Yet, times there were when he thought with the author of 'Vathek,' that there must have been a period when Holland was all water, 'and the ancestors of the present inhabitants fish. A certain _oysterishness_ of eye and flabbiness of complexion are almost proof-sufficient of this aquatic descent; and pray tell me for what purpose are such galligaskins as the Dutch burthen themselves with contrived, but to tuck up a flouncing tail, and thus cloak the deformity of a dolphin-like termination.' Reflecting angrily and sadly upon the recent conversation with his favourite, the General continued to smoke and gaze down the long vista of the quaint Dutch street, with its stiff rows of trees reflected downward in the canal that lay parallel with them, and its quaint gables on each of which, nearly, a stork was perched; the little mirrors projecting from the windows to enable the ladies within to see those who passed outside; the knockers tied up with pincushions and plaited lace to indicate that a 'goodwife was in the straw.' There were women in the mobcaps, print-gowns, and gaudy satin aprons wore by all ranks alike; men in broad, round, conical hats, puckered jackets, and capacious breeches, now no longer to be seen but in very remote districts; an occasional dominie or clergyman in his court-like costume, ruff and cocked hat, passing homeward after having a pipe with some parishioner, or a dish of coffee with his vrouw. There was the clatter of wooden shoes in the ill-paved street; the oil-lamps were beginning to glimmer like glow-worms, and were reflected in the slime of the canals; the drums and fifes of the Scots Brigade, in the adjacent caserne, were playing out the dying day, and sweetly stole upon the ambient evening the old air: 'Oh, the Lowlands o' Holland Hae parted my love and me;' but the General was in shadow-land, thinking of other times and long-vanished faces, and wondering when the guilders of their High Mightinesses, and the prize-money won from the French and Spaniards, would free his inheritance from all its wadsets and incumbrances, and he would be able to hang his sword, where still his father's hung, in the old dining-hall of Thominean.