As Lady Wortley Montagu, in her accustomed sprightliness of style, has mentioned with some appearance of disgust, the white fishy faces of the Dutch women, I beg to observe, that at the Hague I saw several very pretty females: in general they possessed transparent delicacy of countenance, but as generally wanted expression. An English gentleman who had just returned from Italy, where he had been accustomed for several years to the warm voluptuous brunettes of that beautiful country, was uncommonly delighted with the fair faces of the Dutch ladies; but female beauty does not begin to expand itself till after the imprisonment and regimen of the nursery are past. Pretty and healthy children are rarely to be seen in Holland: in general they look pale and squalid, owing to an abominable system followed in rearing them; they are accustomed for the first two or three months to respire the atmosphere of a room, the windows of which are never opened to receive the freshness of the morning air; to wash them with refreshing cold water would be considered as certain infanticide; the miserable infant is swathed round with flannel rollers, until it becomes as motionless as a mummy; and over these ligatures there is always a vast flannel wrapper folded three or four times round the body, and fastened at the bottom of its feet: afterwards, for many months it is loaded with woollen garments, and when at length it is permitted to try for what purpose legs were originally constructed, it is cased in an additional wrapping of flannel, to prevent the dreaded consequences of freely inhaling the salubrious air. As it was summer, I can only speak from information of an equally vile and destructive custom, which obtains in the winter, of suffering the children to sit over the chauffepies or stoves, which frequently supplants the ruddy tints of health by a white parboiled appearance. I saw several of these chauffepies, from which the little pots that in cold weather contain the burning turf, had been withdrawn, used by the ladies as footstools. Whilst the men warm themselves with the smoke of tobacco from above, the ladies, to recompense themselves for not using that indulgence, take care to fumigate themselves below, by placing, in the proper season, these ignited stoves under their petticoats, and resemble the glow-worm, which carries his fire in his tail: the cats and kittens, from the genial warmth of the climate, are glad to take shelter in this warm mysterious sanctuary. The ladies and the lower classes of females are always remarkably neat about the feet; the petticoats of the latter are in general very short, display a well-proportioned leg, clean blue stockings, and a slipper without any heel-piece, or sabot.