equipage. In particular, there was a massive fish-plate, with a golden bottom, with a curious silver fish-slice and fork. Every other article in the room was rare or valuable; the carpet, for example, was an Indian matting, formed of reeds of various colours. The landlady politely lifted one corner of it, and exposed a beautifully tessellated pavement of Dutch tyle, coloured chocolate and buff. Two or three of these tyles she also lifted, when we saw that they lay upon a bed of pure white Holland sand. These she assured us were all lifted, wiped, and laid down again every Saturday when the room was cleaned out. The bed of this room was no less a matter of curiosity. The bedclothes were folded up and laid aside, while the pillows and bedding might be said to be lying in state. They appeared to be filled with the very finest down of the Eider duck, for the smallest touch of the hand sunk as into a fluid substance; the striped tick in which the down was inclosed was of silk and cotton, or, perhaps, wholly of a silk stuff. These, again, were covered with slips of fine lawn cloth, edged all around with Brussels lace. Having seen every thing worthy of notice in this and the other rooms, we retired by a back-door which passes through the kitchen, where we found the landlord smoking his pipe; but he retreated hastily as we approached. This having rather disconcerted us, we immediate ly took leave after returning our best thanks to the landlady. They seemed to have no chimney in the kitchen, but burned their turf upon the floor, on which was laid a plate of cast-iron for a hearth: this was polished as smooth and bright as a piece of sil

ver.

It was impossible to walk through this town without feelings of melancholy; the whole place seemed as if it had been dispossessed, and the gloomy aspect of the shut up or sacred chambers conveyed an idea of their society, which was quite uninviting. Here we naturally observe that man is a social being, and it is certainly a mistaken view of his happiness in this life, to become morose and distant. Among a happy and cheerful people, the inhabitants of the village of Broek, from their man ners and customs, seem to be ill suit

ed for this present life, and are not only shut up from the world, but apparently from one another, and have always before them the emblem of some great change in the state of human life, without, perhaps, deriving much comfort from the reflection.

Saardam is, if possible, a greater curiosity than Broek, even in regard to the retirement of the better sort of houses, their fantastic parterres decorated with shells, which are painted, having also, in several instances, a gilded sphere, supported upon a pedestal of shells, descriptive, perhaps, of their taste for navigation and astronomy. Some of their houses are also surrounded with water, to which you approach by means of a wooden draw-bridge. Here the Dutch painter is allowed to sport with his brush in the deepest tinges of the rainbow, in which he is not confined to house work, but even extends his colours to the shells which decorate their walls, and even to the boughs and branches of their trees. But this is certainly a more interesting place than Broek, from its being more a commercial town.

It was in this village that Peter the Great resided while in Holland, and learned to work as a carpenter; and the cottage is still shewn in which he lodged, with his table and chair, &c. Here an album is kept, where strangers insert their names. Over the chimney there is painted, on a piece of wood,

"Neits is den grooten
Man te klein;"

which is in English, "Nothing is for a great man too little." This cottage is extremely mean, and being almost wholly of wood, like the other houses in Saardam, it has gone much into decay. When the Emperor Alexander was in Holland in 1814, he visited this cottage: and since that a small slip of marble has been sunk into the mantel-piece, with an inscription to this effect: " Alexander, Emperor, to Peter the Great." To this enigma, if I may be allowed to use freedom with this royal inscription, an explanation has been attempted in Dutch upon another piece of marble; but from the translation given us of it, it seemed to be little more definite than the inscription itself.

We visited the church of Saardam,

which is a neat and commodious place of worship; on the roof there is a very large stork's nest, which is not uncommon on the churches of Holland, and is very generally met with on the principal farm houses. But the most surprising thing here is a painting, which is stuck up over the altar-piece, representing, if I recollect rightly, the portly person of a priest, who has been tossed in the air by a bull, in the view of a crowd of spectators; but the female sexton of the church could give no distinct or consistent account of the matter. From the top of the steeple of this church the sight is the most extraordinary that is to be met with in Holland, or, perhaps, anywhere. Within the limited boundary of the township of Saardam, we were assured that there were not fewer than 400 windmills, some grinding corn, others sawing timber, others crushing linseed, making paint, &c.; and not a few were pumping water. As it blew a fresh breeze, the greater part of them were in motion, which, to be sure, was a most singular spectacle. Conceive to yourself the formidable appearance that the few windmills at Newcastle had which you have seen another may think of their appearance at Liverpool-these seemed nothing to me after seeing Amsterdam, where the windmills are very numerous indeed; but all these dwindled to nothing on ascending to the top of Saardam steeple, where they looked like a mighty forest waving in the air; and had Cervantes transported his hero to this field, he might have been excused in mistaking this for the field of Mars, peopled with giants. It also might have been mistaken for the land of the Naiads, as the whole country for many miles is regularly divided into canals of water and ridges of land, the water bearing the proportion of fully one-third to the dry land. These waters are separated from the waters of the Zuiderzee, which seem to be about four feet higher than the surface of the Saardam waters, and are secured by means of a regulating lock, which is very handsomely built with brick, and coped with marble, the front work being painted in deep red colour, agreeably to the Dutch taste. This visit to Broek and Saardam occupied the whole day from seven in the morning till five in the afternoon, and was by

