What a crowd of people, to be sure. “Holland is over-peopled,” said a tradesman to me. “Why, sir, you can have a good clerk for 20l. per annum. The land is ready to stifle with the close packing.”
“Yes,” said I, “so it appears. That operation going on under the bridge is a fit emblem of the tightness of your population.”
As I spoke, I pointed to a man, or rather several men, engaged in a national occupation: packing herrings in barrels. How closely they were fitted, rammed and crammed, and then a top was put on the receptacle, and so on, ad infinitum.
We are now in the Jewish quarter. “Our people,” as the Israelites are wont to call themselves, formerly looked on Amsterdam as a kind of New Jerusalem. Indeed, they are a very important and numerous part of the population. The usual amount of dirt and finery, young lustrous eyes, and old dingy clothes, black beards and red beards, small infants and big hook noses, are jumbled about the shop-doors and in the crowded thoroughfares. Here are some fair peasant girls, Frieslanders, I should think, or from beyond the Y, judging by their helmet-shaped head-dresses of gold and silver plates, with the little fringe of lace drawn across the forehead, just over the eyebrows, the very same that Gerard Dow and Teniers have placed before us. If they were not Dutch women, and belonged to a very wide-awake race, I should tremble for them, as they go staring and sauntering about in rustic simplicity, for fear of that lynx-eyed Fagan with the Satyr nose and leering eye fastened upon them, who is clearly just the man to help to despoil them of their gold and silver, or something more precious still, in the way of his trade.
As we walk through the streets, the chimes, that ever and anon ring out from the old belfries, remind us that we are in the Low Countries; and if that were not sufficient, the showers of water on this bright sunny day descending from the house-sides, after being syringed against them by some industrious abigail, make the fact disagreeably apparent to the passer-by. This will prepare me for my visit to Broek; not that there is so much to be seen there—and Albert Smith has brought the place bodily before us—but if one left it out, all one’s friends that had been there would aver, with the greatest possible emphasis and solemnity, that I had omitted seeing the wonder of Holland. So I shall do it, if all be well.
Here is the Trippenhuus, or Museum of Dutch paintings, situated, of course, on a canal. Van der Helst’s picture of the “Burgher Guard met to celebrate the Treaty of Münster”—the Magna Charta of Dutch independence, pronounced by Sir Joshua to be the finest of its kind in the world—of course claims my first attention. The three fingers held up, emblematic of the Trinity, is the continental equivalent to the English taking Testament in hand upon swearing an oath. But as everybody that has visited Amsterdam knows all about this picture, and those two of Rembrandt’s, the “Night-watch,” and that other of the “Guild of Cloth Merchants,” this mention of them will suffice.
That picture is Jan Steen’s “Fête of St. Nicholas,” a national festival in Holland. The saint is supposed to come down the chimney, and shower bonbons on the good children, while he does not forget to bring a rod for the naughty child’s back.
De Ruyter is also here, with his flashing eye, contracted brow, and dark hair. While, of course, the collection is not devoid of some of Vandervelde’s pictures of Holland’s naval victories when Holland was a great nation.
There must have been great genius and great wealth in this country wherewith to reward it, in the seventeenth century. In this very town were born Van Dyk, Van Huysum, and Du Jardin; in Leyden, G. Douw, Metzu, W. Mieris, Rembrandt, and J. Steen. Utrecht had its Bol and Hondekoeter; while Haarlem, which was never more than a provincial town with 48,000 inhabitants, produced a Berghem, a Hugtenberg, a Ruysdael, a Van der Helst, and a Wouvermans.
In proof of the sharpness of the Amsterdamers, I may mention that most of the diamonds of Europe are cut here.