is entertained by the good people of England. Reading, writing, and arithmetic do not constitute knowledge, but merely the machinery by which it may be afterwards acquired. These rudiments are, like the types of the printer distributed in their compartments—void of learning or science in themselves, till they are worked up by the compositor—who, himself is only an instrument in the hands of a higher agent. “The instruction given in the schools (says an excellent observer, Mr. Chambers) is deficient of nearly all that bears on the cultivation of the perceptive and reflective faculties, and consequently the expansion of the intellect.” This education rarely extends beyond reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography—while the superior orders are taught the French language. At or under 14 years of age, the child leaves school and merges on the ordinary avocations of life. There is in Holland nearly a total absence of scientific instruction. Words not things are taught, and no taste is generated for literature. Yet this elementary education at school, and religious instruction at home, have rendered the people remarkable for order, piety, and morality. In no other country is there so little crime or squalid poverty.
I wish I could say as much for civil as for religious liberty in this country. The press is more completely muzzled than any cart-dog in London. The latter may open his jaws so far as to growl; but the press is hermetically sealed in this submarine territory. No book can be translated or published without the censor’s license—nay, a hand-bill, announcing the importation of Warren’s blacking or Morrison’s pills, cannot be printed or affixed to a wall, without a license and a stamp! In a conversation with an intelligent Dutchman respecting this restriction on the press, I was completely silenced by the following argument. I believe, said the gentleman, that in your profession, prevention is considered to be better than cure. I assented. Then, said he, I observe in all your newspapers that people are tried, and sometimes severely punished, for publishing libels, although the authors may not believe them to be such at the time of writing them. Now the paternal Government of Holland prevents such misfortunes and evils from happening to its subjects, by examining the document before publication, and thus taking on itself the responsibility, in case it should turn out afterwards to be libellous. There was no answering this argument. The Dutch are the most patient animals that ever lived beneath a yoke, or bowed beneath a load of taxes. Talk of John Bull’s rates and taxes! They are bagatelles compared to those in Holland! Every species of business, from the cobbler to the ship-builder, is taxed after a graduated scale, varying from a few shillings to twenty or thirty pounds annually. Every dwelling, every window, door, fireplace—even the furniture, is taxed according to its value! The taxes on houses are more than a fourth of the rent! The necessaries of life are, in fact, extremely dear, and were it not for the solace of tobacco, gin, and coffee, the poorer classes of Dutchmen would die in their dykes under the pressure of hunger and taxation, notwithstanding their loyalty to King, and love of Vaderland!
AMSTERDAM.
How often does the monotonized traveller in Holland and Belgium sigh for the luxury of a zig-zag mule-track along the steep acclivity of some alpine height, as a change of scene from the eternal right-lined chaussée, terminating out of sight, beyond the verge of the horizon, or dipping apparently, like Pharaoh’s route, into a lake or the ocean! The Haerlem pavé is constantly menaced by the Zuyder-Zee on the right, and the German Ocean on the left; but it escapes a watery grave, and safely lands the weary tourist in Amsterdam. Ascending the tower of the Stadthouse, or palace, I cast my wondering eyes over the largest community of beavers that ever lived upon logs, or drove their far-fetched piles into the muddy bottom of lake or pool! Strange that the dry land of this our globe should not afford space enough for cities or towns, without invading the Adriatic and the Zuyder-Zee for the sites of Venice and Amsterdam! From this bird’s-eye view, the confusion and commixture of land and water is inextricable and incalculable. The city stands on nearly one hundred detached islets, connected by more than three times that number of drawbridges—the houses rising bolt upright out of the water—each street being a quay lined with trees—and each mansion a warehouse, as evinced by the crane and rope at the attic for hoisting in goods, furniture, fuel, and provisions. The space between the houses and the water, is much narrower than at Rotterdam, and I think the bustle and activity of commerce are far less conspicuous in the northern than in the southern entrepôt. The water, though capable of floating ships, is unfit for cooking or drinking—and, were it not for the springs of Seltzer, and the distilleries of Scheidam, I imagine that hydrophobia would universally prevail.
I suspect that the Amsterdammers were originally a colony from Palestine. Like the “chosen people,” they are much fonder of conveying merchandize from one hand to another, than of manufacturing any article of trade or commerce. The only fabrications that I could see, were those of ships to carry, and houses to contain goods. The building of houses has long been limited to the re-construction of those whose foundations had given way—and naval architecture has received many checks—the annihilation of the whale-fishery among others. But the red-herring still cheers the heart of the Hollander, and qualifies the brackish water of the Zuyder-Zee. While wandering through the streets in the evening, I found that gin-palaces were not confined to England. They are on a splendid scale here, and frequented by better classes of society than in the British metropolis. We saw burgesses—probably burgomasters—with their wives, and sometimes with their children, drinking, smoking, and listening to the dulcet sounds of Swiss or Bavarian hurdi-gurdies. This was not quite in keeping with the grave, moral, and religious character of the Dutchman.
It is not my inclination—to say the truth, it is not my forte—to describe the lions of Amsterdam—or of any of the other dams in this hybrid offspring of land and water. It was quite enough for me to see the shows—their pictorial delineation I leave to those of my tourist brethren who have studied under that inimitable painter, and hero of the hammer, Geo. Robins, Esq. They can readily transmute a varnished treckschuyt into a Cleopatra’s barge—a buggerlugg into a bust of bronze—a Flanders mare into a prancing Bucephalus—a brick trottoir into a tesselated pavement—or a Belgian flat into a garden of the Hesperides. The worst of this is, that, by the time they have ascended the Rhine, or entered Switzerland, their stock of the picturesque is expended, and they have only the sublime to draw upon for the remainder of the tour.
To see the sights of Amsterdam, the gilders and stivers must be in perpetual motion. Even at the doors of the churches, the padré’s demand your money for admittance into their cold, damp, and dreary tabernacles—a most unusual practice on the Continent.
In order to vary the journey, we returned by Utrecht to Rotterdam:—but although the route was alter, the scene was idem—and I will not detain the reader with any account of it.
BATAVIAN CHARACTERISTICS.
Of all the geological ups and downs which the surface of this globe presents, none is more remarkable, or less remarked, than that which the land of Holland has undergone. Every particle of its soil must once have occupied some higher land or even mountain of the Continent, before it travelled down to take its bath in the ocean—ultimately to rise to nearly the level of the sea—then to be rescued from the waters, partly by the operations of Nature, and partly by the industry of man. Even now the mighty Alps are daily crumbling down, and every shower of rain, and mountain torrent washes down its quota of soil to the Mediterranean or the German Ocean.[5] Should no volcanic revolution interrupt these watery changes, a period must come—ten thousand years are but a dot in the stream of time—when the high lands will be worn down into alluvial deposits which, rising from their oceanic beds, will become annexations to the existing plains. The lower heights will of course shew the effects of this “wear and tear” sooner than the snow-clad Alps; but even these last must one day undergo that transmutation and transplantation to which all sublunary things are destined. This is no imaginary speculation. It is not in Holland alone that we see vast tracts of land carried down from the hills—buried in the deep, for a time—and afterwards rescued from their watery beds. The Delta of the Nile was once among the mountains of Abyssinia—the Sunderbunds have spread far and wide to the south of Calcutta, dividing the Ganges into a hundred mouths—extending the land into the bay of Bengal, and sustaining myriads of animals, and even man himself—the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence are digging the grave of the Alligagny mountains—the mighty Andes—“Giant of the Western Star,” who now