shop, but the copper
vessels, the stoves, the furniture, were all as clean and bright as those
in a gentleman's house. As I passed along these streets, I did not see a
bit of dirt anywhere,--I met with no bad smells, nor did I see a rag, or
a hand extended for alms; one breathes cleanliness and well-being, and
thinks with shame of the squalid quarters in which the lower classes swarm
in our cities, and not in ours only, for Paris too has its Rue Mouffetard.

Turning back to my hotel, I passed through the square of the great new
market. It is placed in the centre of the city, and is not less
strange than all that surrounds it.

It is an open square suspended over the water, being at the same time
a square and a bridge. The bridge is very wide and unites the
principal dyke--the Hoog-Straat--with a section of the town surrounded
by canals. This aerial square is enclosed on three sides by venerable
buildings, between which runs a street long, narrow, and dark,
entirely filled by a canal, and reminding one of a highway in Venice.
On the fourth side is a sort of dock formed by the widest canal in the
city, which leads directly to the Meuse. In this square, surrounded by
carts and stalls, in the midst of heaps of vegetables, oranges and
earthenware, encircled by a crowd of hucksters and peddlers, enclosed
by a railing covered with matting and rags, stands the statue of
Desiderius Erasmus, the first literary celebrity of Rotterdam.

This Gerrit Gerritz--for, like all the great writers of his time, he
assumed the Latin name--this Gerrit Gerritz belonged by his education,
by his literary attainments, and by his convictions to the circle of
the Italian humanists and literati. An elegant, learned, and
indefatigable writer on literature and science, he filled all Europe
with his fame between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; he was
overwhelmed with favor by the popes, sought after and feted by
princes. Of his innumerable works, all of which were written in Latin,
the "Praise of Folly," dedicated to Sir Thomas More, is still read.
The bronze statue, erected in 1622, represents Erasmus dressed in a
fur cloak and cap. The figure is slightly bent forward as if he were
walking, and he holds in his hand a large open book, from which he is
reading. There is a double inscription on the pedestal in Latin and
Dutch, which calls him _vir saeculi sui primarius et civis omnium
praestantissimus_. Notwithstanding this pompous eulogy, poor E