HOLLAND AND ITS PEOPLE.* IT is generally acknowledged that the

best way of getting outside ourselves is to see ourselves as others see us ; and this is most easily done by inducing a foreigner to set down frankly, clearly, and honestly, his observations and reflections. The Dutch, if they had decided on going about the matter with their usual wisdom, could not have chosen an individual more fitted by virtue of contrasted race and country than an educated, observant, keenly artistic, and highly sensitive Italian. To come from the land of sun, of exquisite scenery and still more exquisite colouring, where Art is Nature, and the Graces are possessed by all, the home of an early and splendid civilisation, to a land of amphibians, covered with a dense sky and shrouded in a perpetual haze, where man, instead of leaning on Nature, spends his years in fighting

against her,—this was indeed a contrast, and Signor de Amicis felt it, and has expressed it with great force in his nervous, picturesque, and graphic style. He has a full eloquence, but his command of language, if large, is never redundant ; it is that of an artist intellectually keen, and keenly observant. To follow out the prescription of contrast and strangeness which the traveller had set himself, he visited Zealand, which is a puzzle to the Hollanders themselves. It was a sea in the

Middle Ages, had been reclaimed at the beginning of the sixteenth century, drowned by the Zealanders in self-defence during the War of Independence, and is now once more fertile Zealand, neither land nor sea, but a hopeless tangle of the two. The traveller, as he passes along the silent canals, sees nothing but water, the green strips of dykes, occasional red roofs and steeples, and countless windmills. Having partially accustomed himself to this weird and peculiar land- scape, our traveller arrived by night at Rotterdam. The next morning he saw the extraordinary colouring, "half-funereal and half-festive," of the houses, partly red and partly white

(the dark red appearing nearly black in the distance), and the grotesque appearance of the distorted and seemingly tumble- down houses. He relates how the reality of the fact that this peculiarity is the rule and not the exception dawned on him, and then breaks into a singularly animated and clever description of the sight:— "All the houses—in any street one may count the exceptions on his fingers—lean more or less, but the greater part of them so much that at the roof they lean forward at least a foot beyond their neighbours', which may be straight or not so visibly in- clined; one leans forward as if it would fall forward into the street, another backward, another to tho loft, another to the right; at some points six or seven contiguous houses all lean forward together, those in the middle most, those at the ends less, looking like a paling with the crowd pressing against it. At another point two houses lean together as if supporting one another. In certain streets the houses for a long distance lean all one way, like trees beaten by a prevailing wind ; and then another long row will lean in the opposite direction, as if the wind had changed. Some- times there is a certain regularity of inclination that is scarcely * Holland and tits People. By Edmond° de Amide. Translated from the by Caroline Tilton, Vandyke Edition, London and New York : G. P. Sons. noticeable ; and again, at crossings and in the smaller streets, there is an indescribable confusion of lines, a real architectural' frolic, a dance of houses, a disorder that seems animated. There are houses that nod forward as if asleep, others that start back- ward as if frightened; some bending toward each other, their roofs almost touching, as if in secret conference ; some falling upon one another as if they were drunk, some leaning backward between others that lean forward, like malefactors dragged onward by their guards ; rows of houses that curtsey to a steeple, groups of small houses all inclined toward one in the middle, like conspirators in conclave."

The cleanliness of Rotterdam, and, indeed, all Holland, astonished our traveller, prepared as he was to be critical ; here again comes in the value of contrast. The poorest quarter of the town, between the Hoog Strout and one of the eastern canals, where the houses are smallest, so that the roof can sometimes be touched with the hand, is wonderfully clean :—

" There is no dirt in the streets, no bad smells, not a rag to be- seen, or a hand held out to beg ; there is an atmosphere of cleanli- ness and well-being which makes one blush for the miserable quarters where the poor are crowded in our cities, not excepting Paris, which has its Rue Mouffetard."

Aye I and Rome, and Florence the Festive, and, alas Venice- the Golden. What a contrast, indeed! At Rotterdam, too, the smoking of the Hollanders first attracted his attention. He relates the story of one Van Mace, surnamed " Father Great-Pipe," a successful Indian merchant, who made in his house a marvellous collection of pipes. Van Klaes smoked. 150 grammes per day (a good five ounces), and lived to the age of ninety-eight. In his will, all smokers were invited to

his funeral, and those who accepted were to receive ten pounds of tobacco and two pipes. The poor who took part in the ceremony received an annual present of tobacco. The condition of smoking during the ceremonies was im- posed on all, The coffin was lined with the wood of cigar- boxes, and inside this was laid a packet of Caporal (!), and a packet of old Dutch tobacco. " At my side shall be laid my favourite pipe and a box of matches, because no one knows what may happen. When the coffin is deposited in the vault, every person present shall pass by and cast upon it the ashes of his pipe," He was a bit of a philosopher, was Dlynlaeer van Klee& His cook, Gertrude, who hated tobacco as much as her master loved it, followed the procession with a cigarette;

