On Thursday Dumouriez and Berchemeyer dined with us. In the morning we went to see Klopstock, the father and founder of German poetry. He is now near 90 years of age, full of vivacity and as strong in intellect as he probably ever was. His writings are known throughout Germany, but are difficult to translate, as they are in the sublime, incomprehensible style. His _Messiah_ is his greatest work. He talked to us of English literature, especially of Pope’s Homer. In the evening we went with Mrs. Parish to the Syndic Dormanne’s house in the country. It was a day of festivity, being an annual commemoration of a charitable institution. We laughed at Marsh, who endeavoured to make a compliment to the Syndic about his house, and began praising it as a town house, whereas the Syndic had been pointing out to us the _champêtre_ appearance and the _point de vue pittoresque_ which it enjoyed. But Marsh persisted in his original idea, and dwelt upon its excellence considering it was in a populous town. The truth is the house, tho’ two miles from the city, is one in a sort of row upon the Alster. They left Hamburg on July 24, to go by Hanover to Berlin, crossing the Elbe at Tollenspicker. ‘The carriage came over in the regular ferry boat, which is of a singular construction considering that the waves are sometimes high; the ends are both open. Marsh and Duncannon bought a horse between them, which keeps up with German travelling, a proof of its rapidity!’ They slept the first night at Lüneburg. The road to Zell lay through a stretch of forest land, but sparsely inhabited, ‘not more than three villages sprinkled over an extent of thirty miles.’ Lady Holland says, ‘On the whole it is the worst country I ever saw, and naturally so incapable of improvement that it would baffle the agricultural skill of our English improvers.’ From Zell to Hanover two posts: we were eight hours. Saw nothing but forests of diminutive firs, deep sands, and barren wastes. In fifty years there may perhaps be a tolerable road; at present all that appears is that probability. The _chaussée_ is marked out, trees were planted, and even in some places stones are collected in heaps, but only here and there for about a hundred yards are any laid on the road; and where there is that small portion of _pavé_, it seems merely to be a pretext for a heavy toll. Well may these Hanoverian surveyors boast, as did one of the French patriots, that they labour for posterity! Arrived at Hanover ye 27th July, 1800.