The population of Scheveningen, which numbers only a few thousands, is almost entirely composed of fishermen, the greater number of whom are very poor. The village is still one of the principal stations of the herring fishery, where are cured those celebrated fish to which Holland owes her riches and power. But the profits of this industry go to the captains of the fishing vessels, and the men of Scheveningen, who are employed as sailors, hardly earn a livelihood. On the beach, in front of the village, many of those wide staunch boats with a single mast and a large square sail may always be seen ranged in line on the sand one beside the other, like the Greek galleys on the coast of Troy: thus they are safe from the gusts of wind. The flotilla, accompanied by a steam sloop, starts early in June, directing its course toward the Scottish coast. The first herrings taken are at once sent to Holland, and conveyed in a cart ornamented with flags to the king, who in exchange for this present gives five hundred florins. These boats make catches of other fish as well, which are in part sold at auction on the sea-shore, and in part are given to the Scheveningen fishermen, who send their wives to sell them at the Hague market. Scheveningen, like all the other villages of the coast, Katwijk, Vlaardingen, Maassluis, is a village that has lost its former prosperity in consequence of the decline of the herring fishery, owing, as every one knows, to the competition of England and the disastrous wars. But poverty, instead of weakening the character of this small population, beyond doubt the most original and poetical in Holland, has strengthened it. The inhabitants of Scheveningen in appearance, character, and habits seem like a foreign tribe in comparison with the people of their own country. They dwell but two miles from a large city, and yet preserve the manners of a primitive people that has always lived in isolation. As they were centuries ago, so are they now. No one leaves their village, and no one who is not a native ever enters it: they intermarry, they speak a language of their own, they all dress in the same style and in the same colors, as did their fathers' fathers. At the time of the fishing only the women and children remain in the village; the men all go to sea. They carry their Bibles with them on their departure. On board they neither drink nor swear nor laugh. When the stormy seas toss their little boats on the crests of the waves, they close all the apertures and await death with resignation. At the same moment their wives are singing psalms, shut in their cottages rocked by the wind and beaten by the rain. Those little dwellings, which have witnessed so many mortal griefs, which have heard the sobs of so many widows, which have seen the sacred joys of happy return and the disconsolate departure of many husbands, with their cleanliness, their white curtains, with the clothes and shirts of the sailors hanging at the windows,--tell of the