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the country;-in fine, who left, at his death, his son Maurice, an heir to his many and royal virtues, together with the care of finally establishing that liberty which he had prepared. The confederate Belgian Provinces have erected this monumen to the memory of this pious and invincible hero. Philip II. King of Spain, the terror of Europe, dreaded him; he never vanquished him, he never intimidated him, but he was base enough to use the hand of an infamous and mean assassin to take away his life."

It is, upon the whole, a most magnificent production, and well worthy the inspection of every one who has eyes to see, and soul to comprehend.

To the left of this beautiful structure is the grave of Grotius, with a monument, but paltry in comparison with the former. It consists chiefly of a large medallion, representing the head of Grotius, in white marble, and a child leaning upon an urn with an inverted torch. As the medallion is considered as very like him, he must have been an ugly man. This city is the place of his birth.

At the other end of the church, in a lonely corner, lie the remains of Leuwenhoeck, famous for his microscopical discoveries. Over his cold earth a plain monument is erected by his daughter, on which there is a head of the naturalist, and a simple, though beautiful, inscription in Latin. I was pleased by the utter stillness and seclusion of this corner of the church; it felt like a place where the person whose ashes it contained would have delighted to pursue his beautiful discoveries unmolested by the world, and in death accorded well with the gentle spirit of him whose life was the life of peace.

Having seen every thing worthy of being seen in the body of the church, I ascended to the top of the spire, and an arduous ascent it was; but the labour was amply repaid by the view which I enjoyed. Few sights will astonish a stranger more than the first view from the top of a Dutch steeple. The immense extent of the prospect, without a hill or a valley, a rock or a winding river, is indeed most singular. Every thing is rich and luxuriant, but flat and uniform; the landscape appeared like one prodigious plain, extending on all sides as far as the eye could reach, with green fields,

rows of trees, and canals glittering in the sun. There were farm-houses with groves of chesnuts, villages with spires and poplars, and the fantastic city stretched beneath our feet; the whole appearing more like the gay creation of some whimsical monarch than the habitations of the plodding and phlegmatic Dutchman. After gazing for some time, I became at length quite unconscious of the great extent of the view, and could have believed that the whole visible world was converted into an extensive garden, with walks, and fish-ponds, and shady terraces-Chinese bridges, and basons for gold fish-with peacocks, painted barnacles, and Mandarins' summerhouses.

From this elevated situation I had a fine view of my old friends the storks, all busily employed in feeding their young. I could even keep them in sight during their excursions to the neighbouring canals, in search of food for their unfledged offspring. The impatience of the callow nestlings, on perceiving the approach of the assiduous parent, was extreme. They stretched their long necks over the nests from the chimney tops, the sooner to enjoy the wished-for morsel, and appeared every moment as if about to precipitate themselves into the streets below.

En passant, I may remark, that when in Rotterdam, I questioned a Dutchman concerning the probable origin of the respect and protection which is af forded to this bird; he answered, as I expected, that it was on account of their clearing the canals and marshes of frogs and other amphibious gentry, with which they abound. I had not, however, proceeded ten yards after Mynheer had left me, when I observed an old woman sitting under a tree, with a most excellent supply of frogs in a basket ready for sale; and in fact, before I left her, a girl came up, "nothing loth," and made a purchase, If, therefore, frogs are in request as an article of food, as it is known they have been for centuries, no thanks are due to the storks for their efforts in diminishing their numbers; and as, in as far as I have heard or read, there are no noxious or poisonous animals in the country, it is probable the popular superstition in favour of these birds must have originated in some other cause. Besides, it is generally

admitted, that still waters stagnate sooner when deprived of animal life than when teeming with aquatic myriads, so that their claims to protection, as purifiers of the water, are, at the best, of a dubious nature. They may, however, act as a check to the superabundant production of such creatures during the heats of summer, the increase of which is no doubt favoured by the natural moisture of the soil and climate.

Having descended once more to the habitations of the well-fed Dutchman, I found myself in a few minutes in another cathedral. It is named the Oude Kerk (old church), and contains a fine monument to the memory of the renowned Dutch Admiral, Von Tromp. Its most interesting feature is a recumbent statue of the hero himself, in white marble, the head resting upon a pillow of the same material, which, in appearance, has all the delicacy and softness of the finest down. Above the figure are certain allegorical personages, and beneath is a representation of the battle in which he fell. He was killed in a fight against the English in 1653, and is popularly known in Holland by the title of the "Great father of the sailors." Here the tomb of Peit-Hein, Admiral of the Indian Company, is also to be seen.

