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LADIES OF HOLLAND.

273

as long as they belong to the order, to attend prayers at stated periods, and to be within the convent at a certain hour every evening. To be admitted of this order, they must be either unmarried or widows without children, and the only certificate required is that of good behaviour, and that they have a competence to live upon. The restraints are so very few, that a Beguine may rank next to a happy wife they have each an apartment and a little flower-garden, and take no vows of celibacy or of any other sort; in short, the whole establishment may be considered as a social retirement of amiable women, for the purpose of enjoying life in an agreeable and blameless How superior this to living

manner.

A barren sister all your life,

Chaunting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon!

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I. Scene 1.

The ladies of Holland, if I may judge from those with whom I had the honor and happiness of associating in Amsterdam, are very amiable, thoroughly well bred, well educated, speak English, French and German, and they are very polite and courteous to strangers: they are also remarkable for their attention to decorum and modesty; the unmarried, without prudery, are highly virtuous, and the married present a pattern of conjugal fidelity. They

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are also very fond of dancing, particularly of waltzing, and they are much attached to English country dances, in which the most graceful Parisian belle seldom appears to any advantage.

The interior of the houses belonging to the higher classes in Amsterdam is very elegant; the decoration and furniture of their rooms is very much in the French style : they are also very fond of having a series of landscapes, painted in oil colours, upon the sides of the rooms, instead of stucco or paper, or of ornamenting them with pictures and engravings. The average rent of respectable houses, independent of taxes, is from one thousand to twelve hundred florins. The dinner hour, on account of the exchange, is about four o'clock in this city, and their modes of cooking unite those of England and France: immediately after dinner the whole company adjourn to coffee in the drawing-room.

The water in this part of Holland is so brackish and feculent, that it is not drank even by the common people. There are water-merchants, who are constantly occupied in supplying the city with drinkable water, which they bring in boats from Utrecht and Germany, in large stone bottles the price of one of these bottles, containing a

WATER OF AMSTERDAM.

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gallon, is about eightpence English. The poor, who cannot afford to buy it, substitute rain-water. The wines drank are principally claret and from the Rhine. The vintage of Portugal has no more admirers here than at Rotterdam, except amongst young Dutchmen, who have either been much in England, or are fond of the taste and fashions of our country.

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CHAPTER XVI.

POLICE-FIRES--LAWS RELATING TO DEBTORS DITTO TO BANKRUPTS THE AANSPREEKERS-SINGULAR CUSTOM-THE TROKEN KORB THE STREETS-INSALUBRITY OF STAGNANT CANALS-SOCIETIES FOR RECOVERING DROWNED PERSONS-NOBLE CONDUCT of THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER-POLISH GRATITUDE--AUSTRIA- -THE EXCHANGE-A DUTCH MERCHANT-HERRING FISHERY.

THE laws in Holland against nocturnal disturbers of the peace are very severe. A few months before I was in Amsterdam, two young gentlemen of family and fortune had been condemned to pay ten thousand florins for having, when "flushed with the Tuscan grape," rather rudely treated two women of the lower orders. The night police of Holland would form an excellent model for that of England. The watchmen are young, strong, resolute and well appointed, but annoying to strangers, for they strike the quarter with a mallet on a board, and will haunt his repose all night, unless he is fortunate enough to sleep backwards, or until he becomes accustomed to the clatter. Midnight robberies and fires very seldom occur to guard against the spreading of the latter, there are persons appointed, whose office it is to remain all

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