When it is considered, that at this period, the Spanish monarchy was predominant in Europe, that its armies were mighty, its generals experienced, and its treasury overflowing, the triumphant prowess which the Dutch displayed in finally driving their powerful invaders back to their own frontiers, will render the Dutch name illustrious as long as the record of history endures. The Dutch ladies have rivalled in fame the most renowned heroines of Greece and Rome. The Hollanders treasure up these gallant exploits in their memories, they form the favourite subjects of their songs, and the old and the young recite with enthusiasm the great deeds of their ancestors. The Haarlem lake which I mentioned, presented a very bleak and dismal sheet of water from the canal; it is about fourteen miles long, and about the same number broad, is said to be above six feet deep, and lies between Leyden, Amsterdam, and Haarlem: its waters are slimy, and abound with eels, some of which are of a prodigious size. This lake can have no charm but for a bleacher. The fuel used here is Newcastle coals and turf. Having described what is worthy of notice at Haarlem, it would be indifference indeed to an art which I worship, were I to quit this city without briefly adverting to some of the principal distinguished artists which it had the honour of giving birth to. The first in chronological order was Philip Wouvermans, who was born at Haarlem in 1620, whose sweetness of colouring, correctness of design, beautiful choice of scenery, and perfect knowledge of the chiaro-scuro, or as it has well been defined, of light and black, have excited the admiration and applause of posterity: the subjects which he was particularly partial to were huntings, hawkings, encampments of armies, farriers’ shops, and all those scenes that admitted of his introducing horses, which he painted to great perfection. Notwithstanding his transcendent merit, for a considerable period he met with no encouragement, and encountered many difficulties which greatly depressed his spirits, of which the picture-merchants knew how to take every ungenerous advantage: at length he was relieved from his indigence and dependence, by the bounty of his confessor, who seeing his uncommon genius, was resolved to the extent of his power, to extricate it from the odious shackles which encumbered it, and accordingly advanced him six hundred guilders, by a judicious application of which he emancipated himself from his embarrassments: he now doubled the price of his pictures, and was enabled to give his daughter a marriage portion of twenty thousand guilders. As soon as he was enabled to pay his confessor, he sent the sum he had borrowed, accompanied with a chef-d’œuvre of his works, representing his holy benefactor in the character of St. Hubert kneeling before his horse. All connoisseurs agree that this picture is the finest he ever painted. Wouvermans resided in the Bakenessegragt, a short distance from the church.