Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/196

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184
TOUR THROUGH

specific excited in him a mixture of surprise and contempt. Elsewhere the officious waiters have brought me after dinner tobacco and a pipe, and always appeared ridiculously astonished when with strong tokens of disjust I ordered them to be removed.

In the great church of Haarlem stands the famous organ, which is the largest, and thought to be the finest, instrument of that kind in the world. By paying a ducat to the organist, and half-a-crown to the bellows blower, we heard it about an hour. It is an instrument of astonishing compass of powers. Some of its notes are so delicate as scarcely to exceed the warblings of a small singing bird, others so loud as to shake the many pile in which it stands. We expected to receive much pleasure from the vox humana, or pipe which imitates the sound of the human voice, for we had heard it greatly extolled; but high expectations are too often disappointed, and we found the vox humana disagreeable. It is the voice of a psalm-singing clerk. On the whole, however, this instrument is exquisitely delightful, I