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(with all the other particulars of this siege) by the author of "Hollandia Illustrata." The walls and ramparts of earth, which a mine had broken and crumbled, were of prodigious thickness.

Upon the 8th, I dined in the horse-quarters with Sir Robert Stone and his lady, Sir William Stradling, and divers cavaliers, where there was very good cheer, but hot service for a young drinker, as then I was; so that being pretty well satisfied with the confusion of armies and sieges (if such that of the United Provinces may be called, where their quarters and encampments are so admirably regular, and orders so exactly observed, as few cities, the best governed in time of peace, exceed it for all conveniences), I took my leave of the Leagure and Camerades ; and, on the 12th of August, I embarked on the Waal, in company with three grave divines, who entertained us a great part of our passage with a long dispute concerning the lawfulness of church-music. We now sailed by Teil, where we landed some of our freight, and about five o'clock we touched at a pretty town named Bommell, that had divers English in garrison. It stands upon Contribution-land, which subjects the environs to the Spanish incursions. We sailed also by an exceeding strong fort called Lovestein,* famous for the escape of the learned Hugo Grotius, who, being in durance as a capital offender, as was the unhappy Barneveldt, by the stratagem of his lady, was conveyed in a trunk supposed to be filled with books only. We lay at Gorcum, a very strong and considerable frontier.

13th. We arrived late at Rotterdam, where was their annual mart or fair, so furnished with pictures, (especially landscapes and drolleries, as they call those clownish representations,) that I was amazed. Some of these I bought, and sent into England. The reason of this store of pictures, and their cheapness, proceeds from their want of land to employ their stock, so that it is an ordinary thing to find a common farmer lay out two or three thousand pounds in this commodity. Their houses are full of them, and they vend them at their fairs to very great gains. Here I first saw an elephant, who was extremely well disciplined and obedient. It was a beast of a monstrous size, yet as

* The appellation of a well-known party in Holland.

flexible and nimble in the joints, contrary to the vulgar tradition, as could be imagined from so prodigious a bulk and strange fabric; but I most of all admired the dexterity and strength of its proboscis, on which it was able to support two or three men, and by which it took and reached whatever was offered to it; its teeth were but short, being a female, and not old. I was also shown a pelican, or onocratulas of Pliny, with its large gullets, in which he kept his reserve of fish: the plumage was white, legs red, flat, and film-footed: likewise a cock with four legs, two rumps and vents; also a hen which had two large spurs growing out of her sides, penetrating the feathers of her wings.

17th. I passed again through Delft, and visited the church in which was the monument of Prince William of Nassau,—the first of the Williams, and saviour (as they call him) of their liberty, which cost him his life by a vile assassination. It is a piece of rare art, consisting of several figures, as big as the life, in copper. There is in the same place a magnificent tomb of his son and successor, Maurice. The Senate-house hath a very stately portico, supported with choice columns of black marble, as I remember, of one entire stone. Within, there hangs a weighty vessel of wood, not unlike a butter-churn, which the adventurous woman that hath two husbands at one time is to wear on her shoulders, her head peeping out at the top only, and so led about the town, as a penance for her incontinence. From hence, we went the next day to Ryswick, a stately country-house of the Prince of Orange, for nothing more remarkable than the delicious walks planted with lime trees, and the modern paintings within.

19th. We returned to the Hague, and went to visit the Hoff, or Prince's Court, with the adjoining gardens full of ornament, close walks, statues, marbles, grots, fountains, and artificial music.* There is to this palace a stately hall, not much inferior to ours of Westminster, hung round with colours and other trophies taken from the Spaniards; and the sides below are furnished with shops. Next day (the 20th) I returned to Delft, thence to Rotterdam, the Hague, and Leyden, where

* As at Enstone, in Oxfordshire; see afterwards.

+ Westminster-hall used to be so in Term-time, and the sitting of Parliament, in the beginning of the reign of George III.

immediately I mounted a waggon, which that night, late as it was, brought us to Haerlem. About seven in the morning, after I came to Amsterdam, where being provided with a lodging, the first thing I went to see was a Synagogue of the Jews (being Saturday), whose ceremonies, ornaments, lamps, law, and schools, afforded matter for my contemplation. The women were secluded from the men, being seated in galleries above, shut with lattices, having their heads muffled with linen, after a fantastical and somewhat extraordinary fashion; the men, wearing a large calico mantle, yellow coloured, over their hats, all the while waving their bodies, whilst at their devotions. From thence, I went to a place without the town, called Overkirk, where they have a spacious field assigned them to bury their dead, full of sepulchres with Hebraic inscriptions, some of them stately and costly. Looking through one of these monuments, where the stones were disjointed, I perceived divers books and papers lie about a corpse; for it seems, when any learned Rabbi dies, they bury some of his books with him. With the help of a stick, I raked out several, written in Hebrew characters, but much impaired. As we returned, we stepped in to see the Spin-house, a kind of bridewell, where incorrigible and lewd women are kept in discipline and labour, but all neat. We were showed an hospital for poor travellers and pilgrims, built by Queen Elizabeth of England; and another maintained by the city.

