when he visited, the hut where his ancestor resided: a singular present for a young prince on such an occasion!
A funeral was performing in the churchyard of Saardam as we passed, and we stopt to observe the ceremony. It was the interment of an indigent person, and, the obsequies were performed without, the assistance of a priest. The coffin was of plain fir, unvarnished and unornamented, and the grave in which it was deposited was a large hole, containing about a dozen coffins, and capable of receiving perhaps as many more. After the corpse was put into this populous grave, it was covered with boards, and the mourners departed. The frugality of the Dutch is scarcely more remarkable in any thing, than the economy of their funerals. A person would be despised by his neighbours as a profligate spendthrift who should bestow on a deceased relation a magnificent interment, and there are sumptuary laws against expensive burials. Prayers at the grave, or the tolling of a bell, are considered as idle superstitions,
