I propose in the following pages to begin the conclusion of the narrative of my visit to Europe. During my absence from America I had but little leisure for recreation, my travels generally terminating in interviews with the public, the anticipation of which necessarily prevented that unbending of the mind so essential to the free and easy, by which our constitutional energies are recruited.

Some of my friends very kindly invited me to accompany them to various notable places in their several vicinities; such as Keddleston Park, Dovedale, and Matlock, in Derbyshire; Knaresboro’ Castle in Yorkshire; Newstead Abbey, the late Lord Byron’s seat, in Nottinghamshire; Holyrood, the Falls of Clyde, the fine scenery of the Tay, Loch Lomond, Loch Catherine, the Trosachs, Bridge of Allan, Stirling Castle, &c., &c. The weather being fine on all these occasions, I need scarcely say, that the excursions were highly interesting and agreeable. I might say much of what I saw in all this beautiful scenery, and of the impressions made upon my mind by the sublime and picturesque; but the story has been so often told by tourists, and my feelings in the case are of so little consequence to other people, that I deem it best to dismiss the subject by saying, that I have seen enough of the surface of our globe to satisfy me, that when finished it will make a sufficiently splendid and magnificent inheritance for intelligences of the largest capacities and most scriptural aspirations. It needs only that development of which it is capable by the hand of God, to make it a heavenly world. Substitute righteousness for sin, and perfect what remains unfinished in its wastes and barrens, and no better heaven need be sought than our earth, when the Lord is there.

I saw two relics of the past, in Stirling Castle, which, it may be interesting to the reader to know, have an existence. If he be a Presbyterian and rich, he would perhaps give as much for the one as a very foolish person gave for the coal-heaver’s chair; * and if a son of the old Puritan church militant, he might not fall far short of his “true blue” companion in his bid for the other. These were Oliver Cromwell’s hat, and John Knox’s pulpit. The hat was made of black leather, and was large, heavy, and of very ample brim. It was made to fit upon an ordinary hat; and, I should think, rendered the head and shoulders beneath them safe from sabre-cuts. If the Scotch pulpits were generally like that in Stirling Castle, they were inferior to some I could name in our American wilderness, their “whittlings” nevertheless. It is John Knox’s pulpit, the narrow square box in which the disciple of John Calvin stood when he thundered forth his denunciations against the Pope and Mary, the Scottish Queen. This has sanctified the wood in the “Covenant” heart, and to this present saved it from the flames of devouring fire.

* Huntington, a hypercalvinist or Antinomian celebrity of the last century, and originally a coal-heaver, who wrote a book styled “The Bank of Faith,” and used to sign himself “S.S.,” or Sinner Saved. His followers were so devoted to his memory that one of them gave £300, or $1461, for his old arm-chair.

My labours in Britain having been at length brought to a close, I concluded on a visit to “the Continent” before leaving Europe for the United States. Two friends agreed to accompany me. Accordingly, on September 6^th, 1850, we waited upon the Prussian Consul-General for Great Britain and Ireland to obtain permission to travel in foreign parts, or, as our facetious friend expressed it, “to visit our foreign relations.” We obtained three documents called “passports,” one for each, in which were noted down our ages, heights, colour of our hair, eyebrows, and eyes; shape of our noses and mouth; beard or no beard, and divers other particulars by which we might be known to the gens d’armerie of Europe as true and loyal persons, upon whom constables and jailers had no legal claim. In the left corner of the pass at the foot, we signed our names under the words, “undershrift des Pass Inhabers;” and in the right, opposite the green consular seal, “B. Hebeler” signed his, not forgetting to demand of us ten shillings sterling a piece, for his “Koniglich Preussische” permission to cross the sea without being forbidden to go ashore.

Being thus royally provided, we left London on September 7th, at eleven A.M. in the steamer “Rhine” for Rotterdam, the birthplace of the renowned Erasmus. We were at sea all that day and until 10 A.M. of the next day, being a tolerably pleasant voyage of twenty-three hours. It might have been shorter; but not being able to cross “the Brille” because of the lowness of the tide, we had to make a detour of several miles to get at the city. At 4 A.M. we were off Helvoetsluys, where we “lay-to” for a short time; and by way of settling the stomach (and not being in good health, mine was very infirm) after the qualms of the preceding voyage, we occupied the time in drinking, not Holland gin, but some muddy-looking and ill-flavoured coffee. During the next six hours we passed Williamstadt, Dordrecht, and several other old-fashioned Dutch towns. The natural aspect of the country presented but few attractions. It is low and flat, and but little above the water-level, and in many parts below it. Nothing but a pressure from without could have induced its original settlers to set up their habitations in so swampy and unpicturesque a region. The fens of Lincolnshire, or the extended marsh lands of other low countries in America, are a fair representation of this part of Holland.