I may notice, that, in many of the cathedrals and churches of this country, the French, for what reason it is not easy to guess, have obliterated the inscriptions upon a great number of monuments; even those of eminent private persons, merely distinguished, it is said, for their virtue, or piety, or learning, have been erased from the stone. It is difficult to conceive any thing more wretchedly barbarous than this 66 savage warring with the dead." Yet in many places you see a large and stately ornamented marble presenting a universal blank.

Leaving Delft, and travelling through a pleasant district, with smiling cottages and lovely gardens on every side, I found myself at the Hague in the course of an hour. Near Ryswick, in particular, the trees are tall and majestic, and the general scenery most picturesque. Where that branch of the canal, which conducts to the Hague, leaves the great one leading direct to Leyden, the Castle of Ryswick is to be seen, where the treaty of 1697, between Louis XIV. and Hol

land, Spain, England, and Germany, was concluded.

The Hague is the court, though not the capital of Holland. The general appearance of the people here is less characteristic than in the other Dutch towns which I have seen. There are, however, many excellent and amusing figures among the fishermen and country people. On account of its not being surrounded by walls like the other towns in Holland, and being destitute of municipal rights, the Hague has been denominated a village, and in that view is probably the largest in the world. It contains nearly 40,000 inhabitants, and is adorned by many fine public buildings.

I was indeed much struck by the magnificent palaces of which this elegant city is chiefly composed. I had no where seen so many princely town residences in one place. Having been long the seat of a rich and powerful government, and the residence of the Stadtholder and the Dutch noblesse, the Hague has not the same air of trade and commerce, or, excepting its hotels, any thing connected with the "art of money catching." All is elegance, and splendour, and repose. There is a noble square or place in the centre, adorned with a large bason of water, in which there is a little island covered with flowering shrubs and plants, and inhabited by swans and other aquatic birds, for whose convenience, and that of their young, there are little stairs on the margin of the lake, and shelter for their nests upon the island. These birds are there in perfect safety, the water being very deep; and they are all of course, as to health, and lustre, and plumage, in the "prime of May," and familiar enough.

What pleased me much, in admiring the Hague, was the great number and extent of noble edifices, and these not elbowed and shouldered by mean habitations. In some places kingly palaces are darkened by the gloom of surrounding hovels, and so mingled with each other, that greater magnificence and more slovenly wretchedness can hardly be imagined. It is like passing from Elysium to Tartarus. But here no such objection is to be found.

The palace of the Stadtholder is in a great measure surrounded by canals and drawbridges. It seems a large building, and consists of several divisions, which vary in aspect, and must

have been erected at different times. The principal street is the Voorhout. It is of great length, and contains many houses built in a style of singular elegance.

There are, however, in this town, certain attendant evils, which perhaps tend in a considerable degree to diminish those advantages and superiorities which in other respects it may be said to enjoy. The canals, at least during my short stay, were greener and more stagnant than any I had yet seen. The people seem less primitive in their manners, and the doors and windows of the inns are constantly beset by crowds of officious beggars, whom it is impossible to satisfy, as one horde is no sooner dismissed than a fresh swarm arrives, equally rapacious with the former, and rendered more clamorous by the success of their predecessors.

I lodged at the Twee Steden (Two Cities), not the best auberge I believe. But even here I had some difficulty in obtaining access. The preference is always given, as is natural, to any overgrown Englishman who arrives with three or four carriages occupied by a colony. I happened at this time to be alone and on foot, that is, from the treckschuit; and I am, moreover, a little man, with a sallow complexion, and somewhat of a mean appearance.

Here I dined at the ordinary, and was not particularly delighted with the specimen which it exhibited of Dutch manners. The general aspect of the guests was certainly by no means prepossessing, though I trust, for the sake of Dutch refinement, that the picture which it presented was not one which ought to be considered in the light of a characteristic representation.

seeming to consider it for a moment possible that any rational being would ever think of accommodating his own pleasures to those of another, or be in the slightest degree guided by any principle or feeling but the immediate gratification of every momentary impulse of his own coarse spirit. After dinner, an interesting Prussian girl came to sing some of her native airs. Her voice was musical in the extreme, but her "sounds of sweetest melody" were constantly interrupted by the hoarse laughs of the Dutchmen, some of whose remarks, I have no doubt, from the merriment they excited, were of a most brilliant and refined

nature.

