In detailing these few anecdotes, which to me at least were interesting, I have been induced by a veneration for truth alone, to give a representation which, to such as think that nothing favourable, however deserved, should be reported of those with whom we are not in amity, will not be very palatable. To an enemy, if not generous, let us at least be always just. It is as base in principle, as it is dangerous in politics, to depreciate the popularity of a prince with whom we are at war, for it obviously leads to a miscalculation of his influence upon his people, and of the nature and extent of his strength and resources. I abhor fuming a sovereign with adulation, more especially the ruler of a country at war with my own; but it is what I owe to my own country to relate the fact. CHAPTER III. COMMISSION COUNTENANCES ... PHYSIOGNOMIES COMPARED ... HOMAGE PAID TO GENIUS ... ERASMUS’S STATUE ... INSCRIPTION ... REVOLUTIONARY WHIMS ... LEARNED GALLANTRY ... KISSES ... ANECDOTES OF ERASMUS ... CATHEDRAL OF SAINT LAWRENCE ... THE RIVAL ORGAN ... CHARITY SCHOOLS ... PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS ... EFFECTS OF EDUCATION ON THE PUBLIC MIND ... HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEDFORD ... MR. LANCASTER’S SCHOOL. In my way to the celebrated statue of Erasmus, and indeed wherever I moved, almost every face I met looked as if it belonged to a soul more disposed to cultivate the figures of arithmetic, than of rhetoric. I saw none of those sprightly physiognomies, which abound in the large towns of England or France, full of smiles, of levity, and carelessness, the happy owners of which appear as if they basked and frolicked in the sunshine of every event. Even the Spanish proverb, “thoughts close, looks loose,” is not observed in this city. An eye prone to the earth, a look of settled meditation, and a measured pace denote the Rotterdammer. Yet with these appearances Holland has not been insensible to that literary merit, in honour of which, in other times and regions, the Grecians and Romans raised temples, statues, and constituted public games, to which the Persians, the Arabians, the Turks, and even the Chinese, presented the most magnificent rewards. As the inhabitants of Languedoc established floral games, at which they bestowed golden flowers as prizes to the fortunate poets; as Rome crowned Petrarch with laurel; as Ravenna erected a marble tomb to the memory of Dante, and Certaldo a statue to Boccaccio; as delighted princesses touched with their fragrant lips the cheeks of poets; as the Venetians paid to Sannazarius six hundred pistoles for six verses; as Baif received a silver image of Minerva from his native city, and Ronsard had apartments reserved for him in the palace of Charles IX. of France, and also the honour of receiving poetical epistles from that monarch: behold the Hollander has raised a superb bronze figure to the memory of that great restorer of the Latin tongue, Erasmus.