can produce; I only regret from my experience of last night that
they should be so much occupied in washing as to forget that drying is
also a luxury, but there is no such novelty in this country, and so much
to be seen that I have no time to catch cold. Our Diligence from
Bruxelles held 10 people inside and 3 in front, and we had all ample
elbow room; it was large, as you may suppose, as everything else in
Holland is from top to bottom. Hats, Coats, breeches, pipes, horns,
cows--are all gigantic, and so are the dogs, and because the poor things
happen to be so, they harness a parcel of them together and breed them
up to draw fish-carts. I yesterday met a man driving four-in-hand; in
turning a corner and meeting three of these open-mouthed Mastiffs
panting and pulling, you might almost fancy it was Cerberus drawing the
Chariot of Proserpine--but I am wandering from the Diligence, which
deserves some description. It resembled a little Theatre more than a
coach, with front boxes, pit, &c., lined with common velvet. We had a
curious collection of passengers. Opposite to me sat a prize
thoroughbred Dutch woman as clean and tidy as she was ugly and
phlegmatic, with a close-plaited cap, unruffled white shawl, and golden
cross suspended from her neck. I took a sketch while she stared me in
the face unconscious of the honor conferred. By her side sat a French
woman crowned with the lofty towers of an Oldenburg Bonnet. By my side a
spruce, pretty, Englishwoman, whom I somehow or other suspected had
been serving with his Britannic Majesty's troops now occupying Belgium.
She had on her right hand a huge Brabanter who spoke English, and had
acquired, I have no doubt, a few additional pounds of fat by living in
London. Edward sat behind me in a line with the Brabanter's wife and a
Dutch peasant. These, with two or three minor characters, completed our
cargo, and away we went on the finest road in the world towards Antwerp
between a triple row of Abeles and poplars, and skirting the bank of a
fine canal upon which floated a fleet of Kuyp's barks, and by which
grazed Paul Potter's oxen--the whole road was, in truth, a gallery of
the Flemish school. By the door of every ale-house a living group from
Teniers and Ostade, with here and there bits from Berghem and Hobbema,
&c. Halfway between Bruxelles and Antwerp is Malines. I had began to
fear that I had lost my powers of observation, and was, therefore, no
longer struck with the external