CHAPTER XXIII.-HOLLAND.

HOLLAND, which assumed its present circumscribed territorial boundaries at the revolution in 1830, forms a very important, though not a very powerful European

state.

Holland was formerly the first maritime country in the world, and its commerce is still considerable; but, instead of being the carriers for other nations, the Dutch are now principally venders of their own agricultural and manufacturing produce. The extent of seacoast is considerable, as it reaches from the mouth of the West Scheldt to the Ems. It is also indented by a series of lakes, which in reality gives it a greater extent of water communication than our own sea-girt isle.

Holland extends from fifty-one degrees ten minutes to fifty-three degrees thirty minutes of north latitude, and from three degrees twenty minutes to seven degrees ten minutes of east longitude. In the northern provinces of this kingdom there are neither mountains nor hills, to relieve the eye from the monotony of one dull, continued flat surface; and when viewed from the top of a tower or steeple, the country appears like a vast marshy plain, intersected in all directions by an infinity of canals and ditches. The prospect is not, however, altogether uninteresting, though wanting in what we deem the first features of picturesque beauty, as it exhibits vast meadows of the freshest verdure, and covered with numerous herds of cattle. The number of barks passing in every direction also tend to enliven the scene, and the close succession of farms, villages, and towns, show at once the industry and wealth of the country.

The physical features of this country have been entirely changed by the formation of the Zuyder Zee. From that irruption, the islands of Texel, Vlieland, Schelling, and Ameland, are the only remains of some of the finest portions of ancient Holland. It was in the tenth century that the mouths of the Scheldt were expanded into broad arms of the sea, forming the islands of Beveland, Walcheren, and Schowen; and so lately as the fifteenth century, a great salt-water lake was suddenly formed to the southeast of Dort, overwhelming seventy-two villages and no less than 100,000 inhabitants. To prevent a recurrence of these dreadful calamities, the Dutch began to secure their coast by the construction of dikes, or mounds of earth, the erection of which has been justly considered one of the greatest efforts of human industry. The great rivers are bordered by similar dikes, and provided at convenient distances with sluices, by means of which the country can be laid under water on the approach of an enemy.

The climate of Holland is humid, and the weather variable. The lower parts of the country suffer much from fogs, which would be extremely injurious to health but for the dry northern and easterly winds of the winter months.

The produce of the pasture-lands of this country is exported to every part of Europe, and Great Britain furnishes a ready market for the surplus of butter and eggs. Flax, hemp, tobacco, and hops, are also grown to a considerable extent.

The doctrines of the great reformer, Calvin, are generally received throughout Holland; but there are chapels for every variety and form of Christian worship thickly spread over the country.

The history of Holland is intimately connected with that of the Netherlands generally, and it may be enough to state, that, in their early struggles for liberty, we find an heroic devotion to the cause of their religion and country, which may be said to place the Dutch on a footing with their brethren in Switzerland.

We may now more especially notice the provinces of North and South Holland, which present the extraordinary spectacle of immense districts redeemed from the inroads of a turbulent ocean, to which the power of man has completely set bounds. This country was originally subject to the most degrading state of vassalage; but commerce has had the effect of elevating the lower classes, and, in some cases, of raising to the highest pinnacle of power men who had previously figured but as artisans and tradesmen.

The whole of North and South Holland is a continued flat, and lies so low as to be

under the level of the sea at high water; the tide is prevented from flowing in by means of dikes and natural sandbanks. These dikes are of great extent, generally thirty feet above the level of the adjoining land, and mostly twenty or thirty feet in breadth at the top, and the imposts necessary to keep them in repair are very heavy. The numerous canals and ditches which traverse the province in all directions are likewise provided with dikes, and serve not only to promote internal communication, but to drain the country of superfluous water. In spite of all these precautions, however, the sea in very stormy weather occasionally breaks through its bounds, and spreads terror and devastation throughout whole districts.

The west coast is comparatively safe from this dreadful calamity, from its natural barriers of downs or sandhills. In addition to the two great rivers which water this province in common with the rest of the Netherlands, viz., the Rhine and the Maese, Holland has many smaller rivers peculiar to itself, such as the Vecht, the Amstel, the Zaam, the Schie, the Kotte, and the Spaaren; but they have so little current, as to be more properly canals or water-courses. The principal lake is that of Haerlem. Of hills there is not one in the province, nor an eminence, except the downs by the seaside.

