In most of the continental towns, the streets are as silent as those of Pompeii after ten o’clock; but the bustle begins at day-light, and he must have taken a strong dose of opium who can sleep after that hour! The cocks are crowing, the carts are clattering, the waiters are knocking up the travellers going off by diligence or steamer, the travellers themselves are bawling out for “eau chaude,” “warm wasser,” “boots,” “coffee,” or the “billet”—in short, the jargon of different languages resounding through the lobbies for an hour or two after day-light, would put Babel to shame. And last, not least, the eternal ding-dong of bells, especially in Catholic countries, from dawn of day till eight o’clock, might convince the most sceptical Protestant that PURGATORY is no fable, but an actual punishment inflicted by the priests on this side of the grave, as a foretaste of the future! Still, in most of the continental towns, there is an interval of five or six hours in the night, during which the wearied limbs of the traveller may rest, and his ears may be relieved from discordant sounds. Not so at Rotterdam. The night is infinitely more noisy than the day. It is then that the real bustle begins at the HOTEL DES PAYS BAS, and along the whole line of the quay. The absence of light appears to operate on this amphibious race in the same way as it does on frogs, bats, and owls, and various animals addicted to nocturnal depredation. By midnight the sailors of different nations begin to get sober for the second or third time since morning, and the work of loading and unloading, craning and carting, &c. begins in good earnest. The eternal chorus of “_yo heave ho_,” from a thousand throats, o’ertopping, but not drowning the boisterous din of unutterable discord on all sides, would rouse the god of sleep from his bed of ebony, and put his prime minister, Morpheus, to flight. How the Rotterdamers preserve their lives in the midst of stagnant water surrounding and pervading every habitation, and ingurgitated by man, woman, and child, is only explicable on one of two principles—perhaps of both. They are accustomed to it, as the eels are to skinning:—or the neighbouring SCHEIDAM poisons the animalculæ, and prevents their poisoning the people. There is yet one other supposition. In every habitation and chamber of Rotterdam, and indeed of Holland, there is very perceptible to the senses a malodorous effluvium, composed of three different gases, and emanating from gin, peat and tobacco. This “tertium _quid_”—this “tria juncta in uno”—may possibly tend to counteract, or, at all events, to cover the malarious exhalations continually rising from a quiescent pool, into which the _debris_ of all utterable and _unutterable_ things are daily and nightly plunged![3] THE HAGUE.