THIS Edition of the Hand-book has been subjected to a most careful and thorough revision; many new routes, including the Railroads of Holland, Germany, and Belgium, are added, and several have been rewritten. The Editor trusts that the imperfections and errors of this book will be found to have been considerably diminished. His own personal rectification of mistakes and omissions has been most materially aided by the communications of numerous and obliging correspondents, many of them personally unknown to him, to whom he takes this opportunity of returning his acknowledgments. He begs, at the same time, to repeat his request that travellers who may in the use of the Hand-book detect any faults or omissions which they can correct from personal knowledge, will have the kindness to mark them down on the spot, with the date when they are made, and communicate to him a notice of the same, favouring him at the same time with their names addressed to the care of Mr. Murray, Albemarle Street. The Editor ventures also to request his correspondents to write foreign names with as much distinctness as possible. They may be reminded that by such communications they are not merely furnishing the means of improving the Hand-book, but are contributing to the benefit, information, and comfort of future travellers. *No attention can be paid to letters from innkeepers in praise of their own houses; and the postage of them is so onerous that they cannot be received. The Editor of the Hand-books for Travellers takes this opportunity of returning his thanks to the numerous obliging correspondents who have favoured him by communicating notices of errors and omissions in this and other Guidebooks, of which he has gladly availed himself to improve the present Edition. He has also derived considerable benefit from a German translation of the Hand-books executed by Mr. Baedeker, an intelligent bookseller of Coblenz, who has performed the part not merely of translator but of a careful Editor, and having visited a large part of Germany, has added greatly to the accuracy and value of the work by his own personal observations, the greater part of which have been incorporated in this Edition. CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS. By a recent Act of Parliament the introduction into England of foreign pirated Editions of the works of British authors, in which the copyright subsists, is totally prohibited. Travellers will therefore bear in mind that even a single copy is contraband, and is liable to seizure at the English Custom-house. CAUTION TO INNKEEPERS AND OTHERS. The Editor of the Hand-books has learned from various quarters that a person or persons have of late been extorting money from innkeepers, tradespeople, artists, and others, on the Continent, under pretext of procuring recommendations and favourable notices of them and their establishments in the Hand-books for Travellers. The Editor, therefore, thinks proper to warn all whom it may concern, that recommendations in the Hand-books are not to be obtained by purchase, and that the persons alluded to are not only unauthorised by him, but are totally unknown to him. All those, therefore, who put confidence in such promises, may rest assured that they will be defrauded of their money without attaining their object.1843. LONDON: Printed by SPOTTISWOODES and SHAW, New-street-Square. A HAND-BOOK FOR TRAVELLERS ON THE CONTINENT: BEING A GUIDE THROUGH HOLLAND, BELGIUM, PRUSSIA, AND NORTHERN GERMANY, AND Along the Rhine, from Holland to Switzerland. CONTAINING DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PRINCIPAL CITIES, THEIR MUSEUMS, PICTURE GALLERIES, &c. THE MOST INTERESTING AND PICTURESQUE DISTRICTS; JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET: A. & W. GALIGNANI & Co.; STASSIN AND XAVIER, PARIS LONGMAN, LEIPZIG. 1850. PREFACE. THE writer of this volume having experienced, as every Englishman visiting the Continent must have done, the want of any tolerable English Guide Book for Europe north of the Alps, was induced, partly for his own amusement, partly to assist his friends going abroad, to make copious notes of all that he thought worth observation, and of the best modes of travelling and seeing things to advantage. In the course of repeated journeys and of occasional residence in various part of the Continent, he not only traversed beaten routes, but visited many spots to which his countrymen rarely penetrate. Thus his materials have largely accumulated; and in the hope that they may render as much service to the public generally, as he is assured they already have done to private friends, he is now induced to put them forth in a printed form. The Guide Books hitherto published are for the most part either general descriptions compiled by persons not acquainted with the spots, and therefore imperfect and erroneous, or are local histories, written by residents who do not sufficiently discriminate between what is peculiar to the place, and what is not worth seeing, or may be seen equally well or to greater advantage somewhere else. The latter overwhelm their readers with minute details of its history "from the most ancient times," and with genealogies of its princes, &c.: the former confine themselves to a mere catalogue of buildings, institutions, and the like; after reading which, the stranger is as much as ever in the dark as to what really are the curiosities of the place. They are often mere reprints of works published many years ago, by no means corrected, or brought down to the present time; and whether accurate or not, originally, are become, from the mere changes which each year produces, faulty and antiquated. He He The writer of the Hand-Book has endeavoured to confine himself to matter-of-fact descriptions of what ought to be seen at each place, and is calculated to interest an intelligent English traveller, without bewildering his readers with an account of all that may be seen. has avoided chronological details; and, instead of abridging the records of a town from beginning to end, he has selected such local anecdotes as are connected with remarkable events which have happened there, or with distinguished men who have lived there. has adopted as simple and condensed a style as possible, avoiding florid descriptions and exaggerated superlatives; preferring to avail himself of the descriptions of others, where they appeared good and correct, to obtruding extracts from his own journals. Whenever an author of celebrity, such as Scott, Byron, Rogers, or Southey, has described a place, he has made a point of extracting the passage, knowing how much the perusal of it on the spot, where the works themselves are not to be procured, will enhance the interest of seeing the objects described. |