she had received a large legacy. At Rotterdam, also, the writer passes in review Dutch painting, and exclaims, as an Italian naturally would, at the wonderful realism, the ex- traordinary accuracy, and the laborious finish of the Dutch

artists. Their painting is the exact counterpart of the Dutch character, and whether one calls it high art or low art, it was emphatically painting, if we mean by that word the representation of animate and inanimate things by means

of colour. The writer reminds the reader that his analysis is not for those who know, but for those who have for- gotten ; but it is a very just and kind criticism, general enough to be broadly effective, and delicate enough in par- ticular and as regards exceptions, to be read by all with interest, and has doubtless ere now been read by the Dutch with much profit to themselves. Delft, the Hague, Leyden, Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Utrecht, these cities our traveller visited, becoming with each better acquainted with the Dutch,- and their manner of life as revealed to the stranger. It was the exterior of the Dutchmen that Signor de Amicis saw, the staid, methodical, common-sense, coldly-courteous, and quite unimaginative Dutchmen, at once the most conservative,. the most liberally educated and republican of Continental nations; and we may be sure that such individuals furnished quite enough matter for wonder and study for him, without attempting to gauge the domestic life of a most home-loving people. What he did see of their houses may be summed up in one word, cleanliness,—cleanliness of life, cleanliness of morals, and cleanliness of surroundings ; and these out- ward and visible signs left no doubt as to the exceeding• peace, homeliness, affection, and sanctity of the inner circle of national life. There was not time to do both, so he busies himself with the working existence of the Hollander, as he appears in the cities of to-day and speaks in the history of his country. Delft, the city of disasters, the guardian of melancholy memories, where William the Silent was assassi- nated, impressed the traveller with its air of solemn quietness and its peaceful prettiness. The figure rises up before him, as it does before us, of that true gentleman, patriot, and martyr, William of Orange. One coming from liberate

Italy could not fail to be stirred by the memorials of that fearful fight, when that muddle of sea, sky, land, canals, .dykes, and windmills, sucked down the whole power of the Spanish Monarchy,—a "fantastic funeral," our writer calls it, in his striking description of the war in Zealand, and adds : ." and it was indeed the funeral of the great Spanish Monarchy, which was being slowly drowned in the waters of Holland and covered with mud and maledictions."

There is perhaps one dirty spot in Holland, that country where the Picturesque does not go hand-in-hand with the Dirty, and that is the Jew's quarter, the Ghetto of Amster- dam ; and there is no filthier spot on the face of the globe. 'Ile description of it here given is too long to be quoted, and quotation, if not complete, would be unjust ; but it is both powerful and brilliant, and intensely vivid. Besides these inhabitants of the Ghetto, " the gipsies of the Albaicin of Granada are sweet and clean and perfumed;" and this -comparison may be of use to those who have seen the one and not the other. The Jew who did what man could do for that much maltreated gem, the Koh-i-nor, was to be seen a few years ago in the Zwanenburger Straat. Signor de Amicis visited the dead cities of Zuyder Zee, though these cities are not so dead as he and M. Havant would have us believe ; .great they are no longer, but they have a quiet Dutch exist- ence of their own, and are not idle. It was surely some- what ungrateful of the traveller to call Edam a dead city, whence is named that celebrated cheese, "wherein when once you have thrust your knife you can never leave -off until you have excavated the whole, while desire still hovers over the shell." Our traveller seems to have accus- tomed himself to Dutch cookery. If it is more remarkable for quantity than quality, it is good of its kind, which is more than can be said for a great deal of Continental and Peninsular cookery. The greatest surprise in store for the traveller was Friesland and the Frisians, especially the Frisian women,— those " beardless cuirassiers," as he calls them. Their peculiar headdresses, especially when they are gold, may cost large sums. A Frisian maid-servant wore one that cost £24, and her lover was a wood-cutter ! And what did he think of the 'Groningen peasantry, the wealthiest in the world There is many and many an old Dutch town, and many an ancient bit of Dutch architectural art, which the writer of

Holland and its People never saw, and may have been next to, and not known. But one man cannot see everything, and

having decided to study the more easily approached Hollander, the author has done his best, It is a complaint that must often be made against Continental travellers, that .they seek .acquaintance only with the life of cities, and not with that of the peasantry. Signor do Amicis has to a certain extent avoided this reproach, and there can he nothing but pleasure and appreciation in reading his Holland, remarkable both for its literary quality and justness, and its absence of detraction.

The book is, in fact, so good, that we have broken a rule in -order to review this new edition.