I have long been tired of rambling through museums and picture-galleries—churches and palaces—gardens and promenades; but I am absolutely sick of the endless and reiterated descriptions of all these and a thousand other things, which every tourist delineates anew, as if he had been the first visitor that ever saw the lions! In these catalogues there can be nothing new, even to the fire-side traveller, and I shall pass them by, with merely an occasional reflection or remark. I find but one or two notes in my diary of the Hague—one, the record of a most capital BULL—not made by an Irishman, but by a Dutchman—the “JEUNE TAUREAU,” by Paul Potter. This sturdy, stiff-necked, sandy-haired representative of my countrymen, is no bad sample of the breed. I wish a certain animal of this species, which stands in Fleet Street, with a mouth wide open, and greedy for all kinds of provender, were to be brushed up a little, _a la Paul Potter_. I am sure it would increase the number of spectators, if not of subscribers, to our witty, keen, and sarcastic hebdomadal of Temple-bar.[4] At the dull aristocratic and academic town of Leyden, we crossed a sad memorial of fallen greatness—the drivelling descendant of the majestic Rhine, reduced to the dimensions of a canal, and, like the degenerate offspring of some renowned hero, disgracing the line of his noble ancestor! Restive and perverse in its last act, it only _flows_ when the tide _ebbs_, and stands motionless during the flood. Leyden being a university “open to all parties,” and influenced by merit only (with a little gold), it imposes no oath on the candidates for its degrees—whatever may be the creed of the aspirant. HAERLEM. This is a phrenological city, distinguished by a remarkable bump—the largest “organ of music” in the world. But there is a greater lion in Haerlem than the great organ—one whose distant roarings have struck more terror into the heart of John Bull than did ever Napoleon, with his legions at Boulogne. This monstrous birth of the French revolution—this offspring of atheism and education, in which the orthodox light is extinguished— “Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum,”