The name of the steamer which took me past the celebrated Three Crowns Battery, and along to the pretty low shores of Zealand to Elsineur (HelsingÖr), was the Ophelia, fare three marks. In the Marielyst Gardens, which overhang the famed Castle of Kronborg, is a Mordan’s-pencil-case-shaped pillar of dirty granite, miscalled “Hamlet’s grave.” Yankees often resort here, and pluck leaves from the lime-trees overhanging the mausoleum, for the purpose of conveyance to their own country.

But this is not the only point of interest for Brother Jonathan. Look at the Sound yonder, refulgent in the light of the evening sun, with the numberless vessels brought up for the night, having been warned by the bristling cannon to stop, and pay toll. I don’t wonder that those scheming, go-ahead people, object to the institution altogether—albeit the proceeds are a vital question for Denmark. On the steamer, I fell into conversation with a Danish pilot about this matter. I found that he, like others of his countrymen, was very slow to acknowledge that ships are forced to stop opposite the castle. He said that only ships bound to Russia do so, because the Czar insists on their having their papers visÉd by the Danish authorities before they are permitted to enter his ports.[3]

Finding there was no public conveyance to Fredericksborg, which I purposed visiting, I must fain hire a one-horse vehicle at the Post. It was a sort of mail phaeton, of the most cumbrous and unwieldy description—I don’t know how much dearer than in Norway—so slow, too. On the road we pass the romantic lake of Gurre, the scene of King Valdemar’s nightly hunt. Some storks remind the traveller of Holland. Right glad I was when we at length jogged over divers drawbridges spanning very green moats, and through sundry gates, and emerged upon a large square, facing the main entrance to the castle.

The private apartments, I found, were, by a recent regulation, invisible, as his Majesty has taken to living a good deal here. But I was shown the chapel, in which all the monarchs of Denmark are crowned, gorgeous with silver, ebony, and ivory; and the Riddersaal over it, one hundred and sixty feet long, with its elaborate ceiling, and many portraits: and, marvellous to relate, the custodian would have nothing for his trouble but thanks. In the stable were several little Iceland ponies, which looked like a cross between the Norsk and Shetland races. They were fat and sleek, and, no doubt, have an easy time of it; indeed, Denmark is a sort of equine paradise. What well-to-do fellows those four strapping brown horses were that somnambulized with the diligence that conveyed us to Copenhagen. That their slumbrous equanimity might not be disturbed, the very traces were padded, and, instead of collars, they wore broad soft chest-straps. The driver told me they cost three hundred and fifty dollars each. That flat road, passing through numerous beech-woods was four and a-half Danish miles long, equal to twenty English, and took us more than four hours to accomplish.

Bidding adieu to Copenhagen, I returned by rail to KorsÖr, and embarked in the night-boat Skirner, from thence to Kiel. As the name of the vessel, like almost every one in Scandinavia, is drawn from the old Northern mythology, I shall borrow from the same source for an emblem of the stifling state of the atmosphere in the cabin. “A regular Muspelheim!” said I to a Dane, as I pantingly look round before turning in, and saw every vent closed. A fog retarded our progress, and it was not till late the next afternoon that I found myself in Hamburg. Some few hours later I was under the roof of mine host of the “Three Crowns,” at DÜsseldorf, where I purposed paying a visit to Tidemann, the Norwegian painter. Unfortunately, he was not returned from his summer travels, so that I could not deliver to him the greeting I had brought him from his friends in the Far North. His most recent work, which I had heard much of, the “Wounded Bear-hunter returning Home, having bagged his prey,” was also away, having been purchased by the King of Sweden. At the Institute, however, I saw several sketches and paintings by this master.

Anna Gulsvig is evidently the original of the “Grandmother telling Stories.”

