We left the Hague, and taking the railway, in a little more than two hours were at Amsterdam, a great commercial city in decay, where nearly half of the inhabitants live on the charity of the rest.  The next morning was Sunday, and taking advantage of an interval of fair weather, for it still continued to rain every day, I went to the Oudekerk, or Old Church, as the ancient Cathedral is called, which might have been an impressive building in its original construction, but is now spoiled by cross-beams, paint, galleries, partitions, pews, and every sort of architectural enormity.  But there is a noble organ, with a massive and lofty front of white marble richly sculptured, occupying the west end of the chancel.  I listened to a sermon in Dutch, the delivery of which, owing partly to the disagreeable voice of the speaker and partly no doubt to my ignorance of the language, seemed to me a kind of barking.  The men all wore their hats during the service, but half the women were without bonnets.  When the sermon and prayer were over, the rich tones of the organ broke forth and flooded the place with melody.

Every body visits Broek, near Amsterdam, the pride of Dutch villages, and to Broek I went accordingly.  It stands like the rest, among dykes and canals, but consists altogether of the habitations of persons in comfortable circumstances, and is remarkable, as you know, for its scrupulous cleanliness.  The common streets and footways, are kept in the same order as the private garden-walks.  They are paved with yellow bricks, and as a fair was to open in the place that afternoon, the most public parts of them were sanded for the occasion, but elsewhere, they appeared as if just washed and mopped.  I have never seen any collection of human habitations so free from any thing offensive to the senses.  Saardam, where Peter the Great began his apprenticeship as a shipwright, is among the sights of Holland, and we went the next day to look at it.  This also is situated on a dyke, and is an extremely neat little village, but has not the same appearance of opulence in the dwellings.  We were shown the chamber in which the Emperor of Russia lodged, and the hole in the wall where he slept, for in the old Dutch houses, as in the modern ones of the farmers, the bed is a sort of high closet, or, more properly speaking, a shelf within the wall, from which a door opens into the room.  I should have mentioned that, in going to Broek, I stopped to look at one of the farm-houses of the country, and at Saardam I visited another.  They were dairy houses, in which the milk of large herds is made into butter.  The lower story of the dwelling, paved with bricks, is used in winter as a stable for the cattle; in the summer, it is carefully cleansed and painted, so that not a trace of its former use remains, and it then becomes both the dairy and the abode of the family.  The story above is as neat as the hands of Dutch housewives can make it; the parlor, the dining-room, the little boxes in the wall which hold the beds, are resplendent with cleanliness.