During my stay in this town, while sitting at the window of a front room, I was treated with a most extraordinary spectacle. A tawdry ill-dressed woman, of a dark complexion and diminutive stature, entered the room, and suddenly adjusting her garments, not in the most delicate manner, she commenced upon the stone floor a long continued series of feats of activity, certainly unparalleled by any thing I had ever before witnessed; bending her limbs and body into every form which it was possible to conceive. It was a painful sight, and is a repulsive subject; but, as a single example of her power, I may mention, that at the close of her performance, when a shilling was thrown to her, she turned herself round, and bending fearfully backwards, till her face touched the ground, and her forehead was within a few inches of her heels, she picked up the shilling with her mouth, and without touching the floor with her hands, she resumed the attitude of a human being.

but the little I saw of its men and manners presented a coarse and unintellectual aspect; and, with the exception of the blue-eyed Prussian, I did not see one person whom I should ever desire to see again.

Upon the whole, I was not much At the public table I found assem- gratified by my visit to the Hague. bled a motley group of different asWithout doubt there are in it many pects and professions, and from various pleasing squares-magnificent palaces climes. The greater proportion, how-handsome houses, and fine churches; ever, were Dutchmen, and these, judging from their external characters, were chiefly merchants and merchants' clerks-lieutenants and ensigns in the army-captains of trading vessels and gaunt attornies,-all equally vociferous and vulgar in their manners: every one whistling, singing, laughing, and talking, and puffing out most elaborate fumes of abominable tobacco to the other side of the table, as he felt inclined, without

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The House of the Wood (Maison de Bois), belonging to the Sovereign Prince, and the ancient summer residence of the Stadtholders, is placed nearly two miles northward of the city, at the extremity of a noble forest.

The house itself has nothing remarkable about it, and its gardens, which are public, are not laid out in good taste. The road to it stretches through the forest, the trees of which, though exceedingly high, are so thickly planted and so luxuriant, that the sky is not once visible. The appearance, when you enter it, is picturesque and romantic; and after you are in, you can hardly imagine where you are, the view of the city is so completely obscured. This is a delightful walk, or ride, in warm weather; for the road is of fine sand, to which the wind can get no access quite smooth and firm; and there seems to be through it winding paths in all directions, and no sort of enclosure, division, or fence. On reaching the House of the Wood, I was informed that the princess was there, and that I could not gain admittance till after five o'clock in the evening; this arrangement not suiting my convenience, I returned without visiting the interior. There are in it, I understand, some tolerable paintings, and a cabinet of natural curiosities. The greater part of the latter was moved to Paris during the French administration, and the former would have been so too had they been superexcellent.

through an actual forest. It looks like an endless arch through trees,

a boundless contiguity of shade," and is perfectly straight; for in Holland the line of beauty is a straight line, as Euclid would define it.

At Scheveling there lay just beyond the surge, which from the open coast is very heavy here, about a score of stout sloops and schooners, with nets drying, and the place had much the appearance of bustling industry. Yet there, as in most of the Dutch towns, though I had been taught to expect the contrary, you are infested with beggars of both sexes, and of all ages, some of them in a state of apparent wretchedness in the article of apparel, such as I never saw in Scotland or any part of Britain. As many of these mendicants were young and stout, there would seem to be some neglect somewhere, or "something rotten in the state" of Holland. Yet much allowance must be made for these last twenty years on the Continent of Europe.

Leaving the Hague early in the morning, I arrived at Leyden to breakfast, after a pleasant voyage, in the treckschuit, of three hours,

X. Y. Z. (To be continued.)

This House of the Wood stands embowered amid a grove of oaks, which are the finest in Holland. "Trees of OBSERVATIONS ON THE REMARKS OF

such ancient majesty towered not in Yemen's happy groves, or crowned the stately brow of Lebanon ;" but it cannot be added, "Fabric so vast, so lavishly enriched, for idol or for tyrant, never yet raised the slave race of men; for the building itself is like the habitation of a private person. The wood is about two miles long, and three-fourths of a mile broad. It is remarkable, as being perhaps the only production of the country which the Dutch have not endeavoured to turn to account. On the contrary, it is the object of the most superstitious veneration, and nothing will induce the natives to cut it down in any part, or injure it in any manner of way.