Bagge’s “Landscape in Valders,” and Nordenberg’s “Dalecarlian Scenes,” brought back for a moment the land I had quitted to my mind and vision. “The Mother teaching her Children,” and “The Boiling of the Porridge,” also by Tidemann, proclaim him to be the Teniers of Norway. Though while he catches the national traits, he manages to represent them without vulgarity. But perhaps this lies in the nature of the thing. The heavy-built Dutchman anchored on his square flat island of mud can’t possibly have any of that rugged elevation of mind, or romance of sentiment, that would belong to the child of the mountain and lake.

The school of DÜsseldorf—if such it can be called—has turned out some great artists, e.g., Kaulbach and Cornelius; but the place has never been itself since it lost its magnificent collection of pictures, which now grace the Pinacothek at Munich.

As I sipped a cup of coffee in the evening, I read a most grandiloquent account of the prospects of the DÜsseldorf Theatre for the ensuing winter. The first lover was perfection, while the tragedy queen was “unÜbertrefflich” (not to be surpassed). The part of tender mother and matron was also about to be taken by a lady of no mean theatrical pretensions. This self-complacency of the inhabitants of the smaller cities is quite delightful.

On board the steamer to Emmerich was a family of French Jews, busily engaged, not in looking about them, but in calculating their expenses, though dressed in the pink of fashion.

Here I am at Amsterdam. In the Grand Place is a monument in memory of Dutch bravery and obstinacy evinced in the fight with Belgium. This has only just been erected, with great fÊtes and rejoicings. Well, to be sure! this reminds me of the Munich obelisk, in memory of those luckless thirty thousand Bavarians who swelled Napoleon’s expedition to Russia, and died in the cause of his insatiable ambition. “Auch sie starben fÜr das Vaterland” is the motto.

V. Ruyter and V. Speke are both monumented in the adjoining church. The former, who died at Syracuse from a wound, is described in the inscription as “Immensi tremor Oceani,” and owing all to God, “et virtuti suÆ.”

The warlike spirit of Young Amsterdam seems to be effectually excited just now. As I passed through the Exchange at a quarter to five P.M., the merchants were gone, and in their room was an obstreperous crowd of gamins, armed “with sword and pistol,” like Billy Taylor’s true love (only they were sham), and thumping their drums, and the drums thumping the roof, and the roof and the drum together reverberating against the drum of my ear till I was fairly stunned. “Where are the police?” thought I, escaping from the hubbub with feelings akin to what must have been those of Hogarth’s enraged musician, or of a modern London householder, fond of quiet, with the Italian organ-grinders rending the air of his street. Dutch is German in the Somersetshire dialect; so I managed to comprehend, without much difficulty, the short instructions of the passers-by as to my route to various objects of interest. By-the-bye, here is the house of Admiral de Ruyter, next to the Norwegian Consulate. Over the door I see there is his bust in stone.

As I pass along the canals, it puzzles me to think how the Dutchman can live by, nay, revel in the proximity of these seething tanks of beastliness and corruption. That notion about the pernicious effects of inhaling sewage effluvia must be a myth, after all, and the sanitary commission a regular job. Indeed, I always thought so, after a conversation I once had with a fellow in London, the very picture of rude health, who told me he got his living by mudlarking and catching rats in the sewers, for which there was always a brisk demand at Oxford and Cambridge, in term time. Look at these jolly Amsterdamers. I verily believe it would be the death of them if you separated them from their stinking canals, or transported them to some airy situation, with a turbulent river hurrying past. Custom is second nature, and that has doubtless much to do with it: but the nature of the liquids poured down the inner man perhaps fortifies Mynheer against the evil effects of the semi-solid liquid of the canals. Just after breakfast I went into the shop of the celebrated Wijnand Fockink, the Justerini and Brooks of Amsterdam, to purchase a case of liqueurs, when I heard a squabby-shaped Dutchman ask for a glass of half-and-half. It is astonishing, I thought with myself, how English tastes and habits are gaining ground everywhere. Of course he means porter and ale mixed. The attendant supplied him with the article he wanted, and it was bolted at a gulp.

