Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/283

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THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
271

for their temperance, and the extreme impropriety which they attach to the vice of drunkenness. A woman who should be guilty of this fault, did she belong to the higher walks of life, would be shunned and despised by her acquaintance; and if she moved in a lower sphere, the magistrates would think her a fit object for the correction and discipline of the Spin-house.

As a subject not unconnected with the foregoing observations respecting health and temperance, I may be permitted to animadvert on the preposterous management of children in Holland. The air of the country is considered so prejudicial to tender infants, that for the first two or three months of their existence they are not suffered to be taken abroad; and during the period of their confinement, the windows of their apartments are kept inviolably shut. Their dress chiefly consists of flannel rollers, which are girt so tightly about their bodies, that the infant has not the power to move its limbs; and these ligatures are further covered with an ample flannel wrapper, which is bound