A tour through Holland

Chapter 3: TO THE READER.

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A travel narrative recounts a tour through Holland and along the Rhine, combining vivid city sketches, canal and coastal descriptions, and practical travel notes. The author records Rotterdam, Delft, and other towns, local markets, mills, churches, museums, and carillons, and offers anecdotes about painters, civic figures, and cultural customs. Observations touch on commerce, education, policing, religious life, and the visible effects of recent conflict, mixed with moral reflections and occasional humour. The sequence alternates descriptive reportage, historical and artistic digressions, and personal experience to guide and entertain prospective visitors.

TO THE READER.

I am indebted for some interesting anecdotes of the most eminent Painters of the Dutch and Flemish School to the authors of the Abrégé de la Vie des Peintres, to Pilkington’s Dictionary of Painters, and to the elegant and witty D’Israeli.

I had no companion with me during the greater part of the Tour described in the following pages, which was taken amidst many untoward and embarrassing circumstances, the melancholy effects of war, and which, for that reason, will, I hope, be favoured with the indulgent candour of my friends and of the Public.