LOUVRE MUSEUM, APOLLO GALLERY
The capital, as Erasmus of Rotterdam once remarked, is a place where the people dwell on the tops of trees, like birds. Amsterdam is built on three million piles, driven deep into the swampy soil. Half of its streets are canals. A large population lives in canal-boats the year round. The city is divided by large and small canals into about a hundred islands, with three hundred bridges. The inhabitants feel secure on their timber foundation, though buildings have sunk, occasionally. While the wood-worms are few and feeble and the piles keep wet there is little danger.
The river Amstel passes through the city and gives it its name from the great system of embankments which dam the ever-threatening tide from the arm of the Zuyder Zee on which Amstel-dam stands. This arm is called the Y, spelled Ij in Dutch, and will form a ship-channel, fifty miles long, to the North Sea when fully completed. A large shipping trade is done in the spacious docks, where coffee, tobacco, and sugar come in vast quantities from the Dutch East Indies. One of the industries peculiar to Amsterdam is diamond-cutting. It is not difficult to get access to one of the workshops, and the operation is exceedingly interesting. On market-days and holidays there is a chance to see the old-time picturesque costumes still worn in country parts. The metal helmets, sometimes of silver and gold, with curious ear ornaments have a fine antique air. On Sunday evenings the working folk take their pleasures in the parks, of which swinging is with many the favorite joy. A plump damsel or plumper matron stands facing the lover or husband, and they can swing almost level with the treetop before they tire, or tumble. They take no harm by a fall.
The churches are large, cold and gloomy. The Oude Kerk dates from about 1300. The stained windows are interesting and the organ, two or three stories high, is powerful and mellow. Instead of the pews covering the floor, they occupy a raised platform in the centre, enclosed by a fence with locked doors. Near by may be seen a pile of boxes like stools, which are charcoal stoves to warm the worshippers in winter. The psalmody is so slow that the organ fills up the intervals between words and lines with rolling chords. Near the palace in the centre of the city is the Niewe Kerk, a more ornate and interesting church, built in 1408, in which the sovereigns are crowned. Its monuments to Admiral de Ruyter and Vondel, the national poet, are fine art-works, as also are the carved pulpit and the bronzes in the choir.
The royal palace, on the central square called the Dam, was built in 1648. It stands on thirteen thousand piles. It was originally the State House. Opposite is the Beurs, or Exchange. The Dutch school of painting has qualities not excelled by the finest productions of other nations. Its painters developed a marvellous proficiency in detail-work, a literalness of interpretation, a realism which is undoubtedly imitative, but in its mastery of execution compels enthusiastic admiration. The flatness of their country afforded no chance for painting fine landscapes. What they saw was the sky and the sea in the distance, and people, cattle and household goods at close range. No painters among the old masters equal the Dutchmen in cloud-scapes and sea-pieces, in fidelity to nature and delicate touch. Similarly, there are few, if any, portraits as strong as these wonderful canvases of the Dutch school. No other artists had the genius to see the possible triumphs awaiting the brush that could counterfeit the dewdrop on a rose, the glisten of the copper stew-pan or the satin gown, or the fluffy texture of a beggar’s coat. Now that two generations have learned these things by patient imitation of the old Dutchmen this art has become familiar, but no copyist of our time has approached the marvellous beauty and skill that mark the old Dutch masterpieces. The traveller will enjoy himself to the full in the famous galleries of Amsterdam, and the other towns that lie within easy reach. There are four hundred paintings in the Trippenhuis museum, of which the most famous is Rembrandt’s great picture, “The Night Watch.” Still more impressive to many is the magnificent work of Vander Helst, “The Banquet of the Civic Guard,” an immense canvas, showing a band of men in armor carousing around a table loaded with gold and silver plate, glasses, flagons, etc., affording an opportunity for the painter to show Dutch art at its highest. There are great treats in these galleries for the lover of pictures and for the student of manners. Some of the old painters either lacked poetical imagination or indulged their whimsical humor to the verge of the shocking, in certain subjects. They had at least the merit of being faithful to life as they saw it, which satisfies the average man better, on the whole, than impressionism run to seed.
Eight hundred years ago Amsterdam was a fishing village. In the fifteenth century it became the most important commercial city in the Netherlands. Peter the Great learned the art of ship-building in the little village of Zaandam near the capital. A modern building encloses the cottage in which he lived. The people are rightly proud of their city and its history. They have not of late had opportunities to test their old supremacy as sea-warriors, but they exhibit all their sturdy characteristics in fighting the sea itself, repelling its ceaseless attempts at invasion. The women may be expected to uphold the national reputation for energy in any emergency, to judge by the stolid contentment with which so many of them do men’s work. They act as railway signal men, boatmen, market porters, and do not object to being harnessed with dogs as wagon teams. Yet they seem happy if not exactly gay. In the cities less of this is noticeable. The capital is not behind in artistic and literary culture. Scholarship has always distinguished its people. Its old bookstores are a delightful temptation. The zoological garden is one of the finest anywhere. English is spoken in all the principal stores. The public charities are on an extensive scale. The foreigner is occasionally embarrassed at being politely saluted by members of the Exchange if he chances to pass as they are coming out, and in many such ways he is impressed by the courtesies shown him on all hands. One would not rush to Amsterdam for Parisian excitements, but for nervous systems needing the tone best secured by moderate activity in surroundings that are novel and uniquely interesting, a visit to Amsterdam will prove as great a pleasure as a benefit.