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NOTES OF A TRAVELLER,

&c.

CHAPTER I.

TRAVEL-WRITING.

HOLLAND. THE SUBLIME IN SCENERY.THE PICTURESQUE IN HOLLAND. GARDEN HOUSES. DECAY OF HOLLAND. CAUSES OF DECAY.-COMMERCIAL DECLINE. -MANUFACTURING STABILITY. USEFUL ARTS.- - FINE ARTS. USEFUL AND FINE ARTS COMPARED. USEFUL AND FINE

FEDERALISM.

ARTS. THE POOR IN HOLLAND. THE POOR IN MANUFAC-
TURING TOWNS. POOR COLONIES. -KINGLY POWER IN HOL-
LAND. BELGIUM.
UNION OF THE TWO
COUNTRIES. THE FEDERAL PRINCIPLE. ITS WORKING IN
SWITZERLAND.

IN the social state of the Continent, as it has settled itself since the great political and moral epoch of the French Revolution, there is a vast field to explore, which has scarcely been looked at by our Continental travellers. No period since the introduction of Christianity will be considered by posterity of equal importance with this half of the nineteenth century, — of equal influence in forming the future social and moral condition of the European people. All the great social influences, moral and physical, which have sprung up from the ashes of the French Revolution, and all the influences accumulating in prior times; the diffusion of knowledge by the press; of sentiments of religious and civil freedom by the Reformation; of wealth, wellbeing, and political importance in the middle class, or those between the nobility and peasantry of the feudal ages, by trade, manufactures, and industry; the influence over all ranks of acquired tastes, and wants unknown to their forefathers; the influence

B

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