Holland was formerly subject to the government of counts or earls, and exposed to all the evils of military contests with the Frieslanders on the east, and the Flemings on the south. In the fifteenth century, Holland and the rest of the Low Countries were happily relieved from this petty warfare, the whole becoming, by marriage, subject to the house of Burgundy; and passing some time after, along with the other dominions of that house, to Austria, an exemption from misgovernment was all that was required to diffuse the blessings of industry over a country possessing such ample means of navigation. Amsterdam then became a populous and industrious city; and it is a great mistake to imagine that the Dutch provinces owed the whole of their prosperity to their emancipation from Spain. That grand event added indeed greatly to it, but the foundation goes much further back. After the accomplishment of their deliverance, the great political misfortune of Holland consisted in a division into two parties, one in favor of, and the other against, the ascendency of the house of Orange. The great families, and the bulk of the lower orders, constituted the strength of the former; that of the latter lay in the middling classes, particularly in the towns. The party of the house of Orange has in general been predominant; the most remarkable interregnum was the twenty years previous to the death of De Witt, in 1672, when the young prince was under age, and the opposing party headed by a statesman of the first talent. Other suspensions, but of less importance, took place previous to the years 1748 and 1787. In 1795, the opposition, or, as they are styled, the patriotic party, entertained the hope that the occupation of Holland by the French, and the liberal promises of that government, would enable them to realize their long-cherished expectations of a free government; and the changes that took place were praiseworthy, as far as depended on the Dutch. No retaliation was practised on the Orangists, and the discordant machinery of seven provincial assemblies was moulded into the more harmonious form of one great representative body.

According to the almanac of Saxe-Gotha, the population of the kingdom of Holland now amounts to 2,444,550 persons, and it has a military force of 43,000 men. AMSTERDAM is the largest, wealthiest, and most populous city of Holland, although it is not the seat of government, and only ranks as the capital of the province of North Holland. It is situated on the south bank of the Ij or Y, a gulf of the Zuyder Zee, in fifty-two degrees twenty-three minutes north latitude, and four degrees fifty-four minutes east longitude. The name of the town was originally Amstelredamme, which signifies the dam or dike of the Amstel, a river which in part runs through the city, distributed into several branches, all of which terminate in the Y, which is so called from its figure.

The origin of Amsterdam is not of remote antiquity. In the early part of the thirteenth century it is known to have consisted merely of a few huts inhabited by fishermen. Its name first occurs in a letter of Count Floris, in the year 1275, in which he exempts the town of Amstelredamme from the payment of certain tolls or taxes. Until 1482 it appears only to have been surrounded by a weak palisade; but then a wall of brick was built to protect it from the incursions of the inhabitants of Utrecht, who were continually at variance with the Hollanders, and looked with an evil eye on the rising city. The history of Amsterdam would, indeed, for many years, strikingly illustrate the truth, that next to strife at home, strife between near

neighbors is the most frightful and disgusting. We willingly pass over the details of wrong and outrage with which this period is replete, and proceed to state that, after the states of Zeeland and Holland united, in 1578, with Brabant and Flanders, in the pacification of Ghent, the advantages which Amsterdam offered for commercial enterprise attracted crowds of strangers to the town, not only from the other provinces, but from all parts of Europe; in consequence of which it began to assume that com mercial superiority which had previously belonged to Antwerp, and gradually attained that wealth and splendor which it so long afterward maintained. The prosperity of this great city declined during the wars and troubles of the fifty years preceding 1811; it appears since to have revived, but it has not regained, and can not, perhaps, be expected to regain, its former relative importance. These latter facts may be illustrated by the statement, that the population of Amsterdam was 230,000 in 1785; 180,000 in 1814; and 202,000 in 1830.

The impulse given to the prosperity of Amsterdam at the period we have mentioned rendered it necessary greatly to enlarge the city. Accordingly we find that, in the year 1675, it had increased by one half more than its former size-and was then brought to its present extent. The little alteration it has received during the lapse of the long subsequent period is very remarkable, and is indicated by the fact, that the stranger finds the plans which were made one hundred and fifty years since quite as accurate guides as they were through the streets and to all the remarkable objects which the town offers. It at present covers a surface of about eighteen thousand seven hundred and ninety geometrical feet, and is said to be larger than Haerlem, Leyden, Delft, Rotterdam, and Dordrecht, together, although these are all considerable towns. It is nine and a half miles in circumference, and is surrounded by a ditch eighty feet wide, full of running water, and with a rampart faced with brick, having twenty bastions, on each of which a windmill has been placed. Toward the land the town has eight magnificent gates of stone, and one toward the shore. The fortifications are now much neglected, and have been partly converted into public walks.

