It would take too long to mention all the sights seen and famous places visited by the travellers in Gravenhaag.

They were admitted to the palace of the Prince of Orange, and saw his famous collection of paintings and chalk drawings. They went over the Binnenhof, which is a collection of ancient stone buildings, containing a handsome Gothic hall, and the prison in which Grotius and Barneveldt were confined, the churches, synagogues, and the royal library, and walked on the Voorhout, a beautiful promenade, with a fine, wide road lined with shade trees and furnished with benches, to the Bosch, a finely wooded park belonging to the King of Holland. In its centre, reached by winding walks among the trees and beautiful lakes, stands the Huys in den Bosch—house in the wood—the king’s summer palace.

After visiting all these places, and the printing establishments and iron foundery, Mr. Hyde, finding he had another day before the steamer sailed, took them all to Rotterdam. They went by railway to the city, and drove around it in an open carriage, like a barouche, which was waiting at the depot. Mr. Hyde, who had been there before, was quite familiar with the place. He ordered the coachman to drive through the High Street; and soon the children found themselves on a street considerably higher than the others, lined with shops, and looking very pleasant and busy. Mr. Hyde told them it was built upon the dam which prevented the Maas River from overflowing.

“And this is the only street in Rotterdam,” said he, “which has not a canal in its centre.”

When they had gone the length of High Street, they came to street after street, each having a canal in the middle, lined with trees on both sides, and exhibiting a medley of high gable fronts of houses, trees, and masts of shipping.

“Dear me!” cried Nettie; “I wouldn’t live in such a place for the world. It’s pretty to look at; but think of having those ships going by right under the drawing-room windows. They make me giddy.”

“How many canals!” cried Allan. “They go lengthwise and crosswise through every street but the High.”

“And these clumsy bridges,” said Nettie again, pointing to the drawbridges of white painted wood which they saw at every little distance; they were made of large, heavy beams overhead, and lifted by chains for the vessels to pass through.

Under the trees, beside the canals, were yellow brick “sidewalks,” as Nettie called them; but they were really quays, for the landing of goods.

Between the trees and the houses, on a coarse, rough pavement, among carts, drays, and carriages, walked the foot passengers quite frequently. For though there were sidewalks close to the houses, little outbuildings and flights of steps to doorways were continually in the way, and it was “impossible for one to walk straight along, or at all fast, on any of them,” as the children said.

“Mamma,” said Nettie, “I should think they would break their necks every minute. Just look at those canals, right in the street, and nothing to keep people from falling into them. What do they do in dark nights?”

“How do they light the streets, papa?” asked Eric.

“By oil lamps, hung on ropes from the houses to the trees,” said Mr. Hyde. “They have gas on the High Street.”

Allan’s attention had been attracted by some curious little structures outside the lower windows of several of the houses.

“What are they?” he asked.

“Looking-glasses,” said Mr. Hyde.

“Looking-glasses, papa! Outside their windows?” exclaimed Nettie.

“Yes, dear; they are hung so as to reflect the passing objects to the people inside.”

“Then they can see whatever is going on in the streets below, without coming to the windows,” said Eric.

“What a funny custom!” exclaimed Nettie, again.

The only building they visited was the Church of St. Lawrence, where they saw the famous great organ, a splendid structure, larger than the great organs of Haarlem and Boston. It is one hundred and fifty feet high, mounted upon a colonnade fifty feet high, and has five thousand five hundred pipes.

In the market-place they saw a statue of the great scholar Erasmus, and “the house where he was born,” which is now, alas! a gin-shop. From the Boomptjes, a fine quay, planted with rows of beautiful trees, and surrounded by elegant, dark brick mansions, our party chartered a little sail boat, and went out upon the Maas.

The beautiful, quiet Maas, with Rotterdam’s green, woody banks in view; the blue, blue sky, seen clearly in the limpid waters; the steamers coming and going, and birds flying around, adding their sweet notes to nature’s harmony—this beautiful picture was one remembered by the children all their lives. To-morrow’s parting hung its shadow over them, and softened their hearts to the true beauty everywhere expressed.

The sun had set when they reached the Vyverberg for the last time.

“Mamma,” said Eric, regretfully, “I almost wish I was going home with you all.”

“Uncle Charlie may come to-night,” said his mother, cheerfully. “At any rate, he will soon come. You would then wish you had staid.”

“Yes, I know,” said Eric. “But it is very hard to let you all go home without me, for all that.”

Very careful directions were given to Eric, and he was placed under the care of the landlord until he should hear from his uncle.

The evening was very short to Eric, who lingered by his mother, and could not bear to leave her side, knowing he should see her no more for a long, long year.

Long after Nettie and Allan had left them, he staid with his parents, listening to their last kind advice, and sending little loving messages to his cousins and schoolmates.

In the morning he saw them off with a heavy heart. His father’s last kind words, Allan’s affectionate greeting, Nettie’s tears, and his promise to his mother that he would remember his prayers and daily chapter in the Bible, and would try to make his travels a useful, profitable study, and to keep himself truthful, honest, and kind, were mixed up with a hearty, homesick longing to go after them. His eyes filled with tears as the stretch of water between him and his dear ones rapidly widened; he turned from the wharf with a sorrowful face, slowly and sadly retracing his steps to the hotel.

“How dismal it will be! how lonely and dismal without them!” He thought and murmured sorrowfully,—