much the most interesting day we had spent in Holland; and I always look back to it with renewed pleasure, whether I contemplate the variety or strangeness of the objects which attracted our attention, or think of the agreeable society or easy friendship either of my honourable friend to whose party I belonged, or of the learned and facetious companion with whom we had that day the pleasure of being associated. Returning in the evening to Amsterdam, we did not neglect a bumper in honour of the birth-day of the Prince Regent.

Thursday,

I now sit down to write in good earyou 14th August. nest about Amsterdam, where the whole party are again met, and this day has been appointed for seeing the sights of this moist and languid capital. Our very worthy and learned friend the Doctor had be fore been in Amsterdam, and knowing something of the Dutch language, he laid out the route for the day. A coach with wheels was accordingly ordered to attend immediately after breakfast, when we set off with our commissaire on the box, acting as director to the coachman. Our first visit was to the Rasp-house, down a narrow street in a very close and confined part of the city, where the carriage was not a little hampered by the meeting with one of those most extraordinary looking carriages without wheels, being simply the body of a coach fixed to two pieces of wood, and drawn by one horse with hempen traces, without a pole or shafts of any kind, so that the horse has but an awkward command of the vehicle. To prevent the pieces of wood or sledge on which it is placed from firing from the friction of the causeway, a small barrel of

water is employed to drop upon the wood by a suitable contrivance, as described at Rotterdam. But more generally from the moisture of the streets and the number of canals in Amsterdam, the Jager or driver carries along with him a piece of large flat rope, which he occasionally dips into the canals, and causes this sledge carriage to pass over it, by which means the timber is moistened and the friction for a time destroyed. It has been said, that the Dutch long objected to wheel-carriages at Amsterdam, as the city is built wholly upon piles, but the truth is, that they are very averse

to the grating noise of a carriage, and enjoy a degree of placid quiet in their streets, which is wholly unknown in England.

The Rasp-house is a large prison, having a very dismal and dirty ap pearance. There are at present in it 168 criminals, who are all kept in five great rooms, with eight cells, into which, however, no person is admitted, as in England, where every thing is open to the reasonable inspection of the public. Those we saw were in general very stout men, who were chiefly employed in sawing and rasping dye-woods. There is a low apartment in this prison into which, for particular offences, the prisoner is said to be put, and water let in upon him, and where he must continue to work at a pump to prevent the water from rising so as to endanger his life; but for the humanity of the Dutch, we ascertained that this punishment is not at all to the extent which is represented, as the water cannot rise more than four feet above the level of the floor, and, indeed, it is rarely or never inflicted.

The Spin-house was the next place of public interest which we visited. Here we were received into the governor's room, hung round with numerous portraits of the early patrons of this charity. This is a kind of house of refuge, where beggars are received with their whole families; it now contains about 700 persons of both sexes, and of all ages. In one great hall I counted about 160 beds, in each of which four persons are said to sleep in summer, when there is a division put in the middle, but in the winter, when the house is full, the board is taken out, and then five persons sleep in one bed. They are all dressed in a very simple hempen garb in summer, while in winter woollen is substituted. The patients are not admitted into this house for less than a fortnight, but many are kept in it for years, and the establishment is said to cost the public about 80,000 gilders, or about L. 7000 Sterling per annum. Af ter seeing the working and sleeping wards, we visited the kitchen and steward's room, where we saw the food of the house, which, though plain, appeared to be good. We next visited a room containing forty-four women confined for various

crimes; one of these was now under confinement upon a third accusation for child murder, but the proof had hitherto been found incomplete. Lastly, we visited the chapel, and met the parson, who was eighty years of age, and had been a long time the incumbent in this charge. Another set of prisoners are kept here who are not seen by the public. Here children are sometimes confined at the instance of their parents; wives and husbands are also occasionally confined here, upon the complaint of the offended spouse, for minor offences. This establishment seems to be under very good management, but there is a want of system in the classing of offenders, and whatever may at one time have been the character of Holland for this branch of police, it now falls far short of England.

