In my way from the plantation to the elegant country residence of a Dutch merchant of high respectability, I passed, a few miles from Amsterdam, two burial places of the Jews, who wisely bury their dead in the country; the other inhabitants follow the baneful practice of burying in the churches and church-yards in the city, where the catholics deposit their dead very frequently in protestant churches. In Holland the honours of funeral pomp are scarcely ever displayed: the spirit of economy, which seems to be the tutelar saint of these moist regions, seldom incurs a further expense than a plain coffin, which costs little, and some genuine tears or sighs, which cost nothing. To describe the numerous churches, chapels, and conventicles of the religions of all persuasions, who since the revolution live in cordial amity with each other, and with the government, under which they enjoy the rights of equal citizenship, would be a laborious and not a very interesting labour. The quakers here, and in every other town in Holland, are very few: the Jews and the anabaptists are very numerous, and there are many Roman Catholics. Before the revolution the clergy of the established church were paid by the government; they, as well as every other priest or pastor, are now supported at fixed salaries, raised rateably amongst the inhabitants of the parishes in which they officiate, each sect supporting its own minister. In every parish registers of births, marriages, and deaths are regularly kept. The church-yards are not disgraced, like ours, with low facetious epitaphs, more calculated to make the living merry, than to lead them to serious meditation. Each parish maintains its own poor, under the control of a council. They have also, as with us, outdoor poor. The sabbath is kept in Holland with the same solemnity as in England. The great number of noble charitable institutions in Amsterdam, in which the sick and the friendless of all persuasions are received and cherished, without any recommendation but that of affliction, cannot fail to impress a stranger with admiration, though to enumerate them here would not be very entertaining to the reader.