Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/40

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28
TOUR THROUGH

near two hours, and should probably have had a longer detention, but a French general is a person of too great consequence in Holland to tolerate the accidents which happen with impunity to ordinary travellers, and his remonstrances had due influence with the innkeeper.

The road from Maaslandsluys to Delft is by the side of a canal, through a country well cultivated and fertile. The extinction of their commerce has perhaps turned the attention of the Dutch to agricultural pursuits: and war, by increasing the price of every article of human sustenance, encourages and rewards their diligence: but they have fallen into an error, which is at this moment too prevalent in England — of employing their land rather in feeding cattle than raising corn. Their farms, too, are larger than I could have wished to have seen them, and none of those smiling cottages appear, which beautify the English landscape. Their farm-houses are neat and substantial dwellings, and the persons who inhabit them, an honest and respectable looking race of beings, not at all deserving the appellation