We next visited Felix Meritas, an establishment for scientific purposes, which is supported by subscription. The house is large, but of a very clumsy construction, and seems to be incommodiously laid out into classrooms for demonstration and experi ment, and also for painting and sculpture. Here we saw several good sta tues and casts of the Venus de Medicis, and the Apollo Belvidere, &c. the Laocoon, Egyptian Figures, Hercules, &c. which form altogether a very good collection. But in the department of experimental philosophy they appear here, as in Rotterdam, to be far behind some other European capitals.

The Palace, formerly the Stadthouse, was converted by Bonaparte into a mansion-house for his brother Louis. Externally it is a large mass of square masonry, with numerous windows, with a common door without any portico, and has consequently no attractive elegance beyond its great size. On the top of the walls are ranged a number of bronze figures, such as Justice with the Balance, and Atlas with the Globe on his shoulders. He measures thirteen feet in height, and the globe which he carries is seven feet in diameter. In the interior this house is decorated with the most sumptuous and magnificent furniture which Paris could produce, and is at this day entirely as it was left by Bonaparte; the only article which has been furnished by the present family is an additional bed, decorated with blue and orange satin, with a small

crib bed for the child of the Prince of Orange. Upon expressing some surprise to the housekeeper at the unaltered state of things, she observed, that the furniture was all purchased with the people's money, and that it was very good. On pointing to a pane of Bohemian glass measuring 18 inches by 15 inches, which was in one of the principal doors of the passage, upon which was written "Palais Bonaparte," she mentioned that it had been scratched on it by some of the gens d'armes when on guard, and that it had never been thought worth while to remove it! and exclaimed, with a cast of her head, "Tout le meme-chose."

But the chief object of admiration in this palace is the great marble saloon, measuring 130 fect in length, 60 feet in breadth, and 100 feet in height, which is wholly lined with white marble with blue veins. Upon entering this room, the Madame de hotel turning round and curtseying to the party, said, "Très superbe, and left us to our meditations; and with this observation I am sorry I must also leave you, for it is far beyond the extent of epistolary description, whether it is considered in regard to the magnitude and grandeur of its walls and dimensions, or the taste and value of its furniture.

LETTER XIII.

DEAR J

Utrecht, THE most striking features of the large Thursday, saloon in the palace to 15th August. which I alluded in my last, is the immense extent of highly finished marble walls, with the statue of Atlas and other figures in pure white marble; but, as I before noticed, a description of it would be greatly beyond the compass of a letter, Indeed, it has been given to the public in a large volume, with plates,

We next visited the great church contiguous to the palace, which is much upon the same kind of cathe dral design as that of Rotterdam, &c. Like these, we have here the highly carved and ornamental pulpit of oak, with the screen or elegant brass rail, which separates the choir from the nave. Here it is of great weight, but falls short in point of elegance to that

The dock-yard of Amsterdam is considered extensive, when compared with those of Helvoetsluys and others in Holland; but nothing which I ever met with tended to give me such an elevated opinion of the importance and extent of the naval appointments of Great Britain than the recollections while in this place of Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sheerness, Chatham, and Deptford. The model-room is excellent, and presents a very fine display of ship-building in miniature. There is, in particular, the model of a shipof-war, in a glass case, about seven feet in length, so contrived that it separates, and exhibits a longitudinal and also a transverse section of the ship. The model of the camel, by which the largest ships of Holland are floated over the shallows of the Zuiderzee upon a few feet of depth of wa ter, is curious. It is a very large machine, which may be conceived to be somewhat analogous to the body of two ships. It is scuttled, or water is let into it, when the vessel to be carried over the bar is floated over it. The water is then pumped out of the camel, when its great buoyancy lifts the vessel and floats it over the shallows or bar. There were, besides, several very ingenious_contrivances connected with naval tactics, which were very neatly constructed; and we left this apartment not less gratified at seeing the flags of Holland and Britain, &c. entwined as emblematical of the universal peace, than with the works we had seen. Several ships of war were now under repair, particularly the Zeepaard or Seahorse, &c.; but these works, we were given to understand, proceeded very slowly, owing to the great repairs which the Minister of Marine found necessary for the public works at this and all the other dock-yards, which had been left by Bonaparte in a state approaching fast to ruin.

From the dock-yard we went to the great china magazine of Henry du Bois, where there is a display of elegant wares of all sorts, from a complete set of dinner and tea service in china, with jars of the largest capacity, down to the most trifling toys of