self-satisfaction by the Dutchmen. It is rotting away on dry land, being very seldom used. The country round Rotterdam is famous for its pretty girls and excellent fruit, which (the latter I mean) forms a considerable article of export to England. Nowhere are such enormous grapes to be found. I saw some exposed to sale in the market, which had the appearance and the size of plums. Sauntering idly about, I saw an advertisement of a panorama of Ætna,--entered, in the train of a party of ladies,--and alas! lost my heart. The loveliest girl I ever saw, smiled upon me from the foot of the volcano, with eyes which must have borrowed their glow from its eternal fires, while her lips smiled archly with a bloom equal to that of the oleander at her side. The prettiest foot, and most exquisite symmetry of person,--all were combined to form an ideal, if not of heavenly, at least of the most seductive earthly beauty. Was this a Dutch woman? Oh no, a true Sicilian; but alas, alas! only painted. The glances she cast at me from her viny bower as I went out, were therefore those of triumphant mockery; for since Pygmalion's days are over, there is no hope for me. To-morrow, instead of the glowing sun and subterranean heat of Sicily, the cold wet sea will be around me; but I shall not say, with Voltaire, on quitting pleasant Holland, 'Adieu Canards, Canaux, Canailles.' I shall not write again till I reach London. I will tell you whether I determine to make a long stay there, which I shall decide on the spot. 'En attendant,' I send you a lithographic print of the steamboat in which I sail. A + marks, after the fashion in which the knights of old signed their names, the place where I stand, and with a little help from your imagination you will see how I wave my handkerchief, and send you a thousand affectionate greetings from afar. Your faithful L----. LETTER III. _London, Oct. 5th, 1826._ I have had a most disastrous passage. A squall, constant sea-sickness, forty hours instead of twenty,--and, to crown the whole, striking on a sandbank in the Thames, where we had to lie six hours, till the tide set us afloat again;--such were the disagreeable incidents of our voyage. It is ten years since I quitted England; and I know not whether I saw all things before with beautifying eyes, or whether my imagination had unconsciously brightened the colouring of the distant picture; but the views on the banks of the Thames appeared to me neither so fresh nor so picturesque as formerly, though superb groups of trees and cheerful pretty villas were frequently in sight. But here, as in North Germany, the lopping of the trees often spoils the landscape; only that the quantity of them in the numerous hedges which enclose the fields, and the preservation of at least the topmost branches, render the effect less melancholy here than in the otherwise so beautiful Silesia.