Paris is not only one of the most brilliant, but one of the most interesting cities in the world, from almost every point of view, and we revelled in its museums and monuments; but its memories of the Huguenots had more interest for us than anything else, and we have thought it best to devote our space to that subject rather than to the Louvre, the tomb of Napoleon, Notre Dame, Versailles, Fontainebleau, and the scores of other fascinating places and subjects that appeal to one's interest in this ancient, gay, and terrible city.
We had a rainy day at Brussels and a cold one on the battlefield of Waterloo, but were not deterred from seeing them by these conditions of the weather. Then, with a comfortable feeling, almost like the feeling one has on coming home after journeying in strange lands, we crossed from Roman Catholic France and Belgium into Protestant Holland.
There is an endless variety of interest in the different countries of the Old World. Each has its own fascination for travellers. But, after all, the strangest, quaintest, cleanest and most picturesque country in Europe is Holland--little, wet, flat, energetic, heroic Holland. By calling it picturesque I do not mean that nature has made it so. There are no bold cliffs overlooking the sea, no heathery hills reflecting themselves in placid lakes, no soaring mountains, forest-clad or snow-capped, no waterfalls foaming and thundering among the rocks. It is not what nature has done, but what man has done, that makes Holland so picturesque. There is no country on the globe for which nature has done so little and man has done so much. By an energy and industry unsurpassed in the annals of the world, the Dutchman has wrested his land from the ocean itself, walling out its wild waves with huge dykes, and has converted this swamp into a blooming paradise, studded all over with prosperous farms and opulent cities.
As the two most common names of this country themselves suggest, _Holland_ meaning Hollow Land, and _Netherlands_ meaning Lowlands, the greater part of it is from twenty to thirty feet below the level of the ocean; that is to say, the sea actually rolls some ten yards higher than the ground on which the people live. Hence the common remark, in which, however, there is some exaggeration, that the frog, croaking among the bulrushes, looks down upon the swallow on the housetops, and that the ships float high above the chimneys of the houses.