auts on the brink of the water, and permitted to ask the charity of passengers, which is conveyed to them in a floating box that they cast out.

2

Arrived at the Hague, I went first to the Queen of Bohemia's court,' where I had the honour to kiss her Majesty's hand, and several of the Princesses', her daughters. Prince Maurice was also there, newly come out of Germany; and my Lord Finch, not long before_fled out of England from the fury of the Parliament. It was a asting day with the Queen for the unfortunate death of ner husband, and the presence chamber had been hung with black velvet ever since his decease.

The 28th July I went to Leyden; and the 29th to Utrecht, being thirty English miles distant (as they reckon by hours). It was now Kermas, or a fair, in this town, the streets swarming with boors and rudeness, so that early the next morning, having visited the ancient Bishop's court, and the two famous churches, I satisfied my curiosity till my return, and better leisure. We then came to Rynen, where the Queen of Bohemia hath a neat and well-built palace, or country-house, after the Italian manner, as I remember; and so, crossing the Rhine, upon which this villa is situated, lodged that night in a countryman's house. The 31st to Nimeguen; and on the 2nd of August we arrived at the Leagure, where was then the whole army encamped about Genep, a very strong castle situated on the river Waal; but, being taken four or five days before, we had only a sight of the demolitions. The next Sunday was the thankgsgiving sermons performed in Colonel

1 Elizabeth, daughter of James I., mother of the princes Maurice and Rupert; her youngest daughter was Sophia, Electoress of Hanover, whose eldest son was George I. A carefully written life of this Princess, who was not less remarkable for her beauty and spirit, than for her misfortunes, has been lately written, with illustrations drawn from her unpublished correspondence, by Mrs. Everett Green, in The Princesses of England, vols. v. and vi.

2 Sir John Finch, Speaker of the House of Commons in 1627; Attorney-General to the Queen (Henrietta Maria) in 1635; the following year promoted to be Judge of the Common Pleas; afterwards Lord Chief Justice; thence promoted to be Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in 1637; and in April, 1640, advanced to the peerage as Baron Finch. Ho died in 1660.

Goring's regiment (eldest son of the since Earl of Norwich) by Mr. Goffe, his chaplain (now turned Roman, and father-confessor to the Queen-mother). The evening was spent in firing cannon and other expressions of military triumphs.

Now, according to the compliment, I was received a volunteer in the company of Captain Apsley, of whose Captain-lieutenant, Honywood (Apsley being absent), I received many civilities.

The 3rd August, at night, we rode about the lines of circumvallation, the general being then in the field. The next day, I was accommodated with a very spacious and commodious tent for my lodging; as before I was with a horse, which I had at command, and a hut which during the excessive heats was a great convenience; for the sun piercing the canvass of the tent, it was during the day unsufferable, and at night not seldom infested with mists and fogs, which ascended from the river.

6th August. As the turn came about, we were ordered to watch on a horn-work near our quarters, and trail a pike, being the next morning relieved by a company of French. This was our continual duty till the castle was re-fortified, and all danger of quitting that station secured; whence I went to see a Convent of Franciscan Friars, not far from our quarters, where we found both the chapel and refectory full, crowded with the goods of such poor people as at the approach of the army had fled with them thither for sanctuary. On the day following, I went to view all the trenches, approaches, and mines, &c. of the besiegers; and, in particular, I took special notice of the wheelbridge, which engine his Excellency had made to run over the moat when they stormed the castle; as it is since described (with all the other particulars of this siege) by

1 This was George, distinguished in the Civil Wars as General Goring, for his military services in the cause of the King. He subsequently obtained additional reputation as a lieutenant-general in the army of the King of Spain employed in the Netherlands. He was the eldest son of Sir George Goring, in 1632 created Baron Goring, and in 1644 raised to the Earldom of Norwich, for his services to Charles I., before and after the troubles. General Goring died before his father, in 1662. (See "Correspondence," post, vol. iii. p. 139.)

the author of that incomparable work, "Hollandia Illus. trata." The walls and ramparts of earth, which a mine had broken and crumbled, were of prodigious thickness.

Upon the 8th August, 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 Contribu tion-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 consi derable frontier.

13th August. We arrived late at Rotterdam, where was their annual mart or fair, so furnished with pictures (espe cially 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 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 August. 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 countryhouse 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 immediately I mounted a wag

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

gon, 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 Presby terian 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