Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/211

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THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
199

and cleanliness, interior as well as external: the servants too of the hotels, particularly the females, are neat, in their persons; and there is a modest propriety in their manners, which I have seldom met with in the domestics of an English inn. I prefer them for other good qualities which they possess. Their deportment to strangers is attentive, without any mixture of servility; they are obliging without obsequiousness, and respectful without cringing. The servants of an inn, from the multiplicity of their masters, and the immediate interest which they have in gratifying the persons whom they serve, generally possess less of the dignity of manhood, than any other menials. But of this fault the Dutch waiters are not to be accused: they discharge all the offices of their situation without being degraded by it: their civility never deviates into meanness, nor does their attention to avoid servility degenerate into rudeness,

The condition of servants in general throughout the United Provinces is much superior to that of the same useful class of