Rotterdam was a cheering sight after steaming six hours among these flats. On landing at the Stoomboot Maatschapij we were stopped by two gens d’armes in uniform, with swords at their sides, who in good English very courteously demanded our passports. After paying two dollars thirty-seven and a half cents apiece for them, and having use for them afar off, we were unwilling to comply. We desired to know when, where, and how, we should meet with them again. They informed us that the documents would be quite safe, and that we could obtain them next morning at the Bureau de Police in the Stadt Huis; where the “Signalement des Pass Inhabers,” or the particulars of the passports, are noted in a book, together with the name of the place to which you may be bound. Having surrendered upon this explanation, we passed on; and having no more baggage than we could conveniently carry in hand, we escaped detention by custom-house officials. Cabmen and “touters” crowded the pier, clamouring for “fares” and boarders with as much obstreperousness as in New York itself, only that the police will not allow them to rush on board as they do when steamers make fast to our piers. They rush upon you, however, as if they would “bag you” for themselves at all hazards. A traveller landing at the same place, says, “After delivering my passport, a custom-house officer cried ‘halt!’ but, on seeing my modest equipment, bade me pass on without examination. A few paces farther, at the verge of the quay, I was again arrested by a group of men who insisted upon my going to the custom-house. In vain I represented that my baggage had been ‘passed;’ whether or no, they would bar my passage. I made a feint of yielding, and doubling round a vigilante, as the cabs are named, made off towards the Berliner Hof, the hotel to which I had been commended. The party had perhaps watched my movements, for they rushed after me, and were about to renew their clamour, when a tall man came up and dispersed them, after inquiring in English if the officer had passed me. I afterwards found that the stoppage was ‘a dodge’ on the part of the cab drivers, their object being to compel their victims to escape from the difficulty by a ride.” The “touters” beset us more than the drivers, recommending their several hotels to our favourable regards. But we were deaf to their appeals, being determined on peripatesis, not being burdened with more luggage than each could conveniently carry; and on the agreeable novelty of making discoveries for ourselves in a strange city, where the language of the people was “all Dutch to us,” and therefore as unintelligible as could be wished. We pushed on, therefore, through the crowd, not knowing whither we went. After walking for some time, in directions where hotels seemed to be remarkably scarce, I asked a boy about thirteen years old, in my own tongue of course, but under the supposition that he might possibly be an Anglo-Saxon, if he could tell me where I could find a respectable hotel? Whether my barbarian speech or my beard alarmed him, I cannot say; but he stared at me with open mouth for a few moments, and then by a strong effort, as if to break the spell which bound him, he started off with the velocity of a hare, without answering me a word. Observing the effect recently of my beard upon a Negro boy in Virginia, who on catching a glimpse of me bawled out his master’s message some twenty yards off, and then retreated to the top of a fence, ready to drop over to the farther side and run at my approach; I suspect it was my appearance, and not my speech that made the miniature Dutchman increase the distance between us with all dispatch. I suppose he had never seen a beard before, for the Hollanders make their faces as much like those of boys and women as the keenness of a razor’s edge can accomplish. I was very much struck with the difference in this respect between them and their former fellow-citizens, the Belgians. The latter, as well as the Prussians and Germans, wear enormous beards, unless the fashion has changed since my visit. I attribute this to a political cause. The Belgians, who rebelled against the Dutch government in 1830, are a revolutionary population, sympathising with the progressistas of all other European countries. The Hollanders are content to follow the customs of their fathers, whose plodding industry, and sturdy assertion of their rights and freedom, has placed them, in their own esteem at least, in advance of all the world. Progress, except in the accumulation of ducats, has no charms for the Netherlander. His fathers shaved; why, then, should he forbear? But other nations groaning under the despotism of shaveling priests and royal knaves, are not so contented with their lot as he. They cease to shave, as a testimony against smooth-faced hypocrisy, which they regard as the source of all their evils. Hence the beard has become the symbol of “advanced ideas;” and consequently obnoxious to all partisans of “old opinions,” be they civil, ecclesiastical, or social. For this cause the Pope and his cardinals, bishops, priests, and deacons, “all shaven and shorn,” and the clergy of all sects in western “Christendom,” are hostile to the beard; and wherever their influence is felt, cause it to be suppressed. This is preeminently the case in Rome, where it is forbidden to be worn; and though Holland is intensely Protestant, yet, on the principles, I suppose, of anti-Belgianism or extremes meeting, the Dutch are in fellowship with the Pope in the repudiation of the beard.

Getting no information from the boy, we walked on, until at length we espied the Hotel d’Elberfeld, at the Vlasmarket Hoek and Speiger. Having introduced ourselves to “mine host” as well as we could with our English, imperfectly understood by a man who spoke a patois made up of his own Dutch and our Anglo-Saxon, we arranged to abide with him during our sojourn in Rotterdam. Having consigned our “affaires” to his care, we set out in quest of the novelties presented to foreigners in a Dutch town.

