It is gained through an ancient courtyard full of horses and carriages--like a scene in Dumas.

From the Burg one ought to have a fine view, but Leyden's roofs are too near.

And in the Natural History Museum I walked through miles of birds stuffed, and birds articulated, until I felt that I could give a year's income to be on terms again with a living blackbird--even one of those that eat our Kentish strawberries at sunrise.
I did not penetrate to the interior of the University, having none to guide me, but I was pleased to remember that Oliver Goldsmith had been a student there not so very long ago.

Indeed, as I walked about the town, I thought much of Goldsmith as he was in 1755, aged twenty-seven, with all his books to write, wandering through the same streets, looking upon the same houses and canals, in the interval of acquiring his mysterious medical degree (ultimately conferred at Louwain).

His ingenious project, it will be remembered--by those whose memories (like my own) cling to that order of information, to the exclusion of everything useful and improving--Goldsmith's delightful plan for subsistence in Holland was to teach the English language to the Dutch, and in return receive enough money to keep him at the University of Leyden and enable him to hear the great Professor Albinus.