terize the Old World Dutch. The names of William and Nassau, of De Witt, of Olden Barneveldt, of Grotius, of Van Tromp, of Deruyter, ought therefore to be as dear to an American, or at least to a New-Yorker, as those of the celebrated names of English history, which are so much more frequently on our lips. Though myself a New-Englander, and of unmixed English stock, I have yet surveyed the Netherlands, with emotions belonging to a father-land of my country; a father-land of the same primitive race and distinctive properties as that of the Anglo-Saxons; and a father-land upon which, alike with England, an American may look back, with just pride, as the home of an honored ancestry.
I visited the Netherlands in two successive years, first in the summer of 1829, and again in the summer of 1830. On the first occasion, I sailed up past Hellevöetsluys to Rotterdam, by way of Hollands Diep. From Rotterdam, I proceeded to Delft, the Hague, Leyden, and Haarlem; and thence returning to Rotterdam, through Voorburg and Delft, went by Bergen op Zoom to Antwerp, from Antwerp to Ghent and Bruges, and then back, through Ghent and Alost, to Brussels, and finally through Mons into France. On the second occasion, I proceeded from London by steam to Rotterdam, past the Brielle; from Rotterdam to the Hague and Leyden; from Leyden through Alphen to Amsterdam; from thence to Utrecht, and through Gorcum and Breda to Antwerp, Mechlin, and Brussels; and from Brussels through Alost, Ghent, and Bruges, to Ostende, and so back to England. Thus I was enabled to become acquainted with the principal cities of those countries, which are popularly known as Holland and Belgium. Of course it would be absurd for any man to pretend, by thus cursorily inspecting a country, to acquire, through his own unaided observation, exact or intimate knowledge of the character of the inhabitants, of their political and moral condition, of the statistics of the country, of its literature, of the basis and substance of its nationality.
One thing, however, he may do, without incurring the guilt of passing presumptuous judgment, founded on superficial inquiry. He may faithfully describe what he actually sees; and this I have endeavored to do, in the sketches which I shall present of the chief cities of the Netherlands. One thing farther, an educated American, who visits a foreign country in our times, might well attempt; and that is, to verify and utilize the multifarious facts and opinions touching the country, which other men have published to the world, and to present the combined result of personal observation and of book learning, rather than to restrict himself religiously to the duty of giving an account of what he sees with his own eyes, and hears with his own cars. In regard to countries which are little known, what we most need, and what we require, is the testimony of the traveller as to the facts which come under his observation. It is not so, however, in respect of a people with whom we are comparatively familiar; a people whose institutions, history, and character, have formed the subject of numerous original publications; a people continually before us in the business transactions of the merchant, as well as in the books of the scholar, the deliberations of the statesman, or the more superficial sources of information, accessible to the man of the world. A new work upon such a people, at the present day, might
