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206 whose good-humoured features, and obliging manners, are extremely agreeable. It is happy for the mistress of an hotel, who has occasion so often to dress her face with smiles, when nature has furnished her with a pleasing countenance; a forced smile from a set of features gloomy and lowering like the approaches of a winter's storm, carries with it to me something inconceivably disgusting.

The stadthouse of Amsterdam is one of the first curiosities of the city, which a stranger is anxious to visit. It is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent buildings in the world, as well for beauty of architecture, elegance of decoration, and the vast space of ground which it covers. The first pile which supports the foundation of this house was driven into the ground January the 20th, 1648, and by the 6th of October in the same year thirteen thousand six hundred and ninety-five, the aggregate number of massy trees on which the building rests, were driven into the morass. The first stone, with a suitable inscription, was then laid,' and seven years afterwards, the different