A charming anecdote is related of the admirable conduct of the widow of Barneveldt. After he had perished on the scaffold, his sons, René and William, entered into a conspiracy to revenge his death, in which they were discovered. William fled, but René was taken and condemned to die. His mother solicited his pardon of Prince Maurice, who replied, “It appears strange that you do that for your son, which you refused to do for your husband;” to which she nobly replied, “I did not ask pardon for my husband, because he was innocent; I ask it for my son, because he is guilty.”
The view from the steeple of this church is esteemed the most beautiful in Holland, and is remarkable fine and extensive; but the beauty of the scenery is principally at a distance, as the land immediately surrounding the town is boggy, dotted with piles of white turf. The chimes of this church, or as they are called, the Carillons, are very numerous, consisting of four or five hundred bells, which are celebrated for the sweetness of their tones. This species of music is entirely of Dutch origin, and in Holland and the countries that formerly belonged to her, it can only be heard in great perfection. The French and Italians have never imitated the Dutch in this taste; we have made the attempt in some of our churches, but in such a miserably bungling manner, that the nerves of even a Dutch skipper would scarcely be able to endure it.
These carillons are played upon by means of a kind of keys communicating with the bells, as those of the piano forte and organ do with strings and pipes, by a person called the Carilloneur, who is regularly instructed in the science, the labor of the practical part of which is very severe, he being almost always obliged to perform in his shirt with his collar unbuttoned, and generally forced by exertion into a profuse perspiration, some of the keys requiring a two pound weight to depress them: after the performance, the Carilloneur is frequently obliged immediately to go to bed: by pedals communicating with the great bells, he is enabled with his feet to play the base to several sprightly and even difficult airs, which he performs with both his hands upon the upper species of keys, which are projecting sticks, wide enough asunder to be struck with violence and celerity by either of the two hands edgeways, without the danger of hitting the adjoining keys. The player uses a thick leather covering for the little finger of each hand, to prevent the excessive pain which the violence of the stroke, necessary to produce sufficient sound, requires: these musicians are very dextrous, and will play pieces in three parts, producing the first and second treble with the two hands on the upper set of keys, and the base as before described. By this invention a whole town is entertained in every quarter of it; that spirit of industry which pervades the kingdom, no doubt originally suggested this sudorific mode of amusing a large population, without making it necessary for them to quit their avocations one moment to enjoy them. They have often sounded to my ear, at a distance, like the sounds of a very sweet hand-organ; but the want of something to stop the vibration of each bell, to prevent the notes of one passage from running into another, is a desideratum which would render this sort of music still more highly delightful. Holland is the only country I have been in, where the sound of bells was gratifying. The dismal tone of our own on solemn occasions, and the horrible indiscriminate clashing of the bells of the Greek church in Russia, are, at least to my ear, intolerable nuisances. I afterwards learnt that the carillons at Amsterdam have three octaves, with all the semi-tones complete on the manual, and two octaves in the pedals; each key for the natural sound projects near a foot, and those for the flats and sharps, which are played several inches higher, only half as much. The British army was equally surprised and gratified, by hearing upon the carillons of the principal church at Alkmaar, their favorite air of “God save the king” played in a masterly manner, when they entered that town.
In this church is a superb monument raised to the memory of William the First, the great Prince of Orange, in the east end of the church, which is semicircular, and a range of semicircular pillars support the roof: within these pillars is a large space railed off, and paved with black and white marble, under which is the family vault of the House of Orange; in the centre is the monument, a sarcophagus on which is placed a marble figure of the above prince, in his robes after death: at his feet is a dog, the expression of whose countenance is very much admired; above is a marble canopy supported by four buttresses of white marble, and twenty columns of black and gold in fine style: the epitaph, in small obscure characters, is inscribed upon a tablet held up by two boys in bronze, and at each corner of the tomb stands a bronze figure, the first representing Liberty with a cap, inscribed with aurea libertas; the second is Fortitude, the third Religion, and the fourth Justice, not blind, but ardently gazing upon the balance in her hand. Under an arch at the head of the tomb is a bronze statue of the same prince, and at the other end a figure of Fame just taking wing. The other internal parts of this edifice are adorned with the usual mortuary decorations in Holland, long sable lines of escutcheons. I am as little fond of describing, as I am sure my reader must be of reading, minute descriptions of monuments; but I have been particular here, because the Dutch, with their accustomed frugality, do not much indulge in mausoleums and statues. In France, the late revolution, in its savage phrenzy, with hands still reeking with the blood of the dying, tore open the tombs of princes, and their favourites, and disfigured the consecrated depositaries with the shattered fragments of their marble mausoleums: that revolution, which, with the guillotine in front, and the broken cross in the rear, threatened to spread over and waste the whole of civilized Europe, marched to Holland, where thousands flocked to its standard; but it there very rarely inebriated the mind, and never overpowered the national love of economy; it taught them to despise and expel their living princes, but with pious frugality they spared the costly asylums of their illustrious dead.
CHAPTER VII.
SPIRITED REMONSTRANCE ... ANECDOTE OF A REGICIDE ... INTERESTING ANECDOTE OF FRANK HALS AND VANDYKE ... A DUTCH BLOOMFIELD ... DELIGHTFUL PASSAGE TO THE HAGUE ... DUTCH DISCUSSION OF DESDEMONA’S WISH ... RYSWICK ... APPROACH TO THE HAGUE ... DUTCH REVIEW ... OLD AND NEW CONSTITUTIONS COMPARED ... BRIEF REVIEW OF THE ANCIENT CONSTITUTION OF HOLLAND ... ALSO OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY ... REMARKS ON THE PRINCES OF THE HOUSE OF ORANGE.
It is but just to state, however, that, during their political change, many of the people displayed great firmness, and none more than the manufacturers of this town, who in the year 1803 presented to the executive government of the Batavian republic, a very spirited remonstrance against the temporary suspension of an edict passed in 1802, prohibiting the importation of foreign manufactures of which the following is an extract: “Should we be left destitute,” said they, “of that just and lawful support, which we still hope to obtain, we shall be compelled to demand, that the laws which forbid the exportation of manufacturing tools and implements be repealed, in order that we may be enabled to sell our valuable tools and implements, which will then become altogether useless to us, to foreigners who know how to appreciate their value, or to transplant our manufactories into countries where they daily experience the encouragement which they so highly deserve.”
Not far from the old church, the tower of which is alarmingly out of its perpendicular, is the identical house in which William I. was murdered by a bigoted hireling of the King of Spain in 1584. A Dutch inscription, placed over two holes in the wall on the stairs, made by the pistol bullets after they had passed through his body, communicates the savage circumstance. The bigots of Spain celebrated the murderer as a martyr, and his family were ennobled and pensioned. A solitary instance of honours being paid to a regicide. Well has our immortal bard observed:
——If I could find example
Of thousands, that had struck anointed kings,
And flourish’d after, I’d not do’t; but since