This statue stands upon an arch crossing a canal, and is nearly ten feet high; it was finished in 1622, and is said to be the _chef-d’œuvre_ of Henry de Keiser, a very celebrated statuary and architect. It has been observed, that in the quality of the different statues which the Dutch raised to the memory of Erasmus, may be traced the different degrees of zeal with which his memory was cherished by them. In 1540 they raised a statue of wood; seventeen years afterwards, blushing for the little respect they had observed, they exchanged it for one of blue stone; and in sixty-five years following apotheosized him by the noble memorial of their veneration, which I contemplated with equal admiration and delight. In 1572 the Spaniards, Vandal-like, shot at the stone statue with their muskets, and threw it in the canal, from whence it was afterwards raised and again set up, by order of the magistrates, upon the expulsion of the Spaniards; upon whom the Dutch retaliated in the most spirited and gallant manner, by attacking that nation through her colonial establishments in the East and West Indies, and in Africa, and by capturing the rich galleons of their merciless invaders. The bronze figure is clad in an ecclesiastical habit, with an open book in his hand. Various attempts have at different times been made to convert the sage into a turncoat: before the revolution which expelled the stadtholder and his family, every concavity in his dress was crammed, on certain holidays, with oranges; during the hey-day of the republican form of government, amidst the celebration of its festivals, he was covered with tri-coloured ribbons, when the juice of the orange was never suffered to pass the lips of a true patriot!! Even the marigold, first consecrated by poets to the Virgin, and afterwards used as a symbol of the House of Orange, “The marigold, whose courtier’s face Echoes the sun, and doth unlace Her at his rise,” was expelled from the gardens of the new republicans. Oh, Liberty! happy had it been for millions, if all the outrages perpetrated in thy hallowed name had spent themselves upon ribbons, oranges, and marigolds! Oudaan the poet has done honour to this star of erudition, whose works filled ten folio volumes, and whose talents had nearly raised him to cardinalate under Pope Paul III. in the following lines in Dutch, which are inscribed on his pedestal: Hier rees die groote zon, en ging te Bazel onder! De Rykstad eer’ en vier’ dien Heilig in zyn grav; Dit tweede leeven geevt, die’t eerste leeven gav: Maar ’t ligt der taalen, ’t zout der zeden, ’t heerlyk wonder. Waar met de Lievde, en Vreede, en Godgeleerdheid praald, Word met geen grav geerd nog met zeen beeld betaald: Dies moet hier’t lugtgewele Erasmus overdekken, Nadien geen mind’re plaats zyn tempel kan verstrekken! Or thus in English: