announce the terrible and tempting news of
the Hooge Preis; say one hundred thousand
guilders! the Second Preis fifty thousand!—
all set forth in the publican's window. There,
sheets of figures may be held to do duty as
signs to otherwise unobtrusive establishments—
nearly akin to the Burial Society
spirit, which has its sittings at the nearest
public, only here the Staat is the great
Leviathan landlord. But, after all, does not
His Royal Highness, the Grand Duke of
Splitzen Sellers Böttel, carry out the same
pastime on the persons of strangers doing a
little pleasant study in the laws of colouring?
What more does His Brave Belgic Majesty
strive after, in his sweet little hell at Spa
Valley, than that M. Chevreuil's book, and
his colour-contrasts should be better
known? Nothing can be more correct, nothing
more fashionable. Let, then, our Dutchman
have his Staats Leterij in peace.

Fetching diagonally across the Platz, and
getting free of the gentlemen from Pentonville,
I come out upon the great quay and
monster sluice-dock, or whatever it may be—
known as the Dam Rak. A busy scene of
unloading, loading, packing, stowing, filling,
emptying, hammering, shouting, and general
bustle. There are great warehouses stretching
out queerly into the water, with doors
at the very edge; there are broad bridges
with squat houses in the middle; there are
sailors of every tribe in parti-colours; there
are ships entering and going forth; and there
is a certain brightness, a curious clearness
at the end which is significant of the sea.
Here, is a threshold of the town, as it
were, and here, through monster gates
ranged in rows, fortified with huge piers
of masonry, with look-out places, and
hutches—here is the sea, let in carefully and
with precaution, to feed those green waters
that stagnate through the town. Symptoms
of shipping interest on all sides—scheeps
victuals, scheeps tackling, scheeps sails—
scheeps everything. Schippers clothing, schippers
coffijhuis, schippers everything.

Reaching the end, I look abroad, and find that
this is truly the sea edge of the town, which
does not join its huge enemy abruptly, but is
carried out in its bosom by many quaint
tricks and devices. It is a straggling show of
stone piers and little moles of small dockwork
of projecting stages, crazily put together
of ancient timbers, stretching out
eccentrically with more little hutches planted on
them solitarily. Beyond which, are long rows
of stakes, with openings at stray intervals,
and other rows of stakes beyond them again
with other openings. With a long, long mole
to the right, behind which lie up snugly
whole ship-forests; and another mole, to the
left. Witk the town rising behind a pleasant
piece of cheque-work, a diaper pattern of
many colours coming out duskily. Here, at
one of the eccentric stages, I find a crowd
gathered; a holiday crowd, like myself,
Zaandam bound, and waiting to go aboard
that fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, the
Apollo; beyond question not standing A 1
at Lloyd's.

That steam heathen god was moored alongside,
and the holiday crowd began to pour in,
with much noise and confusion, hustling
one another rudely and good humouredly. I
hear them, but I heed them not; my thoughts
are far away, straggling Peterwards, and
thinking how he must have looked in his
workman's dress, with his axe in his hand.
There is a schipper aboard, who might be
captain of a man-of-war, for all his airs; a
dirty Hatteraick sort of fellow in a bright
fireman's shirt. What infinite swagger there
was in the man, and with what assumption
of office he paced his dirty quarter-deck, can
be but faintly described here, and was in
itself worthy the Zaandam trip. There
sounded presently, the note of departure from
a cracked bell, rung out frantically on a fierce
order, and through a storm of imprecations
and directions from Captain Hatteraick, no
doubt praying in his native tongue for the
ultimate perdition of his own proper eyes.
The ropes are cast off, and the steam heathen
god goes forth labouring through the waters.

We are a little overcrowded on board the
steam heathen god. We have men, women,
children, and many dogs, with us; they are
all, saving the dogs, dressed out gaily, and
plainly bent on making a holiday of it. I
take note particularly of a party seated near
me, six strong, who have come out
a-pleasuring with as hearty a purpose as ever
entered Burgher soul. I find them to consist
of my old Dutch grandfather and his wife,
who is unmistakeably the Gerhard Dow old
woman, stolen away out of her gallery; my
little Dutchwoman and her husband, son to
the grandfather; and their two children, one
of whom is that Mieris child who, it may be
remembered, used to peel carrots in the
Dulwich Gallery. Here, I meet them all. Dutch
grandmother furnished with her due compliment
of wrinkles, nose and chin nutcracker-
wise, her charcoal warmer under her feet in
the manner spoken of so unhandsomely by
Andrew Marvell, Esquire. She keeps pretty
much to herself, being brought out for that
day all capped and frilled, to get some of the
fresh air. My grandfather is unmistakeably
that Mr. Smallweed, whom readers may have
heard of; a terrible old man swathed in a
cloak, though a broiling day, strangely shrunk
and shrivelled away. There is a significant
basket beside him, packed unto bursting, over
which he keeps guard with a singleness of
purpose truly surprising. The packed basket has
been assigned to him as a special duty, and
he looks after it ceaselessly and with a
certain uneasiness, yet not without pride. He
detects me, studying the packed basket with
my eyes at odd moments, and becomes restless.
The son is my sample Dutchman over
again: plenty of underdone meat, of corded