Some one has remarked, that if you would be thoroughly taken out of your own country, you should not travel to Constantinople, but to Rotterdam; which, by those who have visited the former city, is said to be true to a great extent; for in Rotterdam you see all in one, what can only be met with piece-meal elsewhere. If the streets in Philadelphia had canals running along their centres, and on each side of them paved thoroughfares for carts and “foetpaden,” anglice, footpads or passengers, and these were filled with vessels, and vehicles, and rows of trees on each side of the water-courses, the tout ensemble would present a striking resemblance to Rotterdam. The canals, however, are wider than Chestnut and Walnut streets, and, in some parts of the city, afford havens for ships of the largest size. The description of Rotterdam in Hood’s poem is very exact. He writes: —

“Tall houses with quaint gables,

Where frequent windows shine,

And quays that lead to bridges,

And trees in formal line,

And masts of spicy vessels

From western Surinam,

All tell me you’re in England,

But I’m in Rotterdam.”

Hood further styles it “a vulgar Venice;” and to a stranger the queen city of the Adriatic can hardly present a more striking appearance. Land and water are so strangely and picturesquely intermingled; the busy life that pervades both is so thoroughly in keeping with the scene, that to walk about, and look on with curious eye, is occupation enough. Turn your eye which way you will, you see a bridge, its strong pillars rising aloft, bearing the great cross-beams by which each portion is counterpoised. The whole is painted white, and the wooden floor slopes gently upwards from each side to the centre. Presently, a tall-masted vessel floats up; the two men always in attendance at the little lodge erected close by, run out; they withdraw the iron wedges from the staples, and then, with a slight pull at the chain suspended from the cross-beams, each half of the bridge begins slowly to rise: before they are at the perpendicular the schuit has passed; a push at the cross-beams sends them up again; the men spring to the centre to accelerate the descent, impatient boys scramble after them, the wedges are replaced, and the stream of traffic, which had been momentarily interrupted, resumes its course with no more delay than is caused by the issuing of a dray from one of the side streets of a crowded avenue.

A tourist visiting this city says, “My walks up and down in Rotterdam gave me the key to several matters that had puzzled me when living in New York. The American farmer drives to market with two horses at a fast trot, harnessed to a light narrow wagon, with side rails rising high behind at a sharp curve. The Dutch farmer does the same. The New York milkman goes his round in a similar wagon, supplying his customers from two bright cans placed in front of his seat. The Dutchman does the same. New York builders frequently erect whole rows of houses, side, back, and middle, leaving the entire front to be built up last. I saw the same process in Rotterdam, where many new houses were ‘going up.’ Here, too, was the original of the clumsy truck or dray which the carmen of New York drive about the streets by hundreds. Here, too, the reason why shopkeepers’ names are so perseveringly painted on each door-post in Broadway, and other business thoroughfares. Here, too, the frequent occurrence of the announcements, Bakkerij, Bleekerij, and Hoekij, sufficiently explained why, in the over-sea city, a baker’s shop was called a bakery, a bleaching-ground a bleachery, a cake- shop a cooky-store; and the exposing of groceries in open barrels, ranged in rows in the shops, also accounted for the similar practice still existing in New York. Who would have thought that the early settlers at the mouth of the Hudson, whose town-council ‘met one day and smoked their pipes,’ would have left such enduring traces behind them!”

The signboard literature of the Dutch Venice is highly amusing to a foreigner. Over the windows of the provision merchants, they not only tell you that they have boter and kaas, butter and cheese, but, lest you should mistakenly suppose that they distributed it gratuitously, they are careful to tell you that they have it te koop, that is, to sell. This is common in the Hoog Straat as well as in the back lanes. In this street a printed label on a basement door stated, “Hier is een kelder to huur”—Here is a cellar to let. A conveyancer could not wish for greater detail or exactness. In all the Dutch towns the houses are numbered in districts. Thus, Wyk 2. 250 signifies No. 250 in the third wyk or ward; an arrangement which in some respects is by no means convenient. It is much easier to follow the numbers in a street than over a whole quarter, where you are ignorant of the direction of their beginning or ending.

We were very much struck with the leaning of the fronts of the houses towards the streets in numerous instances. We concluded that it was the subsidence of the foundations that caused it. This is said to be a mistake. It is admitted that it may be true in a few cases; but that generally it is to be attributed to the original formation of the houses. Whole streets are said to have been originally built in a sloping position: the backs of the houses present no such deviation from the perpendicular; neither is the roof line altered. Modern builders avoid this overtopping, which, however picturesque, looks dangerous; and new houses are now erected as perpendicular as elsewhere.

The appearance of the vessels, coasters and inland traders, which crowd the havens, is very remarkable. So clean, so bright, so polished: no scratches, no bruises, no marks of rough usage. The fenders suspended from the bulwarks are curved to fit the protuberant side, and strengthened at either end by polished brass ferules; the heel of the bowsprit, the bitts and windlass, the rudder head, are similarly decorated, and painted with gay colours. The little cabins are formal neatness itself, and the vrouw and her family not less clean than the most precise residents on shore. The tubs for washing clothes are so contrived as to hang over the vessel’s side by means of a bracket, so that the splashings fall into the canal, and the slopping of the deck is avoided. Many of these crafts are floating shops for the sale of matting, crockery, brooms, firewood, &c., and on fine days the stock in trade is displayed partly on the quay and on the deck. When business grows slack the owners cast off their moorings, and take up a new position in another street.

(To be continued.)

* * *