"Holland, at first view, appears to have some pretensions to polite learning.

It may be regarded as the great emporium, not less of literature than of every other commodity.

Here, though destitute of what may be properly called a language of their own, all the languages are understood, cultivated and spoken.

All useful inventions in arts, and new discoveries in science, are published here almost as soon as at the places which first produced them.

Its individuals have the same faults, however, with the Germans, of making more use of their memory than their judgment.