact, or strengthened with walls of masonry. Canals inter

sect the country everywhere. We saw orchards, gardens, pasture fields and houses surrounded by canals, which take the place of fences. Every once in a while you see little foot-bridges across these canals, which are constructed on the trap-door system; so that if a farmer wishes to go to his pasture field he throws down the little bridge, passes over, and then throws it in a perpendicular position again, so that cattle and sheep cannot cross. There are seventy-three canals in the city of Amsterdam, three of which are very large, dividing the city into ninety islands, which are connected by three hundred bridges. The buildings are mostly of red brick. They are very high and narrow, and many of them are so far out of the perpendicular that they look as though they were tipsy; they are all built on piles, and when the piles at one end of a house sink a little deeper into the mud, it somewhat resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Baedeker tells us that in 1822 the great Corn Magazine literally sank into the mud, the piles having been inadequate to support the weight of thirty-five hundred tons of grain which were therein stored at the time. The drinking water is brought to Amsterdam by means of pipes, a distance of thirteen and a half miles.

The Dutch are proverbial for their cleanliness. Every bit of brass or metal in the house must shine so you can see your face in it. Women are everywhere, and at all times, scrubbing and cleaning; they get down on their knees and wash the pavements of the streets, the courts of the houses, floors, and halls in hotels, and the waiting-rooms in depots, until a stranger almost becomes impatient at having to walk through so much slop.

The Rijks Museum contains five hundred and thirty-eight pictures, almost all belonging to the Dutch schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rembrandt, the greatest of all the Dutch masters, died in 1669 almost penniless; but he left the world a rich legacy in valuable pictures. His masterpiece,

called the Night Watch, represents a captain with his company of arquebusiers emerging from their Guild-hall. The peculiar lights and shadows, the attitude and appearance of the men, and the harmony of the whole, is most striking and beautiful. Another by the same master entitled the Stamp Masters, represents four of the directors of the guild of the cloth-makers seated at a table, with faces so natural that you almost expect them to speak. Then there are eight admirable pictures by Hondecoeter. His forte is painting the feathered tribe, chickens, ducks, birds, etc. He does it to perfection; the picture called the Floating Feather, is considered the most famous; Paul Potter is the chief among animal painters, and Snyder is also excellent; Van Dyke is one of the most beautiful portrait painters; and Teniers has always some jolly social, or home scene. The latter are usually confined to the kitchen; and almost invariably you discover somewhere in the apartment a brass kettle, which he undoubtedly knew he could paint to perfection. From here we went to a little gem of a gallery called Van der Hoop, containing only about two hundred pictures, many of them beautiful landscapes, sea pieces, and snow scenes, so dainty and pretty and natural that one could almost imagine that it was nature herself adorned in her robe of green, or wrapped in her mantle of white. very small picture only six inches square, of a hermit, by Gerard Dow, is exquisitely done. A Sick Girl and a Physician, by Jan Steen, is also good.

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We next went to the King's Palace, the finest edifice in Amsterdam. It was built for a town hall, but was presented to Louis Napoleon for a King's Palace in 1808. The interior is very beautiful. The walls of the apartments are ornamented with sculptures in white marble. Over the door to the room where cases of bankruptcy were settled, when it was a town hall, is a large piece of sculpture representing "The Fall of Icarus ;" and the moulding above the door, in marble relief, is made up of rats and mice gnawing boxes and papers. The rooms are all furnished extravagantly, but the reception room is the most elaborate of all. It is one hundred and seventeen feet long,

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fifty-seven feet wide, and one hundred feet high, and unsupported by pillars. The walls are entirely of white marble adorned with bass-reliefs. The King of Holland, who resides at the Hague, only spends one week every year at this palace. It is built on thirteen thousand six hundred and fifty-nine piles. We ascended to the top of its tower, where we had a good view of this queer old city, intersected with canals bordered with trees; its multitude of bridges, innumerable housetops, church spires, rustic looking windmills, the docks with their forests of masts, the Zuyderzee, and away in the distance, the concierge pointed out to us the large church at Haarlem.

We stopped while in Amsterdam at the Bible Hotel-an open Bible carved out of marble, over the entrance door, serves as a sign. The owner has the first Dutch Bible printed in 1542, and this fact gave the name to the hotel. Amsterdam has a population of about three hundred and seventeen thousand.

