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268 the fall of Napoleon. Soon after I left the Hague for Leyden.

What Cambridge and Oxford are in England, what Upsala is in Sweden, that is Leyden in Holland,—the University town of the kingdom. It is sometimes called the Athens of the west, and in its reputation as a learned University it yields to no place in Europe. The eminent jurist Grotius and the eminent philosopher Des Cartes lived and wrote here.

Leyden has yet another claim to the interest of the student of history. For it was here that a great battle against oppression and religious bigotry was fought in 1574. The terrible siege of Leyden by the Spanish lasted from October 1573 to March 1574, and then a sort of blockade went on till October 1574. No account of a siege that I have ever read, not even Macaulay's graphic account of the siege of Londonderry is so thrilling as the siege of Leyden as told by Motley. William of Orange at last caused the dykes to be pierced and the country around being inundated, and he relieved the besieged by ship. The town was thus saved from the very jaws of the cruel enemy.

The traveller who comes to this place to see monuments and historical structures will however be much disappointed. Leyden is a quiet town with some canals and one or two important streets, and scarcely any superb buildings. The University building is quite a commonplace one and the lecture-hall about which Neibuhr has written