However this may be, upon Mr. Montague’s being appointed ambassador to the Porte in 1716, our traveller, smitten with the desire of tasting the pleasures of other lands, resolved to desert all her admirers, and visit with her husband the shores of the Hellespont. They commenced their journey in August; and having crossed the channel, proceeded by Helvoetsluys and the Brill to Rotterdam, where she greatly admired the thronged streets, neat pavements, and extreme cleanliness of the place, which at present would scarcely strike a traveller arriving from London as any thing extraordinary. In travelling from Holland, the whole country appeared like a garden, while the roads were well paved, shaded on both sides with rows of trees, and bordered with canals, through which great numbers of boats were perpetually passing and repassing. The eye, moreover, was every minute alighting upon some villa; while numerous towns and villages, all remarkable for their neatness, dotted the plains, and enlivened the mind of the traveller by exciting ideas of plenty and prosperity. At Cologne, whither she had proceeded by way of the Hague and Nimeguen, she was greatly amused at the Jesuits’ church by the free raillery of a young Jesuit, who, not knowing, or pretending not to know, her rank, allowed himself considerable liberties in his conversation. Our traveller herself fell in love with St. Ursula’s pearl necklaces; and, as the saint was of silver, her profane wishes would fain have converted her into dressing-plate. These were the only relics of all that were shown her for which she had any veneration; but she very shortly afterward learned, that, at least as far as the pearls and other precious stones were concerned, the holy fathers had been very much of her opinion; for, judging that false jewels would satisfy a saint as well as true ones, they sold the real pearls, &c., and supplied their places with imitations. Our lady-traveller, though exceedingly aristocratical in her notions, and possessed of but small respect for mere untitled human beings, was compelled by her natural good sense to remark, what other observers have frequently repeated since her time, the extreme superiority of the free towns of Germany over those under the government of absolute princes. “I cannot help fancying one,” she says, “under the figure of a clean Dutch citizen’s wife, and the other like a poor town lady of pleasure, painted and ribanded out in her headdress, with tarnished silver-laced shoes, a ragged under-petticoat; a miserable mixture of vice and poverty.”