We had but one more city on the Continent which we intended to visit, and that was the Hague, and in two hours after entering the cars we were there. It is a very pretty place, having broad, handsome streets, large squares, and spacious houses. It is quite an aristocratic city, of one hundred and two thousand inhabitants. The king and many nobles reside here. In the centre of the city is a sheet of water, with a small island called the Vijver. It is surrounded by shady trees, and is inhabited by ducks and swans, making it quite a fashionable resort for the citizens. It, like other Dutch towns, has many canals. We came here chiefly to see two celebrated pictures, viz., Paul Potter's Bull and Rembrandt's School of Anatomy. These we found upon visiting the picture gallery, and felt that they repaid us for our trouble and expense to see them. Paul Potter's "Bull" is so natural from the tips of his horns to the point of his tail that you are almost persuaded that one of these animals has stepped behind an immense picture frame. Less prominent in the picture are a cow, ram, sheep, lamb, and shepherd in the background. Rembrandt's School of Anatomy represents a scholarly anatomist, dressed in a black cloak, with a lace collar and a broad-brimmed

felt hat, explaining the anatomy of the arm of a corpse lying on a table before him. The skin has been removed from the arm, and with a pair of scissors he is cutting a sinew. His left hand half raised, and the expression of his face tell us that he has paused to make some explanation. Seven men, members of the Guild at Amsterdam, are gathered about the corpse, watching the operation attentively, each with a different expression on his face. If you take a seat, as we did, and study this picture carefully, you will become so absorbed in it that you will imagine you are in the very presence of this company. The characters look like true living men, and the corpse like a true dead man. Several other pictures by Hondecoeter, Girard Dow, Jan Steen, Albert Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyke, and Holbein, are also very fine. From here we went to a small Museum, where chief among its treasures was a top to a large circular table, which surpassed anything of the kind that we saw at Rome. It was of ebony, inlaid with pearl in the form of a wreath of flowers. There are no two buds, leaves, or blossoms, alike. Its arrangement is most graceful in form, and the tints of pearl, yellow, pink, blue, drab, and green, are distributed with the greatest taste.

In the evening we left the Hague for Flushing, where we immediately took a steamer to cross the North Sea. We had a nice state-room and slept well until morning, but were delayeά from landing about two hours, on account of fog. It was so dense that it was necessary to weigh anchor and wait until it had lifted. The different vessels in and near the harbor, blew the fog horns, whistled and rang bells as signals of their whereabouts, to avoid collision. We landed at Queensborough at about eight o'clock in the morning, boarded a train for London, and in two hours were in Mr. Burr's private boarding house once more, where we found precious letters awaiting us from my mother and one of my many sisters, and also from one of our Newton Deacons, and the Miss Grieblings.

CHAPTER VII.

I CAN not tell you what a thrill of pleasure it gave us to once more set foot in "Old England," a Christian nation, whose Sabbaths are kept holy, after being in so many places on the Continent where the Lord's Day is not used as a day of rest and worship. England! "that pretty island which," says Franklin, "compared to America, is but a stepping-stone in a brook, scarcely enough of it above water to keep one's shoes dry." Yet this little island has for two centuries been the mistress of the seas, with all the consequences of that opportunity. It is the centre of the wealth of the world, and the heart of this centre is London. If you would feel the throbbings of the pulse of the world, press your finger on the Bank of England. One writer says, "There is not an occurrence, not a conquest or a defeat, a revolution, a panic, a famine, an abundance, not a change in value of money or material, no depression or stoppage in trade, no recovery, no political and scarcely any religious movement, that does not report itself instantly at this sensitive spot. Other capitals feel a local influence; this feels all the local influences. Put your ear at the Bank, or Stock Exchange near by, and you hear the roar of the world." London, the largest city in the world, with its population of three and a half millions, covers an area of seventy-eight thousand acres, and is situated on both sides of the river Thames, about fifty miles from its mouth. Its massive buildings of brick or stone, have magnificent edifices among them, but the majority are plain substantial looking structures blackened by smoke. Its broad handsome thoroughfares, gorged by carriages, cabs, hansoms, carts, street-cars, omnibuses and hundreds of pedestrians; together with its narrow, crooked, dim streets, form such a labyrinth, that if a stranger does not lose his way many times, (148)