The navigation is interrupted from the Rotterdam entrance to that of the Hague, so that the water within it presents no animating object. In this town turf is principally burnt. Although the taciturnity of the place would induce a stranger to think its population small, it reckons 13,000 inhabitants, 6000 of whom, since the war, have been reduced to the class of paupers. I met with two or three inhabitants who spoke good English, and expressed in terms of feeling misery, the heavy losses and distresses which they had sustained by a rupture with England; yet, strange as it may appear, they seemed to think well of their new government, and spoke with great esteem of their king, of whom they said they well knew, he felt the impolicy of a war with England as much as any Dutchman, and that he would rejoice at the hour, when the great political events which were passing in other parts of the world, would admit of a renewal of amity and free intercourse with that country; they spoke of the government of the Stadtholder with contempt, and of the Republic with detestation. I visited the new church, the tower of which is very fine, and of a prodigious altitude. The first object that excited my curiosity, was the tomb of the immortal Grotius, whose remains were brought here, after he expired at Rostock, in 1645, upon his return from the court of Christina, Queen of Sweden, to this, his native city. The tomb erected to his memory is simple, but handsome; it consists of a medallion representing the head of this great man, and a child leaning upon an urn with a torch inverted. The epitaph in latin is elegant, and expressive of the merits and virtues it perpetuates. I regret, upon opening my memorandums, to find my pencil copy of it so effaced as to be unintelligible: of this great civilian and general scholar, Aubere du Marier, who knew him very intimately said, “that he was tall, strong, and a well made man, and had a very agreeable countenance. With all those excellences of body, his mind was still more excellent. He was a man of openness, of veracity, and of honour, and so perfectly virtuous, that throughout his whole life, he made a point of avoiding and of deserting men of bad character, but of seeking the acquaintance of men of worth, and persons distinguished by talents, not only of his own country, but of all Europe, with whom he kept up an epistolary correspondence.”