tions, to resist or to repel their watery enemy; notwithstanding this well-organized body of inspectors and engineers; notwithstanding the ample funds and great physical force placed at their disposal, and ready to be employed at their bidding, — the violence of the elements often sets all their vigilance, skill, and power at defiance; sweeping away their strongest bulwarks, and threatening their country with a general inundation. EXERCISE LXXXV. INUNDATION IN HOLLAND, 1825.- -Anon. The end of the year 1824, and the commencement of 1825, will be long remembered in other parts of Europe, as well as in Holland. About the beginning of the winter months, extraordinary storms prevailed on all parts of the continent, but particularly in its higher regions and mountain ranges. Waterspouts and torrents of rain descended in Switzerland and the Black Forest, not only sufficient to damage the districts on which they fell, but to overthrow dykes and embankments, to cover whole valleys, and sweep away whole villages, with their inhabitants and cattle. Wirtemberg, Baden, and the countries situated near the Alps, first felt this dreadful visitation. The valleys of the Necker and the Rhine, towards Heidelberg and Manheim, were entirely overflowed, and dreadfully damaged. Similar calamities were experienced in Hanover, Prussia, and other parts of Germany. While all the rivers that discharge themselves into the North Sea and the Baltic, were thus carrying to their shores the evidences of their violence, a tempest, which swept along the whole of these seas, from west to east, concentrating its fury in the Gulf of Finland, produced the most unheard-of calamities at Cronstadt and St. Petersburg; sweeping away, or nearly destroying, the harbor, the fortresses, the arsenal, and the imperial magazines of the former place; dashing the shipping in pieces, or throwing it out on the land; and demolishing, in the latter, wholly or in part, about five thousand houses; destroying an incalculable amount of private and public property, in warehouses and magazines; and drowning, or overwhelming, amid the ruins of their dwellings, four hundred and eighty individuals. The people of Holland heard such accounts with dismay, particularly the intelligence of the ravages committed by the Rhine, in the upper part of his course. In his irresistible fury, he had overleaped or demolished his embankments a thousand feet above the level of the sea; and what might not be dreaded from the force of his accumulated waters, descending on the Dutch territory, the highest point of which is only about thirty-two feet above the same level? The height of their dykes and causeways along his banks is not more than twenty-four feet; and if the water exceeded this elevation, their wealthiest towns and most prosperous villages, their homes and harbors, their fields and gardens, the fruits of their industry, and the monuments of their power, must have been overwhelmed in one common ruin. The water, in most places, had actually ascended to the top of the dykes. In some parts of the country, these ramparts threatened to yield; in others, they had even been slightly broken: every stream was covered with wrecks; every canal leaned against a tottering embankment. In a few days, the greater rivers must have overflowed the causeways; and Batavia must have returned, for a time, to its primitive state. A wind suddenly springing up, and blowing these accumulated waters into the sea, saved it from the threatened inundation. This blessed wind was aided by the most active exertions of the water-police. Breaches in the dykes were. filled up; the wind-mills assisted the discharge; and the threatening danger was for the present averted. It was not for nearly six weeks afterwards, - and then not from the same quarter, that devastation and misery came. The third, fourth, and fifth of February, 1825, were the fatal days for the coast of Holland; and a tempest, occurring at spring tide, was the cause. On the first and second of that month, the wind blew from the southwest; and the weather was extremely mild. The waters of the canals and rivers were thus discharged into the sea in great abundance, and without danger. On the evening of the second, the wind veered round to the northwest, where it continued till the night of the fifth. EXERCISE LXXXVI. THE SAME SUBJECT, CONCLUDED. In the night of the fifth, all was confusion and terror at Amsterdam. In some places, the waves had surmounted their barriers; and the cellars of some of the lower parts of the town were flooded. In other places, the water had got up to the doors. The alarm-bells sounded; and the inhabitants were called to provide for their common safety. Some ran to the dykes with all the materials which they could collect, to heighten or strengthen them. Some took up their carpets, and were preparing to carry the most precious portions of their furniture to the higher quarters of the town, or the upper stories of their houses. The authorities were all at their post, to direct the employment of the means of safety, or to preserve the public tranquillity. On every side, terror and dismay prevailed. Every one. anticipated, from the raging waves, a destruction from which he saw no prospect of escape. Half an hour longer of continued storm, or the slightest rise in the tide, must have laid the greatest part of the Dutch capital and of its treasures under water. Nothing could have prevented this catastrophe but the change of wind, which suddenly took place, a little after midnight. The capital was thus saved; but, as soon as the tempest permitted communication from without, the cry was heard from the opposite side of its harbor, that a breach of the dykes had taken place, and that the fairest portion of its neighborhood. was inundated. On the fourth, the violence of the waves had burst through the causeway or mole of Durgerdam, a village on the Zuyder Zee, about six or seven miles east of Amsterdam; and, pouring irresistibly upon North Holland, spread over more than a third part of it. The inundation did not, of course, rise to an equal height, or produce an equal havoc, over the whole of this space. Two or three of its most fertile districts were entirely protected by their own local dykes, propped up, repaired, and defended, by the enterprise and activity of the peasants. In some other quarters of it, the waters did not rise so high as materially to damage the houses; while over a large portion of its southern and eastern divisions, the waves mounted nearly to the tops of houses and trees, and produced a total devastation. The wretched inhabitants were in general saved by the rapidity of their flight to the nearest little eminences above water, or the activity of the boatmen of Amsterdam, joined to those of their own neighborhood. A great portion of the cattle were likewise rescued by the same means. So that, by this part of the inundation, not more than five or six persons were drowned, and about a thousand head of cattle lost. The damage, however, in other respects, was immense. The lands of an extensive country were laid under water, from which they were not, for years, entirely cleared: woods, and ranges of trees, and shrubberies, and nurseries, and pleasure-grounds, and gardens, were entirely destroyed; whole villages were thrown down, or rendered uninhabitable; manufactories and mills were swept away; farm-houses and villas, with their furniture, their stores, their provisions, their carriages, and agricultural implements, the fruits of last year's industry, and the hopes of this, were all overwhelmed in one common ruin. RULE FOR THE READING OF SERIES OF WORDS AND CLAUSES. In GRAVE and EARNEST DESCRIPTION, as well as in narrative and didactic style, SERIES,· -or successions of words and clauses, comprehended within one and the same rule of syntax,— require ▲ PREVAILING DOWNWARD SLIDE of voice, for emphatic effect; while, in LIGHT and familiarR, or UNIMPRESSIVE passages, the mere SUSPENSION, or even a slight UPWARD tendency of voice, might be sufficient. For examples, see the last sentence of page 166; the sentence commencing 'The contents,' &c., near the middle of page 167; the last paragraph of EXERCISE LXXXIV: and the last paragraph of Ex ERCISE LXXXV. EXERCISE LXXXVII. § > LINES FOR BERKSHIRE JUBILEE, 1844. Mrs. Butler. Hail to this day, that brings ye home, Ye distant wanderers from the mountain-land! Again upon your native hills to stand! And wood-embowered dale, A thousand loving voices speak, Oh! welcome! - From the meadow and the hill From flowing river, and from bounding rill, Into the skies. Gray-lock, cloud-girdled, from his purple throne, And from green, sunny hills, a warbling tone Welcome, ye absent long, and distant far! Who from the roof-tree of your childhood turned, Reaping hard fortunes from the stormy sea, Mid human forms, their spirits' living graves, A heart of love, and free, laborious hands! |