About three miles from the Hague, by the sea shore, there is a village called Scheveling, which supplies the town with fish. The road to it is by a magnificent avenue of majestic oaks, limes, and beeches, which are so scientifically planted, that the same effect is produced as if one was travelling VOL. I

A. M. ON THE DOCTRINES OF GALL AND SPURZHEIM.

MR EDITOR,

I OBSERVE in your Notices to Correspondents, that you have rejected several communications on the subject of the system of Gall and Spurzheim, on account of their containing personalities. I think you are perfectly correct in doing so. Yet, sir, you have given a place in your First Number to a paper which contains what is worse than personality. Personality injures him who uses it more than him against whom it is directed, but misrepresentation inflicts a severe injury; and I am persuaded that, had you been aware of what I am now to point out, you would not have inserted the communication of A. M. I will exhibit only one instance of A. M.'s want of candour, as that will be sufficient to enable you to judge of the degree of credit which ought to be attached to what he has written, without occupying your pages with a longer detail, ЗА

which it would be very easy to draw up. "This gentleman (Dr S.)" says A. M.," and his colleague have asserted, that no anatomist before themselves believed that the brain was, throughout, of a fibrous texture. This, therefore, they claim as a discovery peculiarly their own; and, considering it of high importance, they style it, La premiere et la plus importante des decouvertes, celle sans la quelle toutes les autres seroient imparfaites. Dr Gordon proves very satisfactorily, that from the time of Malpighi in 1664, downwards, such a fibrous structure was believed to exist every where throughout the cerebral mass. To such proofs Dr Spurzheim returns no answer."

Now, so far from its being true that Dr S. returns no answer, the seventh section of his pamphlet begins as follows. Dr S. attacks Dr Gordon as the author of the Critique on his work in the Edinburgh Review, as the author of a work on Anatomy,-and of the Pamphlet, styling him conscientious reviewer, mechanical dissector, and historian.

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"The historian," says Dr Spurzheim, quotes Vieussens, Haller, Mayer, Reil, Portal, and Cuvier, to prove that the fibrous structure of the brain was known. The reader would be mistaken, if he thought that in our works we have not quoted authors of this kind. We have mentioned the same and others, such as Loewenhock, Stenon, Prochaska, Soemmering, Sabatier, and others. In a passage of our memoir, p. 248, we say, 'Bonnet ne trouve dans le cerveau qui des fibres dont chacun auroit sa fonction particuliere.' We have never thought of being the first who maintain that the brain is fibrous, though we know also that the most erroneous opinions have been entertained with respect to its structure. Our principal ideas are, the successive additions and the aggregations of various parts, the two great sets of fibres, and the unfolding of the convolutions, as I propose to detail in the sequel."

This is quite sufficient to invalidate the testimony of A. M., who has acted as all Dr Spurzheim's enemies do. Whoever chooses to read the Edinburgh Review, Dr Gordon's Anatomy, and his examination of Spurzheim's claims, will find, on perusing Spurzheim's reply, that he is not silent on any topic

which is of any importance to his doctrines.

With respect to what took place in the hospital on the occasion of opening a hydrocephalic head, A. M., while he condemns the conduct of the dissector, would have you to believe that Dr Gordon had no concern in the dissection. Who then was the operator? Instead of the appearances which occurred on dissection, (and which amply confirmed the assertions of Dr Spurzheim respecting the state of the brain in hydrocephalus) having been demonstrated to the students, for whose benefit the head was permitted to be opened, they were allowed to depart without either having seen the morbid appearances, or having heard them described. The contents of the head disappeared, and no one could procure the smallest portion for examination. A. M. may probably know who carried them away, or on whose account the students at the hospital were deprived of the benefit of a case, interesting in proportion to the scarcity of opportunities of examining it, and more so on account of the disputed point between Gordon and Spurzheim. A. M. professes himself to be the champion of Dr Gordon, for whom I entertain much personal regard, although I entirely disapprove of the manner in which he has conducted himself with regard to Spurzheim. A. M. would have you to believe that there is no other anatomist worthy of credit; but who is Barclay? Is that a name unknown to anatomists, and to the philosophic world? It is universally allowed that Lawrence and Barclay are the first anatomists in Britain. Barclay acknowledges and maintains the truth of Spurzheim's doctrines; and while he continues to do so, we may surely be allowed to doubt the infallibility of any other

anatomist.

I have yet another paragraph of A. M.'s communication to notice, because I consider that, at least while he is anonymous, any opinion of Spurzheim's principles is as good and trustworthy as that which he thus expresses:

"Never was there a more evident attempt to evade the overwhelming force of unwelcome facts, than has been made by Dr Spurzheim on this examination. Instead of meeting fairly and decisively the objections so strongly

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