The State or Senate-house of this town, if the design be perfected, will be one of the most costly and magnificent pieces of architecture in Europe, especially for the materials and the carvings. In the Doole is painted, on a very large table, the bust of Marie de Medicis, supported by four royal diadems, the work of one Vanderdall, who hath set his name thereon, 1st September, 1638.

On Sunday, I heard an English sermon at the Presbyterian congregation, where they had chalked upon a slate the psalms that were to be sung, so that all the congregation might see it without the bidding of a clerk. I was told, that after such an age no minister was permitted to preach, but had his maintenance continued during life.

I purposely changed my lodgings, being desirous to converse with the sectaries that swarmed in this city, out

of whose spawn came those almost innumerable broods in England afterwards. It was at a Brownist's house, where we had an extraordinary good table. There was in pension with us my Lord Keeper, Finch, and one Sir J. Fotherbee. Here I also found an English Carmelite, who was going through Germany with an Irish gentleman. I now went to see the Weese-house, a foundation like our Charterhouse, for the education of decayed persons, orphans, and poor children, where they are taught several occupations. The girls are so well brought up to housewifery, that men of good worth, who seek that chiefly in a woman, fre-' quently take their wives from this hospital. Thence to the Rasp-house, where the lusty knaves are compelled to work; and the rasping of brasil and logwood for the dyers is very hard labour. To the Dool-house, for madmen and fools. But none did I so much admire, as an hospital for their lame and decrepit soldiers and seamen, where the accommodations are very great, the building answerable; and, indeed, for the like public charities the provisions are admirable in this country, where, as no idle vagabonds are suffered (as in England they are), there is hardly a child of four or five years old, but they find some employment for it.

It was on a Sunday morning that I went to the Bourse, or Exchange, after their sermons were ended, to see the Dog-market, which lasts till two in the afternoon, in this place of convention of merchants from all parts of the world: the building is not comparable to that of London, built by that worthy citizen, Sir Thomas Gresham, yet in one respect exceeding it, that vessels of considerable burthen ride at the very quay contiguous to it; and indeed it is by extraordinary industry that as well this city as generally all the towns of Holland, are so accommodated with graffs, cuts, sluices, moles, and rivers, made by hand, that nothing is more frequent, than to see a whole navy, belonging to this mercantile people, riding at anchor before their very doors; and yet their streets even, straight, and well paved, the houses so uniform and planted with lime trees, as nothing can be more beautiful.

The next day, we were entertained at a kind of tavern, called the Briloft, appertaining to a rich Anabaptist, where, in the upper rooms of the house, were divers pretty water

works, rising 108 feet from the ground. Here were many quaint devices, fountains, artificial music, noises of beasts, and chirping of birds; but what pleased me most was a large pendant candlestick, branching into several sockets, furnished all with ordinary candles to appearance, out of the wicks spouting out streams of water, instead of flames. This seemed then and was a rarity, before the philosophy of compressed air made it intelligible. There was likewise a cylinder that entertained the company with a variety of chimes, the hammers striking upon the brims of porcelain dishes, suited to the tones and notes, without cracking any of them. Many other water-works were shown.

The Keiser's, or Emperor's Graft, which is an ample and long street, appearing like a city in a forest; the lime trees planted just before each house, and at the margin of that goodly aqueduct so curiously wharfed with Klincard brick, which likewise paves the streets, than which nothing can be more useful and neat. This part of Amsterdam is built and gained upon the main sea, supported by piles at an immense charge, and fitted for the most busy concourse of traffickers and people of commerce beyond any place, or mart, in the world. Nor must I forget the port of entrance into and issue of this town, composed of very magnificent pieces of architecture, some of the ancient and best manner; as are divers churches.

The turrets, or steeples, are adorned after a particular manner and invention; the chimes of bells are so rarely managed, that being curious to know whether the motion was from any engine, I went up to that of St. Nicholas, where I found one who played all sorts of compositions from the tablature before him, as if he had fingered an organ; for so were the hammers fastened with wires to several keys put into a frame twenty feet below the bells, upon which (by help of a wooden instrument, not much unlike a weaver's shuttle, that guarded his hand) he struck on the keys and played to admiration: all this while, through the clattering of the wires, din of the too nearly sounding bells, and noise that his wooden gloves made, the confusion was so great, that it was impossible for the musician, or any that stood near him, to hear any thing himself; yet, to those at a distance, and especially in the

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