Dutch half-and-half, reader, is a dram of raw gin and curaÇoa, in equal portions.

What a crowd of people, to be sure. “Holland is over-peopled,” said a tradesman to me. “Why, sir, you can have a good clerk for 20l. per annum. The land is ready to stifle with the close packing.”

“Yes,” said I, “so it appears. That operation going on under the bridge is a fit emblem of the tightness of your population.”

As I spoke, I pointed to a man, or rather several men, engaged in a national occupation: packing herrings in barrels. How closely they were fitted, rammed and crammed, and then a top was put on the receptacle, and so on, ad infinitum.

We are now in the Jewish quarter. “Our people,” as the Israelites are wont to call themselves, formerly looked on Amsterdam as a kind of New Jerusalem. Indeed, they are a very important and numerous part of the population. The usual amount of dirt and finery, young lustrous eyes, and old dingy clothes, black beards and red beards, small infants and big hook noses, are jumbled about the shop-doors and in the crowded thoroughfares. Here are some fair peasant girls, Frieslanders, I should think, or from beyond the Y, judging by their helmet-shaped head-dresses of gold and silver plates, with the little fringe of lace drawn across the forehead, just over the eyebrows, the very same that Gerard Dow and Teniers have placed before us. If they were not Dutch women, and belonged to a very wide-awake race, I should tremble for them, as they go staring and sauntering about in rustic simplicity, for fear of that lynx-eyed Fagan with the Satyr nose and leering eye fastened upon them, who is clearly just the man to help to despoil them of their gold and silver, or something more precious still, in the way of his trade.

As we walk through the streets, the chimes, that ever and anon ring out from the old belfries, remind us that we are in the Low Countries; and if that were not sufficient, the showers of water on this bright sunny day descending from the house-sides, after being syringed against them by some industrious abigail, make the fact disagreeably apparent to the passer-by. This will prepare me for my visit to Broek; not that there is so much to be seen there—and Albert Smith has brought the place bodily before us—but if one left it out, all one’s friends that had been there would aver, with the greatest possible emphasis and solemnity, that I had omitted seeing the wonder of Holland. So I shall do it, if all be well.

Here is the Trippenhuus, or Museum of Dutch paintings, situated, of course, on a canal. Van der Helst’s picture of the “Burgher Guard met to celebrate the Treaty of MÜnster”—the Magna Charta of Dutch independence, pronounced by Sir Joshua to be the finest of its kind in the world—of course claims my first attention. The three fingers held up, emblematic of the Trinity, is the continental equivalent to the English taking Testament in hand upon swearing an oath. But as everybody that has visited Amsterdam knows all about this picture, and those two of Rembrandt’s, the “Night-watch,” and that other of the “Guild of Cloth Merchants,” this mention of them will suffice.

That picture is Jan Steen’s “FÊte of St. Nicholas,” a national festival in Holland. The saint is supposed to come down the chimney, and shower bonbons on the good children, while he does not forget to bring a rod for the naughty child’s back.

De Ruyter is also here, with his flashing eye, contracted brow, and dark hair. While, of course, the collection is not devoid of some of Vandervelde’s pictures of Holland’s naval victories when Holland was a great nation.

There must have been great genius and great wealth in this country wherewith to reward it, in the seventeenth century. In this very town were born Van Dyk, Van Huysum, and Du Jardin; in Leyden, G. Douw, Metzu, W. Mieris, Rembrandt, and J. Steen. Utrecht had its Bol and Hondekoeter; while Haarlem, which was never more than a provincial town with 48,000 inhabitants, produced a Berghem, a Hugtenberg, a Ruysdael, a Van der Helst, and a Wouvermans.

In proof of the sharpness of the Amsterdamers, I may mention that most of the diamonds of Europe are cut here.

