To the choirs of this cathedral, the scholars of the charity schools of the city, attended by their masters and professors, repair twice a year to undergo a public examination, in the presence of the principal officers of the state resident in the city, who are distinguished for their learning, attended by some of the clergy. The rector, or first professor, opens the meeting with a short speech in praise of _Literature and the Civil Magistracy_: such of the pupils as are about to remove to the university, pronounce an oration in praise of some illustrious prince, or of Erasmus; on the dignity, ornament, and utility of sound learning to a state; in praise of commerce and industry; on the baneful consequence of passion and indolence; on fortitude, patience, concord, and other moral virtues; they then conclude with a compliment to their masters for their care of them, and to the magistrates for honouring them with their presence; and finally, take leave of their school-fellows, whom they exhort to pursue their studies indefatigably, and to live in amity with each other. The principal magistrates then present each of them with some classical author, superbly bound and gilt: the juniors, who are to remove to the higher classes, then come forward, and compliment the magistrates and their masters in a sentence or two either of verse or prose. The effect of this ceremony is increased by the organ playing at its commencement and close. The reader will, I am sure, be gratified with this brief description of a plan so generative of every good to the nation which adopts it. Children, as soon as they can think, discover that they are the peculiar care of their country; they are taught to respect its laws, and by descanting upon, to imitate its most shining examples, and to repay the paternal solicitude of the government, by becoming useful or ornamental members of its community. Amidst the political storms which have agitated Holland for so many years, more fatal to its prosperity than those of the ocean, in which it almost appears to float, education has never been neglected: to bestow upon his children decent and useful instruction, has ever formed the anxious care of the Hollander: he feels that whilst he trains their minds to habits of investigation and industry, he secures to them, under any form of government, the sources of support and advancement. This general diffusion of useful instruction made Holland what she was in the most shining periods of her history, and whenever its enlightening influence shall cease to be felt, as a commercial country she must decline.