It is a saying of Augustine, that "the world is a great book, of which they who never stir from home read only a page. It is with a delighted attention that we gaze upon new objects. Curiosity is awakened, and some knowledge is sure to be acquired even by the gazer, not indeed very profound, but nevertheless of value.

Calais, Boulogne, and Dieppe have become of late years half English; and the British traveller hardly feels himself abroad in such places. Commend me, therefore, as a point of debarkation, to Rotterdam: the city is interesting, and the change from home and contrast to it are striking. The canals are all smooth, and still, and covered with schuyts. In one of these I saw a broad Dutch sailor in a shirt of red flannel, and big breeches, employed with a bucket in dashing water over the bows of his craft; for what I was at a loss to conjecture, seeing that it was already of a cleanliness, which seemed to resent the notion of its having ever been defiled by use heretofore, or designed for it hereafter. In fact, were it not for the size of these schuyts,

and the dirty red shirts of their guardians, you might fancy them mere models-bright brown models for the show-room of an arsenal. There is not a bit of brass work or a nail-head about them, that does not glisten, and the anchors hang over the bows as polished as if they were some kind of large and noble weapons, not to grapple with foul mud, but with a hostile galley.

The city is a strange object; there are many things toy-like about it. If you pass a shop, for instance, of a mere huckster; the painted tubs, the cannisters, the measures, the scales, are all of a shining neatness, that you cannot reconcile with the idea of their being ever used; and the red unsmiling face of the seated shopman might divert the fancy with a playful doubt as to his being anything more than some larger creation of the ingenious toyman. Thus it is with the houses generally :- the windows, the doors, the posts, the rails, the ornamental iron work, are all of a brightness, at once pleasing and forbidding: you doubt if any dare breathe on the windows,

or touch the knockers. The colours too are all peculiar to the land,-doors, window-shutters, sash-frames; the green, the red, the yellow, have a depth, and a kind of dull yet rich gravity about them, quite different from the like-named colours with

us.

Except a few of the old Dutch skippers, there is little remarkable in costume. In the markets, indeed, some of the countrywomen attract attention by the size and form of their ear-rings, and of those large plaques of thin gold, or gilt metal at the sides of their head; but the dress both of men and women, in their respective classes, is a something belonging, strictly, neither to that of England or France, but partaking the fashion of both countries. A few of the elderly females of the middle class, and upper maid-servants of the like age, wear the decent dress, which I remember in my boyhood to have seen on the same classes in old England:- the plain caps and frills, the kerchiefs wrapping over the bosom, the fair uncovered arm, the round, full, nurselike form, and the quiet motherly

look, together with their remarkable fairness of complexion, are very pleasing to the eye of an Englishman; and, with many, will bring back the thoughts of their nursery days.

The inhabitants, generally, look as if the busy world had left them behind in the race of life, and as if they were too slow to recover their lost ground. I was particularly struck with their late rising, and with the slow and measured manner of all their labour,- between the hours of five and six, on a July morning, I scarce encountered a soul, and few houses were open when I returned to mine. The sledges, which go about with burthens, are drawn by large powerful animals with full manes and long tails: they are shod in an uncouth manner, fitted only for a slow high walk, and they seem subdued by situation to an unhorselike tameness. On a market day there is a little more stir; some waggons are driven in at a trot, and you instantly recognize, in their forms, the vehicles which the old Dutch and Flemish mas

ters have made us all familiar with. I saw few beggars; and these not in rags, they seemed only to ask charity from those in the middle class, and their abord was rather a coax than a craving, and generally ventured on near the beer-house benches.

I should perhaps have doubted the existence of mirth in Rotterdam, if a boat, returning from the fair at Brill, had not passed under my windows the evening before I went away. They were "the happy low," and loudly happy; they danced with bent and lifted knees, and chins depressed; they sung out, and they drowned the softer tabor. Heads were thrust from every window, and the sympathy of good humour shone in all countenances as the groupe floated past, enacting their joy, and apparently rather delighted than disturbed by the public gaze. But the sounds of joy are few in this city: they certainly are not of a cheerful character in the Spiel Huis Straat; through which if you walk after dusk, you will see mean curtains hanging before many doors, and from the lights behind, and the vile