Next day, I took the steamer to Zaandam, metamorphosed by us into Saardam, pretty much on the same principle, I suppose, that an English beefsteak becomes in the mouths of the French a “biftek.” The tumble-down board-house, with red tile roof, built by the semi-savage Peter, in 1632, will last all the longer for having been put in a brick-case by one of the imperial Russian family. I always look on Peter’s shipwright adventures, under the name of Master Baas, as a great exaggeration. He perhaps wanted to make his subjects take up the art, but he never had any serious thoughts of carpentering himself. He only was here three days, and, as the veracious old lady who showed the place told me, he built this house himself, so what time had he for the dockyards? When some of your great folks go to the Foundling Hospital, and eat the plum-pudding on Christmas-day, or visit Woolwich and taste the dietary, and seem to like it very much, that is just such another make-believe.

“Nothing is too little for a great man,” was the inscription on the marble slab over the chimney-piece, placed there by the very hand of Alexander I. of Russia. In the room are two cupboards, in one of which Peter kept his victuals, while the other was his dormitory. If Peter slept in that cupboard, and if he shut the door of it, all I have to say is, the ventilation must have been very deficient, and how he ever survived it is a wonder. The whole hut is comprised in two rooms. In the other room are two pictures of the Czar. In the one, presented in ’56 by Prince Demidoff, the Czar, while at work, axe in hand, is supposed to have received unwelcome intelligence from Muscovy, and is dictating a dispatch to his secretary. The finely chiselled features, pale complexion, and air of refinement, here fathered on this ruffian, never belonged to him. The other picture, presented by the munificent and patriotic M. Van der Hoof, is infinitely more to the purpose, and shows you the man as he really was, and in short, as he appears in a contemporary portrait at the Rosenborg Slot. Thick, sensual lips—the very lips to give an unchaste kiss, or suck up strong waters—contracted brow, bushy eyebrows, coarse, dark hair and moustache—that is the real man. He wears broad loose breeches reaching to the knee, and on the table is a glass of grog to refresh him at his work.

Ten minutes sufficed for me to take the whole thing in, and to get back in time for the returning steamer, otherwise I should have been stranded on this mud island for some hours, and there is nought else to see but a picture in the church of the terrible inundation; the ship-building days of Zaandam having long since gone by, and passed to other places.

By this economy of time I shall be enabled to take the afternoon treckshuit to Broek. A ferry-boat carries us over the Y from Amsterdam, a distance of two or three hundred yards, to Buiksloot, the starting-place of the treckshuit, when, to my surprise, each passenger gives an extra gratuity to the boatman. This shows to what lengths the fee-system may go. And yet Englishmen persist in introducing it into Norway, where hitherto it has been unknown. Entering into the little den called cabin, I settled down and looked around me. On the table were the Lares, to wit, a brass candlestick, beyond it a brass stand about a foot high, with a pair of snuffers on it, and then two brasiers containing charcoal, the whole shining wonderfully bright. Opposite me, sitting on the puffy cushions, was a substantial-looking peasant, immensely stout and broad sterned, dressed in a dark jacket and very wide velveteen trousers. He wore a large gold seal, about the size and shape of a half-pound packet of moist sugar, and a double gold brooch, connected by a chain. As the boat seemed a long time in starting, I emerged again from this odd little shop to ascertain the cause of the delay, when I found to my surprise that we were already under way. So noiselessly was the operation effected, that I was not aware of it. Dragged by a horse, on which sat a sleepy lad, singing a sleepy song, the boat glided mutely along. The only sound beside the drone of the boy was the rustling of the reeds, which seemed to whisper, “What an ass you are for coming along this route. You, who have just come from the land of the mountain and the flood, to paddle about among these frogs.” Really, the whole affair is desperately slow, and there is nothing in the world to see but numerous windmills, with their thatched roof and sides, whose labour it is to drain the large green meadows lying some feet below us, on which numerous herds of cows are feeding.