iv the admirable Tour of Mr. Russel, so little has been written on the subject of Germany, that the most meagre contribution of a chance traveller in that country scarcely needs any apology. My brief notices of such places in Flanders and Switzerland as I traversed in my route belong, of necessity, to the character of a volume which is but the personal narrative of an autumnal excursion on the Continent. CLAVERTON FARM, INTRODUCTION. Ir is a pleasant thing to be awakened by the morning sun shining in on new and unfamiliar objects, and to find yourself in the chamber of a foreign hotel, actually upon the Continent; your projected tour fairly begun, your passport, your pocketbook, your purse, safe on the chair beside you; your portmanteau, and sac de nuit, that have safely passed the ordeal of the rumpling hand, ready for instant departure, or long sojourn, as their master shall determine; and cares, packets, and the custom-house behind you. B 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, |