I went down the first street I came to, and took several turns in that quarter to observe how the lower classes of the Dutch live. The streets were extremely narrow, and the houses were smaller and more crooked than those in any other part of the city; one could reach many of the roofs with one's hand. The windows were little more than a span from the ground; the doors were so low that one was obliged to stoop to enter them. But nevertheless there was not the least sign of poverty. Even there the windows were provided with looking-glasses--spies, as the Dutch call them; on the window-sills there were pots of flowers protected by green railings; there were white curtains,--the doors were painted green or blue, and stood wide open, so that one could see the bedrooms, the kitchens, all the recesses of the houses. The rooms were like little boxes; everything was heaped up as in an old-clothes shop, but the copper vessels, the stoves, the furniture, were all as clean and bright as those in a gentleman's house. As I passed along these streets, I did not see a bit of dirt anywhere,--I met with no bad smells, nor did I see a rag, or a hand extended for alms; one breathes cleanliness and well-being, and thinks with shame of the squalid quarters in which the lower classes swarm in our cities, and not in ours only, for Paris too has its Rue Mouffetard. Turning back to my hotel, I passed through the square of the great new market. It is placed in the centre of the city, and is not less strange than all that surrounds it. It is an open square suspended over the water, being at the same time a square and a bridge. The bridge is very wide and unites the principal dyke--the Hoog-Straat--with a section of the town surrounded by canals. This aerial square is enclosed on three sides by venerable buildings, between which runs a street long, narrow, and dark, entirely filled by a canal, and reminding one of a highway in Venice. On the fourth side is a sort of dock formed by the widest canal in the city, which leads directly to the Meuse. In this square, surrounded by carts and stalls, in the midst of heaps of vegetables, oranges and earthenware, encircled by a crowd of hucksters and peddlers, enclosed by a railing covered with matting and rags, stands the statue of Desiderius Erasmus, the first literary celebrity of Rotterdam.