for which in any French restaurant one expects to pay a few pence;
and when the bill arrived this simple fluid cut such a dashing figure
in it that at first I could not recognise it at all. When I put the
matter to the landlord, he explained that the duty made it impossible
for him to charge less than f. 1.50 (or half a crown) a bottle;
but I am told that his excuse was too fanciful. None the less, half
a crown was the charge, and apparently no one objects to pay it. The
Dutch, on pleasure or eating bent, are prepared to pay anything. One
would expect to get a reasonable claret for such a figure; but not
in Holland. Wine is good there, but it is not cheap. Only in one
hotel--and that in the unspoiled north, at Groningen--did I see wine
placed automatically upon the table, as in France.

Rotterdam must have changed for the worse under modern conditions;
for it is no longer as it was in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's day. From
Rotterdam in 1716 she sent the Countess of Mar a pretty account of
the city: "All the streets are paved with broad stones, and before
the meanest artificers' doors seats of various coloured marbles,
and so neatly kept that, I will assure you, I walked all over the
town yesterday, _incognita_, in my slippers, without receiving one
spot of dirt; and you may see the Dutch maids washing the pavement of
the street with more application than ours do our bed-chambers. The
town seems so full of people, with such busy faces, all in motion,
that I can hardly fancy that it is not some celebrated fair; but I
see it is every day the same.

"The shops and warehouses are of a surprising neatness and
magnificence, filled with an incredible quantity of fine merchandise,
and so much cheaper than what we see in England, I have much ado
to persuade myself I am still so near it. Here is neither dirt nor