t,
"_Il en a plus_," added he, rudely.

"What is he saying, sir, if I might be so bowld?" said Mr. Moriarty to
me, imploringly.

"You measure more than is set down in your passport," said I,
endeavouring to suppress my laughter.

"Oh, murther! that dish of boiled beef and beet-root will be the ruin of
me. Tell them, sir, I was like a greyhound before supper."

As he said this, he held in his breath, and endeavoured, with all his
might, to diminish his size; while the Frenchmen, as if anxious to
strain a point in his favour, tightened the cord round him, till he
almost became black in the face.

"_C'est ca_" said one of the officers, smiling blandly as he took off
his hat; "_Monsieur peut continuer sa route_."

"All right," said I, "you may come in, Mr. Moriarty."

"'Tis civil people I always heard they wor," said he; "but it's a
sthrange country where it's against the laws to grow fatter."

I like Holland;--it is the antipodes of France. No one is ever in a
hurry here. Life moves on in a slow majestic stream, a little muddy and
stagnant, perhaps, like one of their own canals, but you see no waves,
no breakers--not an eddy, nor even a froth-bubble breaks the surface.
Even a Dutch child, as he steals along to school, smoking his short
pipe, has a mock air of thought about him. The great fat horses, that
wag along, trailing behind them some petty, insignificant truck, loaded
with a little cask, not bigger than a life-guardsman's helmet, look as
though Erasmus was performing duty as a quadruped, and walking about his
own native city in harness. It must be a glorious country to be born in.
No one is ever in a passion; and as to honesty, who has energy enough to
turn robber? The eloquence, which in other lands might wind a man from
his allegiance, would be tried in vain here. Ten minutes' talking
would set any audience asleep, from Zetland to Antwerp. Smoking,
beer-drinking, stupifying, and domino-playing, go on, in summer, before,
in winter, within, the _cafes_, and every broad flat face that you look
upon, with its watery eyes and muddy complexion, seems like a coloured
chart of the country that gave it birth.

How all the industry, that has enriched them, is ever performed--how
all the cleanliness, for which their houses are conspicuous, is ever
effected, no one can tell. Who ever saw a Dutchman labour? Every thing
in Holland seems typified by one of their own drawbridges, which rises
as a boat approaches, by in