are also very fond of dancing, particularly of waltzing, and they are much attached to English country dances, in which the most graceful Parisian belle seldom appears to any advantage.

The interior of the houses belonging to the higher classes in Amsterdam is very elegant; the decoration and furniture of their rooms is very much in the French style : they are also very fond of having a series of landscapes, painted in oil colours, upon the sides of the rooms, instead ́of stucco or paper, or of ornamenting them with pictures and engravings. The average rent of respectable houses, independent of taxes, is from one thousand to twelve hundred florins. The dinner hour, on account of the exchange, is about four o'clock in this city, and their modes of cooking unite those of England and France: immediately after dinner the whole company adjourn to coffee in the drawing-room.

The water in this part of Holland is so brackish and feculent, that it is not drank even by the common people. There are water-merchants, who are constantly occupied in supplying the city with drinkable water, which they bring in boats from Utrecht and Germany, in large stone bottles the price of one of these bottles, containing a

WATER OF AMSTERDAM.

275

gallon, is about eightpence English. The poor, who cannot afford to buy it, substitute rain-water. The wines drank are principally claret and from the Rhine. The vintage of Portugal has no more admirers here than at Rotterdam, except amongst young Dutchmen, who have either been much in England, or are fond of the taste and fashions of our country.

N N 2

CHAPTER XVI.

POLICE-FIRES-LAWS RELATING TO DEBTORS--DITTO TO BANKRUPTS THE AANSPREEKERS-SINGULAR. CUSTOM-THE TROKENKORB THE STREETS-INSALUBRITY OF STAGNANT CANALS-SOCIETIES FOR RECOVERING drowned pERSONS-NOBLE CONDUCT OF THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER-POLISH GRATITUDE-AUSTRIA--THE EXCHANGE-A DUTCH MERCHANT-HERRING FISHERY.

THE laws in Holland against nocturnal disturbers of the peace are very severe. A few months before I was in Amsterdam, two young gentlemen of family and fortune had been condemned to pay ten thousand florinsfor having, when "flushed with the Tuscan grape," rather rudely treated two women of the lower orders. The night police of Holland would form an excellent model for that of England. The watchmen are young, strong, resolute and well appointed, but annoying to strangers, for they strike the quarter with a mallet on a board, and will haunt his repose all night, unless he is fortunate enough to sleep backwards, or until he becomes accustomed to the clatter. Midnight robberies and fires very seldom occur to guard against the spreading of the latter, there are persons appointed, whose office it is to remain all

FIRES.

277 day and all night in the towers or steeples of the highest churches, and as soon as they discern the flame, to suspend, if it be in the day, a flag; if in the night, a lanthorn towards the quarter of the city in which it rises, accompanied by the blowing of a trumpet. This vigilance, and the facility of procuring water in summer, the natural caution of the people, and their dread of such an accident, conspire to render it a very rare visitor. An average calculation of fires which occur in London, where a regular account of all such accidents are registered, by each fire insurance company having an establishment of firemen and engines, may be collected from the register of one year, commencing from Michaelmas 1805, viz. three hundred and six alarms of fire attended with little damage, thirty-one serious fires, and one hundred and fiftyfive alarms, occasioned by chimneys being on fire, amounting in all to four hundred and ninety-two accidents. The English fire insurance companies calculate on an alarm of fire every day, and about eight serious fires in every quarter of a year. This is a frightful estimate, and when it is considered, that scarcely a fire of any material extent has been known in the memory of man to have broken out in either of the universities, or in any of the inns of court, where it would be most likely they would occur, on account of the frequent carelessness of the inhabitants, little doubt can remain on the minds of any one, that infinitely

278

LAWS RELATING TO DEBTORS.

the greater number of fires which happen are the fatal consequences of diabolic design.

Although, owing to the great frugality and industry of the people, an insolvent debtor is rather a rare character, consequently held in more odium in Holland than in most other countries, yet the laws of arrest are milder there than in England. If the debtor be a citizen or registered burgher, he is not subject to have his person seized at the suit of the creditor, until three regular summonses have been duly served upon him, to appear in the proper court, and resist the claim preferred against him, which process is completed in about a month; after which, if he does not obey it, his person is subject to arrest, but only when he has quitted his house; for in Holland a man's dwelling is held even more sacred than in England, and no civil process whatever is capable of being served upon him, if he stands but on the threshold of his home. In this sanctuary he may set at defiance every claimant; if, however, he has the hardihood to appear abroad, without having satisfied or compromised his debt, he is then pretty sure, from the vigilance and activity of the proper officers, to be seized; in which case he is sent to a house of restriction, not a prison for felons, where he is maintained with liberal humanity, the expences of which, as well as of all the proceedings, must be defrayed by the creditor. Under