Dorothy Wordsworth -- 29 mei 1823

• Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855) was een Engels dichteres en dagboekschrijfster, en de jongere zus van de dichter William Wordsworth. Haar dagboeken staan hier online.
• In 1823 maakten broer en zus een rondreis door België en Nederland.

Leyden, Thursday 29th. — Arose, and found that our commodious chamber looked upon pleasure-walks, which we at once determined must be the University garden, naturally giving to this place the sort of accommodations found in our own seats of learning, but no such luxury belongs to the students of Leyden. The ground with its plantations through which these walks are carried, and upon which the sun now so cheerfully shone, was formerly covered with buildings that were destroyed, together with the inhabitants, by an explosion which took place in a barge of gunpowder in 1806, then lying in the neighbouring canal....

There are no colleges, or separate dwellings, in Leyden, for the students; they are lodged with different families in the town. Our guide had three at his house from England, as he told us. A wandering sheep lying at the threshold, as we passed a good-looking house in the street; were told that this was a pensioner upon the public, that it would lie there till it was fed, and then would pass on to some other door. This animal had been brought up the pet of a soldier once quartered at Leyden, and when he changed his situation his favourite was sent into the fields, but preferring human society, it could not be confined amongst its fellows, but ever returned to the town, and, begging its daily food, it passed from door to door of those houses which its old master had frequented, obstinately keeping its station until an alms was bestowed—bread, vegetables, soup, nothing came wrong, and as soon as this was received, the patient mendicant walked quietly away.

Haarlem. — ... Reached Haarlem at five o'clock; went directly to the Cathedral, mounted the tower, an hour too early for the sunset; a splendid and interesting view beyond any we have seen. Looking eastward, the canal seen stretching through houses and among the trees, to the spires of Amsterdam in the distance. A little to the right, the Mere of Haarlem spotted with vessels, the river Spaaren winding among trees through the town; steeple towers of Utrecht beyond the Mere. The Boss, a fine wood and elegant mansion built by —— Hope, now a royal residence; new kirk, fine tower; the sea, and sand-hills beyond the flats glowing under a dazzling western sky. The winding Spaaren again among green fields brings the eye round to the Amsterdam canal, up which we shall glide....