Their ancient marriages-funerals — fuperftitions A vifit to feveral Frontier and other German and fions of Profperity and Adverfity-Obfervations on the impolicy of the new French Syftem, fo far as it refpects national or domeftic happiness-The beauty of order-The deformity of anarchy-Cha- LETTER II. Review of the Dutch troops, by the Stadtholder-The elements no respecter of perfons-A field day in the rain-Reflections on the advantages of Little over Great People. LETTER 111. A letter on different fubjects, refpecting the DutchTheir modern Marriages and Deaths-The writer "gleans a trio of travellers, a pair of which are authors; the one denominated in this our sheaf, Mr. Blank-being literally what that word expreffes Mr. Prize, for a like reafon, and Mr. Blank-and-Prize, because he is a compound of the two others-A tribute of justice to the Pencil and Character of De Loutherbourg. 1 GLEANINGS, 33 GLEANINGS, &c. LETTER I. TO THE HONOURABLE MRS, B. South Wales. WHEN. I mentioned to a learned and elegant friend my defign to pass fome years on the Continent, he cordially took my hand, and thus addreffed me: "You are going to travel: travelling, like "love, makes authors; authors make books: "men, women, and children, publish at home, " what they have seen or heard abroad ;-Ergo, "were not you already an author, it would be "expected of you to write a book." To travel then, and to publish; are become things of course, faid I?" As much fo, re joined my friend, as cause and effect." It would be difficult, however, I presumé, to prove that though they may be equally in order, they are equal in value; for, to multiply copies of copies of copies, is, furely, adding to the bulk of an an evil that "has increased, is still increasing, "and ought to be diminished:" I admit your obfervation, proceeded I, that every body publishes travels, but am in doubt about the use of the inference; for, if people who leave their own country predetermined to make a book out of what they meet with, what they fee, or seem to fee, in others, it either is an argument against the farther overftock of the literary market, or a proof pofitive that the innumerable travelling bookmakers, who have "beat the beaten road" these thousand years, have told us nothing we did not know better before; and, hereupon, a pretty curious queftion arifes: How far thofe who have undertaken to conduct our perfons and purfes through countries, remote or near, have proved themselves true or falfe guides? how far readers who have taken abroad with them such publications as the Vade Mecums of their refpective tours, have found themselves more or less perplexed and mifled, than if they had been left to their own ignorance, and to the experience which, however dearly, perhaps more truly, corrects it?, "You think then, refumed my friend, that an answer to these interrogations would de"termine the propriety of giving, or refusing "to give, another book of travels to thofe al "ready ready published: You imagine that a new "edition every ten years of the first and only tr original work, marking the fresh modes by way of addenda, would preclude, and render useless, all the labours of imitative tra"vellers?" I told him, this would be, perhaps, going too far, but that were the replies to be made by those admirable critics the eye and the pocket, we should "fee feelingly" that our knowledge by no means increases in proportion to the number of our books on the fame subject. "It "must be acknowledged, interpos'd he, that "the regions, not of fact, only, but, of fairy "land, have been over-run with travellers: Every "thing, therefore, of either use, or ornament, might be fuppofed, at this time of day, to "Live in defcription and look green in fong." "but, the truth is, that much is always left to "be found by him who is diligent to seek, and that, of the innumerable travellers who "have gone the fame roads there are few who "have not added fomething to our ftock of in"formation, or amusement: and, moreover, "that every person of talents is, in reality, origi"nal, either in the matter or manner of exerting "them; no two people, even of equal abilities, B 2 (employing |