UTRECHT, July 2nd.

Well, thank Heaven, Amsterdam is behind us! How I got thither
signifies not one farthing; it was all along a canal, as usual. The
weather was hot enough to broil an inhabitant of Bengal; and the
odours, exhaling from every quarter, sufficiently powerful to regale
the nose of a Hottentot.

Under these agreeable circumstances we entered the great city. The
Stadt-huys being the only cool place it contained, I repaired thither
as fast as the heat permitted, and walked in a lofty marble hall,
magnificently covered, till the dinner was ready at the inn. That
despatched, we set off for Utrecht. Both sides of the way are lined
with the country-houses and gardens of opulent citizens, as fine as
gilt statues and clipped hedges can make them. Their number is quite
astonishing: from Amsterdam to Utrecht, full thirty miles, we beheld
no other objects than endless avenues and stiff parterres scrawled
and flourished in patterns like the embroidery of an old maid's work-
bag. Notwithstanding this formal taste, I could not help admiring
the neatness and arrangement of every inclosure, enlivened by a
profusion of flowers, and decked with arbours, beneath which a vast
number of round unmeaning faces were solacing themselves after the
heat of the day. Each lusthuys we passed contained some comfortable
party dozing over their pipes, or angling in the muddy fish-ponds
below. Scarce an avenue but swarmed with female josses; little squat
pug-dogs waddling at their sides, the attributes, I suppose, of these
fair divinities.

But let us leave them to loiter thus amiably in their Elysian groves,