troops, victorious and uninjured; how many, fecretly, or, to fay the truth, openly, defired and hoped, they might be vanquished and cut to pieces! How ftrange does this feem, how unnatural does it found!

Is it not as if this mouth

Should tear this hand for lifting food to it."

With respect to the Hollanders, the liberty to fay and do what they like, in defiance of all inhibited things, and, as ufual, with the more eager audacity, because forbidden, is theirs; and as to their being taxed, do they confider that they live in a country made by industry, in despite of nature, who intended it only to be one of her enormous bogs, while the ancestors of this grumbling but hard-working hive, fet" doggedly to it," as Dr. Johnson fays, to make it into productive land, and a more productive water? a pile of ftupendous art, from one end to the other, and not to be kept in repair without extraordinary taxation? Do they grudge this? Would they let the edifice run to ruins, and be buried amongst

*Not one of the motives that urged the French people, had the Dutch

"To fpur the fides of their intent,
"Save vaulting ambition,"

which, in all probability, will in their cafe, at least be found to

have

"O'erleap'd itfelf."

them?

them? Would they heap up their money-bags to fink them with themselves more profoundly in the returning bog? Will the French, or their native patriots, mend either their country or their commerce? Let them try ! Ingenious, laborious, abfurd, wife, foolish, preposterous people!

Here then let us bid a long, and probably a laft, adien, to the United Provinces, on which we have bestowed more liberal obfervation than they have been wont to receive, but not more than they have deferved, as the most curious and aftonishing efforts of a patient, powerful, and vigilant people: A like farewell to Guelderland, for whofe profperity I fhall have a warm wish, were it only for the fake of the opportunity it gives of lofing one's way, and finding the Man of the Foreft. Bleffed be every leaf of every tree which comes under the axe of that man! And bleffed be you, my friend! aye, and ye, my readers!-Weftphalia invites; but I cannot quit one country, and take you into another, without separating them and their inhabitants by a pause in our correfpondence.

LET.

LETTER LIX.

TO THE SAME.

1

I HAVE in a former letter noted the wonderful progreffive relief from low to high land, and from wet to dry, from ftagnant canals to running streams, as you proceed in your journey from the United Provinces to the Upper Countries. This is lefs fenfibly felt after a few days or weeks ramble in Guelderland; but could the traveller be fuddenly tranfported from the Province of what is properly called Holland, to thofe blooming edges of Weftphalia, to which I am now conducting you, he would imagine, that one was the purgatory of finful, and the other the paradife of happy fouls: The fabled waters of the Styx and of Elyfium, are not more strongly contrafted. The very air, as well as the water, takes a purer breath. Not that, in point of vegetable or rural grandeur, Weftphalian Pruffia is to be compared to feveral parts of Dutch Guelderland; but in point of unambitious and ever-fmiling fcenery, I have never seen any thing fuperior. The houses and the land, and, indeed, the inhabitants of Holland, refemble nothing

but

but themselves. The charming Duchy of Cleves, and all that it inherits," refembles the most beautiful unaffuming parts of England. You have fcarcely reached the firft Pruffian town, which is mid-way betwixt Nimeguen and Cleves, the name of which is Cuylenberg, ere your native country preffes on your heart: you feem to be carried, by fome magician, into the midst of its alluring feenery its whited cottages, com. fortable farms, and cultured grounds, are all within your view. You are ftruck almoft at every step with the fimilitude. It is the agree

able and beautiful, but not the fublime of nature. There is nothing of hill or vale, water or wood, to astonish the traveller; but there are numbers of objects always fresh and always charming, and a profpect of great abundance. I am speaking here of the Duchy of Cleves in a circumference of its beft poffeffions, a coup d'œil of more than fifty miles; for, on a clear day, your eye can travel to this extent, if it takes fight from any of the delightful little eminences near the town of Cleves particularly from a mount in the wood which gives you the command of half a dozen noble avenues, each a mile in length, at the end of which your view is bounded by the prettiest towns in the circle of Weftphalia, and province of Guelderland. The eye refts fatiffied and refreshed; it wishes not to penetrate

beyond

beyond these beautiful limits. The Cleves wood is, in itself, full of charms, artificial and natural; but by the former I only mean the ftately, and fomewhat formal, rows of trees which fhade and canopy the almoft numberless paths that are cut through it. Yet, admitting this to be an objection to the lover of nature in all her graceful wildness, there are to be found in this wood an infinity of bye-walks, where nature is permitted to enjoy her utmost romance, and to sport her "virgin fancies," and which, perhaps, derive additional charms from the contraft with the more difciplined vegetation. This fine wood is fenced round with the old English-looking parkpaling, thatched, as it were, with grey mofs, as with us, and, as with us, the chaffinch, greenfinch, goldfinch, and "all the other finches of the grove," as the critic fays, are feen pecking at it on a fine fpring morning to build the outworks of their nefts. I have haunted this wood at all times and feafons, and truft, therefore, you will be pleased with both a fummer and winter account of it. There appears to be fomething remarkable in the foliage of Weftphalia, to be obferved in the most dreary months. With us, even in our most extended forefts, the trees and bushes are almoft ftripped of their withered foliage. In Great-Britain and in Holland, autumn fcarcely leaves a trace behind her when the furly

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