The city was besieged by the Spaniards in 1574, and delivered therefrom by the Prince of Orange in the year following.[{344}]
To-day the plan of Leyden forms a regular pentagon, with long streets and boulevards, all characteristically Dutch, with old-time and modern houses alike built with queer gabled roofs, giving quite a mediæval aspect to an otherwise lively and up-to-date little city.
The city is traversed from east to west by the Oud Rijn, which throws out many arms and branches and gives to the place a most Venetian appearance.
One distinctive feature of the topographical aspect of Leyden, and one which is universal in most of the cities of Holland, are the canals which cross and recross the principal streets. All is plus propres, as the French have it, and the tree-bordered, cobblestoned quays are not the least of the town's attractions for the stranger.
Unquestionably the chief architectural treasure of Leyden is the Stadt Huis. It is of the style which may best be called Dutch, and is a reconstruction of 1597.
In front of the Stadt Huis are a pair of gaudily coloured stone lions, which have looked down for a matter of three hundred years on the Pilgrim Fathers, some of whom had gathered and settled here previous to going[{345}] to the New World, on Oliver Goldsmith, on Boswell, on Evelyn, and on many other Englishmen who attended the famous university here.
One learns that these lions were once properly coloured beasts,—at least of the conventional tone of stone sculptured animals, and that they were only recently painted a gaudy vermilion, which apparently is not a very durable colour, as in these days they seem to shed and don their coats with surprising frequency.
The chief ecclesiastical monuments of Leyden are the church of St. Peter, of the thirteenth to sixteenth century, a vast Latin cross of not very good Gothic; and St. Pancras, of the thirteenth century, built, curiously enough, on the ground-plan of a St. Andrew's cross.
St. Peter's was built in 1221, but in 1512 its great tower fell and was replaced by the present one, which rises high above the rest of the fabric.
In truth, there is not much of interest to be derived from a contemplation of the church except the memory of the great names of those interred therein, which form a veritable category of those who became famous in matters[{346}] ecclesiastic, artistic, and scientific, in Holland's roll of fame.