What traffic have not these high old houses looked on, when two thousand and five hundred vessels lay in the river at one time, and the commerce of Europe found here its best mart.Along the stream now is a not very clean promenade for the populace; and it is lined with beer-houses, shabby theaters, and places of the most childish amusements.There is an odd liking for the simple among these people.In front of the booths, drums were beaten and instruments played in bewildering discord.Actors in paint and tights stood without to attract the crowd within.On one low balcony, a copper-colored man, with a huge feather cap and the traditional dress of the American savage, was beating two drums; a burnt-cork black man stood beside him; while on the steps was a woman, in hat and shawl, making an earnest speech to the crowd.In another place, where a crazy band made furious music, was an enormous "go-round" of wooden ponies, like those in the Paris gardens, only here, instead of children, grown men and women rode the hobby-horses, and seemed delighted with the sport.In the general Babel, everybody was good-natured and jolly.Little things suffice to amuse the lower classes, who do not have to bother their heads with elections and mass meetings.
In front of the cathedral is the well, and the fine canopy of iron-work, by Quentin Matsys, the blacksmith of Antwerp, some of whose pictures we saw in the Museum, where one sees, also some of the finest pictures of the Dutch school,--the "Crucifixion" of Rubens, the "Christ on the Cross" of Vandyke; paintings also by Teniers, Otto Vennius, Albert Cuyp, and others, and Rembrandt's portrait of his wife,--a picture whose sweet strength and wealth of color draws one to it with almost a passion of admiration.We had already seen "The Descent from the Cross" and "The Raising of the Cross" by Rubens, in the cathedral.With all his power and rioting luxuriance of color, Icannot come to love him as I do Rembrandt.Doubtless he painted what he saw; and we still find the types of his female figures in the broad-hipped, ruddy-colored women of Antwerp.We walked down to his house, which remains much as it was two hundred and twenty-five years ago.From the interior court, an entrance in the Italian style leads into a pleasant little garden full of old trees and flowers, with a summer-house embellished with plaster casts, and having the very stone table upon which Rubens painted.It is a quiet place, and fit for an artist; but Rubens had other houses in the city, and lived the life of a man who took a strong hold of the world.
AMSTERDAM
The rail from Antwerp north was through a land flat and sterile.
After a little, it becomes a little richer; but a forlorner land to live in I never saw.One wonders at the perseverance of the Flemings and Dutchmen to keep all this vast tract above water when there is so much good solid earth elsewhere unoccupied.At Moerdjik we changed from the cars to a little steamer on the Maas, which flows between high banks.The water is higher than the adjoining land, and from the deck we look down upon houses and farms.At Dort, the Rhine comes in with little promise of the noble stream it is in the highlands.Everywhere canals and ditches dividing the small fields instead of fences; trees planted in straight lines, and occasionally trained on a trellis in front of the houses, with the trunk painted white or green; so that every likeness of nature shall be taken away.
>From Rotterdam, by cars, it is still the same.The Dutchman spends half his life, apparently, in fighting the water.He has to watch the huge dikes which keep the ocean from overwhelming him, and the river-banks, which may break, and let the floods of the Rhine swallow him up.The danger from within is not less than from without.Yet so fond is he of his one enemy, that, when he can afford it, he builds him a fantastic summer-house over a stagnant pool or a slimy canal, in one corner of his garden, and there sits to enjoy the aquatic beauties of nature; that is, nature as he has made it.The river-banks are woven with osiers to keep them from washing; and at intervals on the banks are piles of the long withes to be used in emergencies when the swollen streams threaten to break through.
And so we come to Amsterdam, the oddest city of all,--a city wholly built on piles, with as many canals as streets, and an architecture so quaint as to even impress one who has come from Belgium.The whole town has a wharf-y look; and it is difficult to say why the tall brick houses, their gables running by steps to a peak, and each one leaning forward or backward or sideways, and none perpendicular, and no two on a line, are so interesting.But certainly it is a most entertaining place to the stranger, whether he explores the crowded Jews' quarter, with its swarms of dirty people, its narrow streets, and high houses hung with clothes, as if every day were washing-day;or strolls through the equally narrow streets of rich shops; or lounges upon the bridges, and looks at the queer boats with clumsy rounded bows, great helms' painted in gay colors, with flowers in the cabin windows,--boats where families live; or walks down the Plantage, with the zoological gardens on the one hand and rows of beer-gardens on the other; or round the great docks; or saunters at sunset by the banks of the Y, and looks upon flat North Holland and the Zuyder Zee.
The palace on the Dam (square) is a square, stately edifice, and the only building that the stranger will care to see.Its interior is richer and more fit to live in than any palace we have seen.There is nothing usually so dreary as your fine Palace.There are some good frescoes, rooms richly decorated in marble, and a magnificent hall, or ball-room, one hundred feet in height, without pillars.