The Diary of John Evelyn (Volume 1 of 2). Evelyn John
were divers pretty waterworks, rising 108 feet from the ground. Here were many quaint devices, fountains, artificial music, noises of beasts, and chirping of birds; but what pleased me most was a large pendant candlestick, branching into several sockets, furnished all with ordinary candles to appearance, out of the wicks spouting out streams of water, instead of flames. This seemed then and was a rarity, before the philosophy of compressed air made it intelligible. There was likewise a cylinder that entertained the company with a variety of chimes, the hammers striking upon the brims of porcelain dishes, suited to the tones and notes, without cracking any of them. Many other waterworks were shown.
The Kaiser's or Emperor's Graft, which is an ample and long street, appearing like a city in a forest; the lime trees planted just before each house, and at the margin of that goodly aqueduct so curiously wharfed with Klincard brick, which likewise paves the streets, than which nothing can be more useful and neat. This part of Amsterdam is built and gained upon the main sea, supported by piles at an immense charge, and fitted for the most busy concourse of traffickers and people of commerce beyond any place, or mart, in the world. Nor must I forget the port of entrance into an issue of this town, composed of very magnificent pieces of architecture, some of the ancient and best manner, as are divers churches.
The turrets, or steeples, are adorned after a particular manner and invention; the chimes of bells are so rarely managed, that being curious to know whether the motion was from any engine, I went up to that of St. Nicholas, where I found one who played all sorts of compositions from the tablature before him, as if he had fingered an organ; for so were the hammers fastened with wires to several keys put into a frame twenty feet below the bells, upon which (by the help of a wooden instrument, not much unlike a weaver's shuttle, that guarded his hand) he struck on the keys and played to admiration. All this while, through the clattering of the wires, din of the too nearly sounding bells, and noise that his wooden gloves made, the confusion was so great, that it was impossible for the musician, or any that stood near him, to hear anything at all; yet, to those at a distance, and especially in the streets, the harmony and the time were the most exact and agreeable.
The south church is richly paved with black and white marble, – the west is a new fabric; and generally all the churches in Holland are furnished with organs, lamps, and monuments, carefully preserved from the fury and impiety of popular reformers, whose zeal has foolishly transported them in other places rather to act like madmen than religious.
HAERLEM
Upon St. Bartholomew's day, I went among the booksellers, and visited the famous Hondius and Bleaw's shop, to buy some maps, atlases, and other works of that kind. At another shop, I furnished myself with some shells and Indian curiosities; and so, toward the end of August, I returned again to Haerlem by the river, ten miles in length, straight as a line, and of competent breadth for ships to sail by one another. They showed us a cottage where, they told us, dwelt a woman who had been married to her twenty-fifth husband, and being now a widow, was prohibited to marry in future; yet it could not be proved that she had ever made away with any of her husbands, though the suspicion had brought her divers times to trouble.
Haerlem is a very delicate town and hath one of the fairest churches of the Gothic design I had ever seen. There hang in the steeple, which is very high, two silver bells, said to have been brought from Damietta, in Egypt, by an earl of Holland, in memory of whose success they are rung out every evening. In the nave hang the goodliest branches of brass for tapers that I have seen, esteemed of great value for the curiosity of the workmanship; also a fair pair of organs, which I could not find they made use of in divine service, or so much as to assist them in singing psalms, but only for show, and to recreate the people before and after their devotions, while the burgomasters were walking and conferring about their affairs. Near the west window hang two models of ships, completely equipped, in memory of that invention of saws under their keels, with which they cut through the chain of booms, which barred the port of Damietta.
LEYDEN
Having visited this church, the fish-market, and made some inquiry about the printing-house, the invention whereof is said to have been in this town, I returned to Leyden.
At Leyden, I was carried up to the castle, or Pyrgus, built on a very steep artificial mount, cast up (as reported) by Hengist the Saxon, on his return out of England, as a place to retire to, in case of any sudden inundations.
The churches are many and fair; in one of them lies buried the learned and illustrious Joseph Scaliger, without any extraordinary inscription, who, having left the world a monument of his worth more lasting than marble, needed nothing more than his own name; which I think is all engraven on his sepulcher. He left his library to this University.
28th August, 1641. I went to see the college and schools, which are nothing extraordinary, and was complimented with a matricula by the magnificus Professor, who first in Latin demanded of me where my lodging in the town was, my name, age, birth, and to what Faculty I addicted myself; then, recording my answers in a book, he administered an oath to me that I should observe the statutes and orders of the University while I stayed, and then delivered me a ticket, by virtue whereof I was made excise-free; for all which worthy privileges, and the pains of writing, he accepted of a rix-dollar.
Here was now the famous Dan. Heinsius, whom I so longed to see, as well as the no less famous printer, Elzevir's printing-house and shop, renowned for the politeness of the character and editions of what he has published through Europe. Hence to the physic-garden, well stored with exotic plants, if the catalogue presented to me by the gardener be a faithful register.
But, among all the rarities of this place, I was much pleased with a sight of their anatomy-school, theater, and repository adjoining, which is well furnished with natural curiosities; skeletons, from the whale and elephant to the fly and spider; which last is a very delicate piece of art, to see how the bones (if I may so call them of so tender an insect) could be separated from the mucilaginous parts of that minute animal. Among a great variety of other things, I was shown the knife newly taken out of a drunken Dutchman's guts, by an incision in his side, after it had slipped from his fingers into his stomach. The pictures of the chirurgeon and his patient, both living, were there.
There is without the town a fair Mall, curiously planted.
Returning to my lodging, I was showed the statue, cut in stone, of the happy monk, whom they report to have been the first inventor of typography, set over the door; but this is much controverted by others, who strive for the glory of it, besides John Gutenberg.
I was brought acquainted with a Burgundian Jew, who had married an apostate Kentish woman. I asked him divers questions: he told me, among other things, that the World should never end; that our souls transmigrated, and that even those of the most holy persons did penance in the bodies of brutes after death, – and so he interpreted the banishment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar: that all the Jews should rise again, and be led to Jerusalem; that the Romans only were the occasion of our Savior's death, whom he affirmed (as the Turks do) to be a great prophet, but not the Messiah. He showed me several books of their devotion, which he had translated into English, for the instruction of his wife; he told me that when the Messiah came, all the ships, barks, and vessels of Holland should, by the power of certain strange whirlwinds, be loosed from their anchors, and transported in a moment to all the desolate ports and havens throughout the world, wherever the dispersion was, to convey their brethren and tribes to the Holy City; with other such like stuff. He was a merry drunken fellow, but would by no means handle any money (for something I purchased of him), it being Saturday; but desired me to leave it in the window, meaning to receive it on Sunday morning.
1st September, 1641. I went to Delft and Rotterdam, and two days after back to the Hague, to bespeak a suit of horseman's armor, which I caused to be made to fit me. I now rode out of town to see the monument of the woman, pretended to have been a countess of Holland, reported to have had as many children at one birth, as there are days in the year. The basins were hung up in which they were baptized, together with a large description of the matter-of-fact in a frame of carved work, in the church of Lysdun, a desolate place. As I returned, I diverted to see one of the Prince's Palaces, called the Hoff Van Hounsler's Dyck, a very fair cloistered and quadrangular building. The gallery is prettily painted with several huntings, and at one end a gordian knot, with rustical