This highest part of the house afforded a beautiful prospect; the view
was almost as extensive as the one from the top of the citadel, the old
Roman tower situated in the midst of Leyden. Like a spider in its web,
Wilhelm's native city lay in the midst of countless streams and canals
that intersected the meadows. The red brick masonry of the city wall,
with its towers and bastions, washed by a dark strip of water, encircled
the pretty place as a diadem surrounds a young girl's head; and like a
chaplet of loosely-bound thorns, forts and redoubts extended in wider,
frequently broken circles around the walls. The citizens' herds of
cattle grazed between the defensive fortifications and the city wall,
while beside and beyond them appeared villages and hamlets.

On this clear April day, looking towards the north, Haarlem lake was
visible, and on the west, beyond the leafy coronals of the Hague woods,
must be the downs which nature had reared for the protection of the
country against the assaults of the waves. Their long chain of hillocks
offered a firmer and more unconquerable resistance to the pressure of the
sea, than the earthworks and redoubts of Alfen, Leyderdorp and
Valkenburg, the three forts situated close to the banks of the Rhine,
presented to hostile armies. The Rhine! Wilhelm gazed down at the
shallow, sluggish river, and compared it to a king deposed from his
throne, who has lost power and splendor and now kindly endeavors to
dispense benefits in little circles with the property that remains. The
musician was familiar with the noble, undivided German Rhine; and often
followed it in imagination towards the south but more often still his
dreams conveyed him with a mighty leap to Lake Lugano, the pearl of the
Western Alps, and when he thought of it and the Mediterranean, beheld
rising before his mental vision emerald green, azure blue, and golden
light; and in such hours all his thoughts were transformed within his