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RIESBECK S TRAVELS THROUGH GERMANY. 281
with tea. They are fo intent upon their bufinefs, and fo entirely taken up with their
- fpeculations, that you may pufh their guts out almoft without difturbing them. On
Saturdays they go to their expenfive gardens, where they {pend the whole of the Sun-
‘day, and enjoy themfelves juft as they do in their counting-houfes. 1 had occafion to
vifit one of them in his garden; he was taken up all the afternoon, in gathering fallad
for his fupper. Another fhut himfelf up, and fpent the whole Sunday in killing flies in
his fummer-houfe. Thefe, and fmoking tobacco, are their common amufements in
their hours of recreation. When they are in company, they fit as if they were pinned
to their chairs, gape at each other, and every quarter of an hour converfe on the news of
the day, which, of all the news publifhed in Lurope, is the moft piteous. ‘This is the
quinteffence of political nonfenfe ; and their ecclefiafticks, who, to the fhame of the refor-
mation, are greater monks than the German capuchins, will give you the quinteflence
of the /piritual. Were it not for the ftrangers, efpecially the officers, ani fome of the
nobility who have been polifhed by their voyages, there would not bea tolerable fociety
to be met with throughout all Holland.
Their government, and police, is as extraordinary as the country and every thing
bears a tint of the inconverfible melancholy and niggardly humour of the natives.
It is received as a common opinion here, that no difh of fith, which you know is the
mott ordinary produce of the country, is brought to table, which has not been paid for
once to the feller, and fix times to the ftate. The fpirit of the inhabitants, which re-
volts at every idea of facrifice to the public good, compels the magiftrate to lay thefe
heavy impofts upon the firft neceffaries of life. It is thefe heavy charges, as well as the
aftonifhing tranquillity of the inhabitants, which are the caufes of the miferable living of
this country. _[ will only give you one f{pecimen of their police, which is extraordinary
enoigh. A ftranger, who knows nothing of laws, and the cuftoms of the country,
happens to fend his fervant to a wine-merchant to buy a bottle of wine; the merchant
gives it the man, without telling him a word of his danger; the fervant carries the bot-
tle home in his open hand; he is met by a conftable, and afked where he bought it,
which the other tells without difficulty ; but no fooner has he done fo, than he is ar-
re{ted, and, in due procefs of time, tried, and banifhed the country. Thus the poor
fervant alone fuffers, and neither the mafter who fent him, ner the merchant who fold
the wine in retail, which, according to law, ought only to have been done by thofe whe
keep taverns, are at all punifhed.
LET EER, LEX.
Am/fterdam.
THIS, dear brother, according to the generally received opinion, frogs-ftolen coun-
try is originally nothing more than fand, brought down by the Rhine from Switzerland,
and the upper parts of Germany; and fea mud, which the north and weft winds have
caufed the waves to bring up. There is in no part of it any folid earth; and as early
as on the borders of the duchy of Cleves, you find the moft evident marks of this coun-
try’s haying been formed like the Egyptian Delta, with this difference only, that the
Nile yields a moft fruitful foil; whereas the Rhine carries nothing with it but a hard
fand.. Parts of Brabant and Flanders have been formed in like manner by the Scheld,
the Maefe, and fome other rivers: there are notorious proofs of this. At a great dif-
tance from the coaft, in Flanders, you find under the good earth, dry fand, and under
this again, large layers of good earth, as if the rivers and {ea had by turns depofited
their fands and their mud. The whole coaft of Germany is of the fame kind, as far as
VOL VI. rome) the
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