I think Utrecht one of the most beautiful cities in Holland, next to the Hague, which it is said to exceed in size. The streets are wide, and the buildings handsome, amongst which the hand of the Spanish architect is frequently to be traced. The canals are about twenty feet below the street; and the access to them for the servants of the adjoining houses is by a subterranean passage. These canals are very much neglected, and were covered in all directions with cabbage-stalks, leaves, and other vegetable substances, left to putrefy upon the surface. There I first beheld a branch of the Rhine unmingled with other waters. This mighty river has partaken of the mutability to which every thing sublunary is subjected. Near the village of Cooten, about twelve miles from Utrecht, the traveller may contemplate corn waiving and cattle depasturing where once it rolled its broad majestic waters, now diminished to a little streamlet: its division into the two great copious and navigable streams takes place a little above Nimeguen: the right branch retains the name of the Rhine; the left is called the Waal, a word expressive of a defensive boundary, which separated the ancient Batavians from their hostile neighbours on the southern border: the former, during its superabundance, produced a small branch called the Lack, which ran near the little city of Wyk, by Deurstede, directed its course towards Utrecht, upon which it bestowed the name of _Ultra trajectum_, passed through Woerden Leyden, and disembogued itself into the German Ocean at Catwyk: the latter branch in rolling its waters toward the sea, incorporated with the Maas, and their united streams were called the New Maas, under which name they flow by Dort, Rotterdam, and other cities, into the sea. Had rivers tongues, as poets feign they have, this much-injured branch of the Rhine might have exclaimed with Wolsey, I now am left ——to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Upon the subsiding of a great inundation, the frequent terror of the Low countries, it was found that the Rhine had changed its channels, and flowed into that of the Lack, to which it had given birth, in consequence of its channel having been amazingly deepened by the watery irruption. This branch, in consequence of the power of its waters not being able to bear down the obstructions opposed to it, is not able to force its way to the sea, and is stopped in its course near the village of Catwyk by mountains of accumulated sand, and being compelled to regurgitate, is distributed over, and lost in the neighbouring canals.