The town of Amsterdam itself, in the simple circumstances of its existence, is one of the most striking monuments of human industry and power which the world affords. The adjacent country, along the banks of the Y, is four or five feet below the level of the river, from the irruption of which it is preserved by massy and ponderous dikes; and only an immense dam of the same kind secures the town itself from inundation, with which it seems every moment threatened by the brimful canals and waters which surround it. Canals, indeed, intersect the town itself in every direction, dividing it into ninety islands, which are connected by means of two hundred and ninety bridges, some of stone and some of wood: the river Amstel itself divides the town into two parts, the eastern or old, and the western or new part; the communication between which is by a bridge, partly built of brick and partly of stone, with thirty-five arches. This bridge is about six hundred and ten feet long, sixty-four and a half wide, and furnished with iron balustrades. The largest ships may pass through the eleven central arches. The borders of these canals are usually planted with trees, which, with the stagnant and feculent state of much of the water, is reasonably thought to be prejudicial to the public health, and to afford a sufficient solution of the fact, that mortality in Amsterdam is, in proportion to the population, greater than in any other European city. The town itself is, indeed, built in the midst of a salt-marsh. In consequence of this, the foundation of all the houses and public buildings is formed by driving piles, of from fifty to sixty feet in length, through the swampy ground, until they rest firmly on a solid bank of sand below the morass. The upper ends of the piles are then sawed to a level, and thick planks are nailed to them, on which the masonry is constructed. This renders the foundation by far the most expensive part of an ordinary building. Structures of this description are not nearly so precarious as the inexperienced might imagine. Some buildings have declined very much from the perpendicular, but are considered quite as secure from falling as before; they are not thought equally secure from sinking, in case the sand should give way on which the piles rest. An event of this kind happened a few years ago, when a stack of warehouses, heavily laden with corn, sunk and totally disappeared. This mode of foundation gave occasion to the witticism of Erasmus, who said that in his country great multitudes of people lived upon the tops of trees.

The streets of Amsterdam are in general very narrow. Many that contain the

houses of the most opulent merchants are not more than seventeen feet wide. There are, however, some very fine streets: Kiezer's gragt, or Emperor's street; Heeren gragt, or Lord's street; and Prissen's gragt, or Prince's street, are upward of one hundred and forty feet wide, and are lined with houses the splendor of which would do honor to any town in Europe. All the streets are paved with brick, and a few of them have raised footpaths for passengers; but as wheel-carriages are neither numerous nor are allowed to be driven with speed, the ways are nearly as safe as the flag-stone pavements of London. Most of the private houses are built of brick, painted and ornamented with different colors. Their exterior is usually plain; the interior of the houses, however, is sufficiently splendid, decorated very much in the French style, and the sides of the rooms are generally painted with landscapes in oil-colors. Having said thus much of the city in general, we shall devote the remainder of our space to its public buildings and institutions.

The largest and most stately edifice, not only in Amsterdam but in the kingdom of Holland, is the stadthouse, or townhall, which appears so conspicuously in the centre of our engraving. It was begun in 1648, and was finally completed in 1655, at a cost of fifteen hundred thousand dollars-an enormous sum for that time, but which ceases to surprise when it is considered, first, that it rests upon thirteen thousand six hundred and ninety-five massive trees, or piles; and, then, that the building-which is two hundred and eighty-two feet in length, two hundred and fifty-five feet in depth, and one hundred and sixteen feet high-is constructed of a material which is not to be found in the country. With the exception of the ground-floor, which is of brick, it is all built of freestone. Notwithstanding its prodigious size, the stadthouse is not very magnificent in its external appearance. The front is indeed ornamented with several statues of excellent execution; but most of them are lost in the view, except some fine bronze figures of Justice, Wealth, and Plenty, together with a colossal statue of Atlas, upholding the world, which appears upon the building. The structure is surmounted by a round tower, which rises fifty feet above the roof, and which contains a great number of bells, the largest of them weighing between six and seven thousand pounds, and their chimes are remarkably harmonious. The entrance into this building is by seven doors, intended to represent the seven provinces. The omission of a grand entrance is said to be owing to the cautious foresight of the burgomasters who superintended the erection, who thought that, in case of popular tumult, the mob might thus be prevented from rushing in. The interior of the edifice is exceedingly superb; all the chambers being highly ornamented with marbles, statues, and paintings. There is a large magazine of arms on the second floor, which extends the whole length of the building, and contains a curious and valuable collection of ancient and modern Dutch weapons. On the top of the building there are six large cisterns of water, intended as a supply in case of fire, to prevent which all the chimneys are lined with copper. One of the courts of the stadthouse was occupied as a prison, on two sides of which, below the ground, are the dungeons, the state of which seemed hardly compatible with the mild spirit of the penal code of Holland. We believe that imprisonment is usually very severe in that country; but this may be accounted for by the fact that life is rarely taken as a punishment for crime, and that the prisons therefore contain many criminals, who, in most other countries, would have suffered death. The treasures of the famous bank of Amsterdam, the establishment of which, in 1609, so materially contributed to the prosperity of the town, were formerly deposited in strong apartments on the ground-floor of the stadthouse. Before the war with France, it was supposed to contain the largest quantity of bullion in the world; the precious metals heaped up there being estimated at not less than two hundred millions of dollars. The French, however, were grievously disappointed when, after their entrance into Amsterdam, it was found that, instead of the immense treasures which the bank was reputed to contain, the deposites of cash had been lent out by the directors to public bodies, whose bonds were found there in great abundance. Nevertheless, it is to this day true that, in proportion to its population, there is no city in Europe which contains so large an amount of disposable capital as Amsterdam; and it is probably more owing to this circumstance than to any other that it continues prosperous under the altered circumstances of the times. The stadthouse is now used as a palace, to which purpose it was first appropriated by Louis Bonaparte, when king of Holland.

The Exchange, so long famous in the mercantile world, is a plain but stately fabric