CHAPTER II.

THE BOOMPIES- -BAYLE-PREROGATIVES OF GENIUS-SPANISH INSCRIPTIONS-A DUTCH DINNER-DUTCH BEGGARS-A GOOD BARGAIN ANECDOTES OF SOME MEMBERS OF THE BATAVIAN EXECUTIVE BODY---ANECDOTES OF THE PASSION OF THE DUTCH FOR TRAFFIC ANECDOTE OF LORD NELSON AND THE DEY OF TUNIS---HEREDITARY DRESSES---THE EXCHANGE OF ROTTERDAM---ANECDOTES of THE ENGLISH THERE---SEVERAL ANECDOTES OF THE KING AND QUEEN OF HOLLAND---PUBLIC OPINION OF THEM---DUTY OF A TOURIST.

ONE of the first places we visited was the Boomquay, or Boompies, which extends along the river, about half a mile from the new to the old head, the two places where the water enters the city, and fills the canals, which are seven in number: this street is very broad and truly magnificent; and the prospect from it, over the river, and the opposite country, highly delightful. Cheyney-walk at Chelsea is a very humble resemblance to it.

Many of the houses are very noble, and some of them are built of free-stone, which not being the produce of the country, must have been brought to the spot at a great

expence. In England a rage for expensive building had so possessed a man whom I knew, and who resided very far from the capital, that he had many parcels filled with bricks and stones sent down to his workmen by the mail coach.

The Boom-quay forms a fine mall for the inhabitants of the city, and is chiefly the residence of the most opulent and elegant families. An English nobleman, Lord North and Gray, had many years since a superb house here, which he became entitled to in right of his wife, a rich Dutch lady.

Upon this quay once resided the celebrated Bayle, the author of the Historical and Critical Dictionary, and professor of philosophy and history at Rotterdam, from which he was removed by the influence of M. Jurieu, who in a violent controversy with him, had illiberally misrepresented his principles, and driven him to great penury.. The writings of this extraordinary man are so versatile and so adapted to every one's taste, that he secured readers amongst divines, philosophers, physicians, wits, and libertines in every part of Europe. Saurin, with that antithesis for which he was more known than for the elegance of his compositions, thus describes him :-" Bayle was one of those extraordinary men, whom it is difficult to

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BAYLE.

"reconcile with themselves, and whose opposite qualities

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give us room to doubt whether we ought to consider "him as the best, or the worst of men. On the one hand "he was a great philosopher, who knew how to distinguish "truth from falsehood, who could at one view perceive all "the consequences of a principle, and the chain or series, "in which they were linked together; on the other, he was a great sophist, who undertook to confound truth "with falsehood, and knew how to deduce false inferences "from the hpyothesis he advanced. On the one hand, he "was a man of learning and of knowledge, who had read "all that could be read, and remembered all that could "be remembered; on the other he was ignorant, or af"fected to be so, of the most common things, in respect of "which he proposed such difficulties, as had been answered "a thousand times. On the one hand he attacked the "most eminent men, opened a large field of labour for "them, led them through the most difficult ways, and if "he did not get the better of them, at least gave them

great trouble, to get the better of him; on the other, "he made use of the worst of authors, to whom he was "lavish of his praise, frequently disgracing his writings

by citing such names as no learned man ever mentioned." So speaks Saurin of this able man, whose abilities, however, have been honoured with the usual homage; they have been allowed to consecrate the place in which they