d.

Balthazar reached the rampart of the town in safety, hoping to swim
to the other side of the moat, where a horse awaited him. But he had
dropt his hat and his second pistol in his flight, and so he was
traced and seized before he could leap from the wall.

Amid horrible tortures, he not only confest, but continued to triumph
in his crime. His judges believed him to be possest of the devil. The
next day he was executed. His right hand was burned off in a tube of
red-hot iron; the flesh of his arms and legs was torn off with red-hot
pincers; but he never made a cry. It was not till his breast was cut
open, and his heart torn out and flung in his face, that he expired.
His head was then fixt on a pike, and his body, cut into four
quarters, exposed on the four gates of the town.

Close to the Prinsenhof is the Oude Kerk with a leaning tower. It is
arranged like a very ugly theater inside, but contains, with
other tombs of celebrities, the monument of Admiral van Tromp,
1650--"Martinus Harberti Trompius"--whose effigy lies upon his back,
with swollen feet. It was this Van Tromp who defeated the English
fleet under Blake, and perished, as represented on the monument, in an
engagement off Scheveningen. It was he who, after his victory over the
English, caused a broom to be hoisted at his mast-head to typify that
he had swept the Channel clear of his enemies.

LEYDEN[A]

[Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." Translated by Caroline
Tilton. By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the
publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.]

BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS

Leyden, the antique Athens of the north, the Saragossa of the Low
Countries, the oldest and most illustrious of the daughters of
Holland, is one of those cities which make you thoughtful upon first
entering them, and are remembered for a long time afterward with a
certain impression of sadness.

I had hardly arrived when the chill of a dead city seemed to fall upon
me. The old Rhine, which crosses Leyden, dividing it into many islets
joined together by one hundred and fifty stone bridges, forms wide
canals and basins which contain no ship or boat, and the city seems
rather invaded by the waters than merely crossed by them. The
principal streets are very broad and flanked by rows of old
blockhouses with the usual pointed gables, and the few people seen in
the streets and squares are like the survivors of a city depopulated
by the plague.