he was arrested as a Jacobite
and thrown into prison for a fortnight. The result was that the ship
sailed without him. It was just as well for him and for us, for it
sank at the mouth of the Garonne. In 1755, however, he was in Leyden,
although by what route, circuitous or direct, he reached that city
we do not know.

He lost little time in giving his Uncle Contarine an account of his
impressions of Holland and its people. Here is a portion of a long
letter: "The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from
him of former times: he in everything imitates a Frenchman, but
in his easy disengaged air, which is the result of keeping polite
company. The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps exactly
what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are
the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest
figures in nature: upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked
narrow hat laced with black ribbon; no coat, but seven waistcoats,
and nine pairs of breeches; so that his hips reach almost up to his
arm-pits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company,
or make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of his
appetite! Why she wears a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders lace:
and for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats.

"A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his
tobacco. You must know, sir, every women carries in her hand a
stove with coals in it, which, when she sits, she snugs under her
petticoats; and at this chimney dozing Strephon lights his pipe. I
take it that this continual smoking is what gives the man the ruddy
healthful complexion he generally wears, by draining his superfluous
moisture, while the woman, deprived of this amusement, overflows with
such viscidities as tint the complexion, and give that paleness of
visage which low fenny grounds and moist air conspire to cause. A Dutch
woman and Scotch will bear an opposition. The one is pale and fat, the
other lean and ruddy: the one walks as if she were straddling after
a go-cart, and the other takes too masculine a stride. I shall not
endeavour to deprive either country of its share of beauty; but must
say, that of all objects on this earth, an English farmer's daughter is
most charming. Every woman there is a complete beauty, while the higher
class of women want many of the requisites to make them even tolerable.

"Their pleasures here are very dull