Holland, v. 1 (of 2)

Thus this province, mysterious before we entered it, seemed doubly so when we had quitted it. We had traversed it and had not seen it, and we left it with our curiosity ungratif...

Two dykes, one more than a thousand two hundred meters in length, the other more than two thousand meters long, separated from each other by the space of a kilometer, project in...

Here I must make a short digression. It is well known that ladies of a certain age, good mothers and good housekeepers, whose social position does not allow them to leave their...

The observations that I have had occasion to make on the character and life of the inhabitants will be more to the purpose at the Hague. I will only mention that in Rotterdam, a...

Near the market square stands the cathedral, which was founded toward the end of the fifteenth century at the time of the decadence of Gothic architecture. It was then a Catholi...

While I was vaguely regarding the street I saw a house which amazed me. I thought I must be mistaken: I looked at it more closely,--looked at the houses near it, compared them w...

In the Binnenhof the venerable Van Olden Barneveldt was beheaded. He was the second founder of the republic, the most illustrious victim of the long struggle between the patrici...

The present gallery at Rotterdam contains but a small number of paintings, among which there are very few works of the best artists and none of the _chefs d'oeuvre_ of the Dutch...

Scheveningen is a village two miles from the Hague, and connected with it by a straight road bordered along its whole length by several rows of beautiful elms, which form a perf...

Shortly after this another plot against the life of the Prince was discovered. A French nobleman, an Italian, and a Walloon, who had followed him for some time with the intentio...

On entering we find ourselves at once before the most celebrated of all painted animals, Paul Potter's "Bull"--that immortal bull which, as has been said, was honored at the Lou...

Now, it is obvious that in a country so extraordinary the inhabitants must be very different from those of other lands. Indeed, few peoples have been more influenced by the natu...

"I wish every smoker in the kingdom to be invited to my funeral in every way possible, by letter, circular, and advertisement. Every smoker who takes advantage of the invitation...

When the snow is packed hard the turn of the sleigh comes. Every family has a sleigh, and at the hour the world goes out walking they appear by hundreds. They fly past in long r...

One who looks for the first time at a large map of Holland must be amazed to think that a country so made can exist. At first sight, it is impossible to say whether land or wate...

Vondel, the greatest poet Holland has produced, was born in 1587 at Cologne, where his father, a hatmaker, had taken refuge, having fled from Antwerp to escape from the Spanish...