In Earle's _Microcosmography_, for example, a younger brother's last refuge is said to be the Low Countries, "where rags and linen are no scandal".

But better testimony comes perhaps from _The English Schole-Master_, a seventeenth-century Dutch-English manual, from which I quote at some length later in this book.

Here is a specimen scrap of dialogue:-- S.May it please you to give me leave to go out?
M.Whither?
S.Home.
M.How is it that you goe so often home?
S.My mother commanded that I and my brother should come to her this day.
M.For what cause?
S.That our mayd may beat out our clothes.
M.What is that to say?
Are you louzie?
S.Yea, very louzie.
Sir William Temple, the patron of Swift, the husband of Dorothy Osborne, and our ambassador at The Hague--where he talked horticulture, cured his gout by the remedy known as Moxa, and collected materials for the leisurely essays and memoirs that were to be written at Moor Park--knew the Dutch well and wrote of them with much particularity.

In his _Observations upon the United Provinces_ he says this: "Holland is a country, where the earth is better than the air, and profit more in request than honour; where there is more sense than wit; more good nature than good humour, and more wealth than pleasure: where a man would chuse rather to travel than to live; shall find more things to observe than desire; and more persons to esteem than to love.

But the same qualities and dispositions do not value a private man and a state, nor make a conversation agreeable, and a government great: nor is it unlikely, that some very great King might make but a very ordinary private gentleman, and some very extraordinary gentleman might be capable of making but a very mean Prince." Among other travellers who have summed up the Dutch in a few phrases is Sir Thomas Overbury, the author of some witty characters, including that very charming one of a Happy Milk Maid.