Some of the finest paintings of the Dutch school are in the national museum here; _genre_ pictures, many, if not most of them, but pleasant to look at, if not of the highest art; and we visited another collection of the same, left by a M. Van der Hoop. There are several other private collections thrown open to the public. But after all, the most charming picture was the Jews' quarter of the city. I know it was horribly filthy, and so crowded that we could hardly make our way; I know it was filled with squalor and rags, and great dark eyes, and breathed an odor by no means of sanctity. The dusky, luminous-eyed people seemed to move, and breathe, and hold a constant bazaar in the lane-like streets filled with everything known and unknown in merchandise, or leaning out from the windows of the tottering houses, their arms crossed over the sill, to dream away a lifetime. Still there was a fascination about it all, a suggestion of vagabondism, of Ishmaelitish wanderings, of having "here no continuing city," that touched the heart of a certain Methodist minister's daughter in our party.
Sometimes the houses rise directly from the water, as did our hotel, the entrance being gained from another street in front. Our room was like a town hall, with mediæval bed furniture and sofa, high chest of drawers, and great round table that might have come in with the Dutch when they took Holland. The deep windows looked down upon a canal. Across from them, anchored to the quay as if for a lifetime, was one of the river boats. Early in the morning the wife of the skipper--a square woman, brown-faced, with faded, braided hair--ran out bareheaded into the town, coming back with her arms mysteriously full. Down into the cabin she disappeared, from whence directly came a sound of sputtering and frying, with a most savory odor. Up she would come again--frying pan in hand to corroborate her statement--to call her husband to breakfast. He was never ready to respond, never, though he was doing nothing to support his energetic family at the time, but coiling and uncoiling old ropes, or rubbing at invisible spots with a handful of rope-yarn. I know he only delayed to add to his own dignity and the importance of his final advent. Breakfast over, there followed such a commotion in the little world as I cannot describe--a shaking out of garments, a scraping out of plates, and throwing into the canal the refuse of the feast, a flying up with pots and pans for no object whatever but to clatter down again with the same, and all in the face and eyes of the town, with nevertheless the most absorbed and unconscious air imaginable. When it was over, somewhat what red in the face, but serene, the wife would appear upon the deck, to sit in the shadow of a sail and mend her husband's stockings, or put on a needed patch. We left the boat still fast to the quay; but I know that some day, when it was filled with scented oils, and rouge, and borax, and all the other things exported from the manufactories here, our skipper and his wife went sailing out of the canals and along the edge of the sea or up the Rhine, the stockings all mended, and the good woman not above giving a strong pull at the ropes.