During my stay here, I was informed of a detestable practice, frequent among many melancholy and disordered persons of this place; who being weary of life, and apprehensive of the sin of self murder, rather choose to murder some innocent child, and by that means to be brought to capital punishment, by which they attain their desire of death, with the advantage, as they imagine, of a previous time for repentance, without the guilt of their own hand. At the same time they esteem the child, whom they choose to sacrifice, to be without any guilt of conscience, as having not yet arrived to years of discretion[140]. This tragedy happens every year, as many experienced witnesses among our merchants assured me; and they attribute the frequency of the practice to the great facility of their confessors, in affording peace and fair promises to all sorts of dying penitents. Another tragedy lately acted at _Hamburg_ was of a monstrous virago, born in the dukedom of _Zell_, who by an unnatural disposition of her uterine parts was capable of acting the part of a man; and accordingly she made it her practice in rambling from place to place to marry at each a young woman, several of whom she had murdered. With her last spouse, whom she had let into all her mysterious impiety, she murdered one of her former wives; as likewise a man, whom they had cajoled for sometime into their company, and whose head they afterwards boiled for venefical uses, as they pretended. But being caught and tortured, they confessed this black history of their life, and were executed here about a year since. The campain about the neighbourhood of _Hamburg_ is green, and well distinguished with wood and shade; but at a farther distance, like other parts of _Lower Saxony_, it is a dull and unfruitful heath. The immediate circuit of the walls affords delicious walks, all kept in good repair, and adorned on each side with rows of trees, kept in a beautiful order. Sometime after we had received the account of the capture of the Spanish galleons at _Vigo_, happening to have a leisure hour, I amused myself in writing the following short poem upon that agreable subject. _Erit altera, quae vehat Argo_ _Delectos heroas._ Virg. Ecl. iv. ℣. 34.