LETTERS TO-BEYANTON AND; CONTARINE,

« Providence interposed in myfavour : the ship was gOM on to Bourdeaux before I

got from.pnson and was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and every one of

the crew were drowned. It happened the last great storm. There was a shin

<< at that time ready for Holland : I embarked, and in nine days, ttak "y ^

I arrived safe at Rotterdam; whence I travelled hy land to Leyden • and whence

"I now write.

"You may expect some account of this country, and though I am not well
" qualified for such an undertaking, yet shall I endeavour to satisfy some part of
" your expectations. Nothing, surprised me more than the hooks every day
'' published, descriptive of the manners of this country. Any young man who takes
<<it into his head, to publish his travels, .visits the countries he intends to describe •
"passes through them with as much inattention as his valet de chambre • and
" consequently not having a fund himself to fill a volume, he applies to those who
" wrote before Mm, and gives us the manners of a country, not as he must have
" seen them, but such as, they might have been fifty years before. The modem
" Dutchman is quite a different.creature from him of .former times : he in every-
" thing imitates a. Frenchman, but in his easy disengaged air, which is the result
'' of keeping polite company. The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps
" exactly what a Frenchman might have .been in the reign of.Louis SIT. Such
" are the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures
"in.uaturo.: upon a headiof lank hair he wears: a half-cocked narrow hat laced
" with black ribbon : no coat, but seven waistcoats, and nine pairs of breeches ; so
" that his hips reach almost up to his arm-pits. , This well-clothed vegetable is
" now fit to see company, or make love. But. what a pleasing creature is the
" object of Ms appetite ? Why she,wears a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders
'' lace : and for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats.

'' A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but .his tobacco.
" You must know, sir, every,woman carries in her hand a stove with coals in it,
'' which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats; and at this chimney
'' dozing Strophon lights his pipe. I take it that this continual smoking is what
'' gives the man the ruddy healthful complexion he generally wears, hy draining
'' his Huporlluous moisture, while the woman, deprived of this amusement, over-
'' ilows with such viscidities as tint the complexion, and give that paleness of visage
" which low fenny grounds and moist air conspire to cause. A Dutchwoman and
'' Scotch will well bear an opposition. The one is pale and fat, the other lean and
"ruddy: the one walks as if she were straddling after a go-cart, and the other
" takes too masculine a stride. I shall not endeavour to deprive either country of
" its share of beauty; but must say, that of all objects on this earth, an English
" former's daughter is most charming. Every woman there is a complete beauty,
" while the higher class of'women want many of the requisites to make them even
'' tolerable. Their pleasures hero are very dull though very various. You may smoke,
" you may cloze, you may go to the Italian comedy, as good an amusement as either
'' of the. former. This entertainment always brings in Harlequin, who is generally a
" magician, a,ud in consequence of his diabolical art performs a thousand tricks on
" the rest of the persons of the drama, who;are all fools. . I have seen the pit in a
'' roar of laughter at this humour, when with his sword he touches the glass from
" which another was drinking. - 'Twas not his face they laughed at, for that was
<' masked. They must have seen something vastly queer in the wooden sword,
" that neither I, nor you, sir, were you there,' could see."making a line" . 434