ADVERTISEMENT.

SOME justly admired Authors having condescended to glean a few stray thoughts from these Letters, which have remained dormant a great many years, I have been at length emboldened to lay them before the public. Perhaps, as they happen to contain passages which persons of acknowledged taste have honoured with their notice, they may possibly be less unworthy of emerging from the shade into daylight than I imagined.

Most of these Letters were written in the bloom and heyday of youthful spirits and youthful confidence, at a period when the old order of things existed with all its picturesque pomps and absurdities; when Venice enjoyed her piombi and submarine dungeons: France her bastile; the Peninsula her holy Inquisition. To look back upon what is beginning to appear almost; a; fabulous era in the eyes of the modern children of light, is not unanusing or uninstructive; for, still better to appreciate the present, we should be led not unfrequently to recall the intellectual muzziness of the past.

But happily these pages are not crowded with such records: they are chiefly filled with delineations of landscape and those effects of natural phenomena which it is

not in the power of revolutions or constitutions to alter or destroy.

A few moments snatched from the contemplation of political crimes, bloodshed, and treachery, are a few moments gained to all lovers of innocent illusion. Nor need the statesman or the scholar despise the occasional relaxation of light reading. When Jupiter and the great deities are represented by Homer as retiring from scenes of havoc and carnage to visit the blameless and quiet Ethiopians, who were the farthest removed of all nations, the Lord knows whither, at the very extremities of the ocean, would they have given ear to manifestoes or protocols? No, they would much rather have listened to the Tales of Mother Goose.

London, June 12th, 1834.

OL

CONTENTS.

THE LOW COUNTRIES AND GERMANY.

LETTER I.

PAGE.

Passage to Ostend. The Capuchin church.--Ghent.-Quiet and Con-

tent, the presiding deities of Flanders.-Antwerp.-The Place de Meir.

-Silence and solitude of the town, contrasted with the tumult and

uproar of London,

LETTER II.

Visit to the cabinets of pictures in Antwerp.-Monsieur Van Lencren's

collection. The Canon Knyff's house and gallery of paintings.-The

Canon himself. His domestic felicity.-Revisit the cathedral.-Grand

service in honour of St. John the Baptist.-Mynheer Van den Bosch,

the organist's, astonishing flashes of execution.—Evening service in the

cathedral. Magical effect of the music of Jomelli.-Blighted avenues.

-Slow travelling.-Enter the United Provinces.-Level scenery.-

Chinese prospects.-Reach Meerdyke.-Arrival at the Hague,

LETTER III.

The Prince of Orange's cabinet of paintings.-Temptation of St. Antho-

ny, by Breughel.-Exquisite pictures by Berghem and Wouvermans.

Mean garrets stored with inestimable productions of the Indies.-Enam-

elled flasks of oriental essences.- -Vision of the wardrobe of Hecuba.—

Disenchantment.-Cabinet of natural history.-A day dream.-A deli-

cious morsel. Dinner at Sir Joseph Yorke's.--Two honourable boobies.

-The Great Wood.-Parterres of the Greffier Fagel.-Air poisoned

by the sluggish canais.-Fishy locality of Dutch banqueting rooms.—

Derivation of the inhabitants of Holland.-Origin and use of enormous

galligaskins.—Escape from damp alleys and lazy waters,

LETTER IV.

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Leave the Hague.-Leyden.-Wood near Haerlem.-Waddling fisher-

men. Enter the town.-The great fair.-Riot and uproar.-Confusion

of tongues.-Mine hostess,

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LETTER V.

Amsterdam. The road to Utrecht.-Country houses and gardens.—Neat

inclosures.-Comfortable parties.-Ladies and Lapdogs.-Arrival at

Utrecht.-Moravian establishment.-The Woods.-Shops.-Celestial

love.-Musical Sempstresses.-Return to Utrecht,

PAGE.

LETTER VI.

Arrival at Aix-la-Chapelle.-Glimpse of a dingy grove.-Melancholy

saunterers.-Dusseldorf Gallery.-Nocturnal depredators.-Arrival at

Cologne. Shrine of the Three Wise Sovereigns.-Peregrinations of

their beatified bones.-Road to Bonn.-Delights of Catholicism.-Azure

mountains.-Visionary Palaces,

LETTER VII.

Borders of the Rhine.-Richly picturesque road from Bonn to Andernach.

-Scheme for a floating village.-Coblentz.-A winding valley.-The

river Lahn.-Ems.-The planet.-A supposed Apparition.-A little

sequestered Paradise,

LETTER VIII.

Inveterate Idlers.-The planet Orloff and his satellites.-A Storm.-Scared

women. A dreary Forest.-Village of Wiesbaden.-Manheim.-Ulm.

-The Danube: unlimited plains on its margin.-Augsburg.-Sketch

of the Town.-Pomposities of the Town-House,

LETTER IX.

Extensive woods of fir in Bavaria.-Grand Fair at Munich.-The Elec-

tor's country palace.-Court Ladies.-Fountains.-Costume.-Garden

and tea-room.--Hoydening festivities there.-The Palace and Chapel.

-Gorgeous riches of the latter.-St. Peter's thumb.-The Elector's

collection of pictures.-The Churches.-Hubbub and confusion of the

Fair. Wild tract of country.-Village of Wolfrathshausen.-Perpetual

forests. A tempest.-A night at a cottage, .

LETTER X.

Mittenwald.-Mountain chapels.-Saint Anna's young and fair worship-

pers.-Road to Inspruck.-Maximilian's tomb.-Vast range of pros-

pects. A mountain torrent.-Schönberg,

LETTER XI.

Steinach-its torrent and gloomy strait.-Achievements of Industry.—A

sleepy Region.-Beautiful country round Brixen,

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