can look, with feelings of pride and independence, from his airy citadel of health and activity, down on surrounding nations—whilst the phlegmatic Hollander, secure from winds and waves, under the shelter of his break-water ramparts, surveys with kindred feelings and self-gratulations his fertile flats, his irrigated fields, and commerce-bearing canals—his senses steeped in that musing mood, that “fool’s paradise” suspended midway between the excitement of gin, and the tranquillity of tobacco?
Be this as it may, there can be little doubt that the moral and physical character—the inward temperament and outward man—are all very much modified by the climate, the soil, and the circumstances around us. It might not be difficult to shew that the prominent characteristics of the people in question are modified by these external agencies. The Hollander is accustomed to watch, with the patience of a cat, for that precise period when the alluvial deposits on his shores have attained that level which permits him to stretch out his mounds of earth, and grasp the piece of newly-emerged ground for future culture:—hence his patience and vigilance through life, while watching the opportunity of benefiting himself. He observes, from infancy, the labour and expense of realizing this property in the soil:—hence his economy, even to parsimony. His climate is damp and cold: his temperament is therefore phlegmatic. The surface of his country is flat and monotonous; without monuments of antiquity, historical renown, or classical recollections:—there is, consequently, no more poetry in his composition than in a Dutch cheese, or a stagnant canal. Living beneath the level of the ocean, he is liable to inundations from the watery element:—he is therefore habitually cautious of all contingencies. The equinoxes, the vernal and autumnal floods, the changes of the moon, are all important epochs and events in a submarine territory;—he is, therefore, a calculating animal, from his cradle to his grave. At war with the elements, he is naturally brave even to obstinacy, whether the cause be right or wrong; and will fight to the knees in blood, rather than either advance or retreat. Monotony being almost universal, ideality is nearly null:—the Dutchman, therefore, smokes during the greater part of his time, in default of conversation—tobacco being, at once, the cause and the excuse for taciturnity. In Holland there are nearly as many canals for communication, as there are dykes for defence:—the Batavian is, therefore, eminently commercial:—but the limits of the soil being narrow, and the population dense, colonization became necessary, despite of the “Vaderlandsleifde,” and emigration continues though the colonies have dwindled away. The intellectual views of the Hollander are nearly as limited as his geographical. There are no mountains, whence a wide and varied prospect can be taken in by the eye—neither are there academic eminences, from which the mind can soar into the regions of literature, science, art, or philosophy. As it is infinitely more difficult to raise dykes than children—to extend the soil, than to swell the census—so the Batavian has been a political economist long before the science was taught by Malthus, or practised by Martineau, in this country. As a merchant, he is honest and honourable in his negociations abroad—punctual as his pipe in receipts and disbursements at home. Exclusively occupied with the concerns of self—whether ruminating, fumigating, or calculating—he has little time, and less inclination, to meddle with affairs of state. The measure of his patriotism is amply sufficient for an abundance of loyalty—and if “passive obedience and non-resistance” be cardinal virtues in subjects, then the Dutch ought to be dear to the heart of their sovereign. I have no doubt that they are so. It is only a matter of reciprocal feeling—for assuredly the sovereign is dear to the Dutch.
Embarking at Rotterdam, the steamer ploughs its weary way through the muddy Maas for three long days, before it reaches Cologne. One night is spent in the malodorous town of Nymeguen—and the other on board—so that, altogether, this is one of the most monotonous voyages that could well be projected. There is not even the satisfaction of finding one bank or place more ugly, or more uninteresting than another—which would be some little variety, and afford some subject for remark. All is puddle-dock in the near, and sand-bank in the distance. Here and there the spire of a church, the roof of a house, or the mast of a schuyt appears on the horizon, for a time, and vanishes again in the blank.
COLOGNE.
If the narrow streets of Cologne be famous, or rather infamous, for bad smells, it is to be recollected that the waters of that ancient city are more valuable than the wines of the neighbouring Rhine:—that they are carried to every corner of the earth—and prized for their delicious flavour, beyond the richest productions of Rudesheim or Johannisberg. Thus good cometh out of evil—and the most grateful perfume is exhaled from the most malodorous city of Europe. “Give a dog a bad name,” and the sooner you shoot him the better. Yet if a stranger arrived at Cologne, by day or by night, not knowing the name of the place, he might traverse its numberless and crooked streets, without remarking more disagreeable scents than his nose would encounter on the banks of the Tiber, the Arno, or the Seine—in the wynds of Auld Reekie, the Gorbals of Glasgow, the purlieus of the Liffey—or even of father Thames, between Puddle-dock and Deptford. I will not maintain that all the little rivulets which meander the streets of this town, after a shower of rain, are the veritable “Eau de Cologne” of Messieurs Farina; but I must say that the olfactories of my fair countrywoman of the “Souvenirs,” were more delicate than impartial, when she penned the following sentence. “But the dreadful effluvia of the black, filthy streams that defile every street, penetrated even through the folds of pocket-handkerchiefs soaked in perfume.”—Souvenir, p. 93.
Fiction being the “soul of poetry,” we need not wonder that the Bard should seize the opportunity of having his fling at poor Cologne. Accordingly Coleridge exercised his wit and his acrimony in the following lines, in which he apostrophises Cloacina, and the nymphs, “who reign o’er sewers and sinks.”
“The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash the city of Cologne,
But tell me nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?”