en, enters a sergeant and
twelve grenadiers with their bayonets screwed, and puts us all under
the King's arrest. It seems my company were Scotchmen in the French
service, and had been in Scotland to enlist soldiers for the French
army. I endeavoured all I could to prove my innocence; however, I
remained in prison with the rest a fortnight, and with difficulty got
off even then. Dear Sir, keep this all a secret, or at least say it
was for debt; for if it were once known at the University, I should
hardly get a degree. But hear how Providence interposed in my favour;
the ship was gone on to Bordeaux before I got from prison, and was
wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and every one of the crew were
drowned. It happened the last great storm. There was a ship at that
time ready for Holland. I embarked, and in nine days, thank my God, I
arrived safe at Rotterdam; whence I travelled by land to Leyden; and
whence I now write.

You may expect some account of this country, and though I am not well
qualified for such an undertaking, yet shall I endeavour to satisfy
some part of your expectations. Nothing surprised me more than the
books every day published, descriptive of the manners of this country.
Any young man who takes it into his head to publish his travels,
visits the countries he intends to describe; passes through them with
as much inattention as his _valet de chambre_; and consequently not
having a fund himself to fill a volume, he applies to those who wrote
before him, and gives us the manners of a country, not as he must have
seen them, but such as they might have been fifty years before. 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 armpits. 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: for every pair of
breeches he carries, she puts on two