I doubt not many of your readers will have been as much amused as myself with the choice specimens of Foreign English enshrined in your pages. When at Amsterdam, some years since, I purchased a Guide to that city, which I regard as a considerable literary curiosity in the same line. It was published at Amsterdam, by E. Maascamp, in 1829, and contains from beginning to end a series of broken English, professing all the while to be written by an Englishman.

It commences with the following "Advertisement:"

"The city of Amsterdam—remarkable as being one of the chief metropoles of Europe, and as being in many respects the general market of whole the universe; justly celebrated for—its large interior canals, on both of their sides enlivened and sheltered by ranges of large, thick, and beautiful trees, and presenting, on large broad and neatly kept, most regularly pav'd quays, long chains of sumptuous habitations, or rather palaces of the principal and weathy merchants; moreover remarkable by its Museum for the objects of the fine arts, &c., its numberless public edifices adapted either to the cultivation of arts, or to the exertions of trade, or to establishments charitable purposes, or of temples of all manners of divine worship—the city of Amsterdam, we say," &c. It is dated "This 15the of Juin, 1829."

In page 14. the author gives us an account of his habits, &c.:—

"I live in Amsterdam since some considerable time I drink no strong liquors, nor do I smoke tobacco and with all this—I have not been attacked by those agues and fevers wh frequently reign here from the month of Juin to the end of the autumn: and twenty foreigners whom I know, do follow the same system, and are still as healthy as I myself; while I have seen a great many of natives taking their drams and smoking their pipes ad libitem, and moreover chawing tobacco in a quite disgusting manner, who," &c.

An Amsterdam Sunday, p. 42.:

"On sundays and holydays the shops and warehouses, and, intra muros, those of public entertainment are close: the devotees go to church, and sanctify the sabbath. Others go to walk outside the towngates: after their walk, they hasten to fine public-play-gardens, where wine, thea, &c. is sold. Neither the mobility remains idle at these entertainments. Every one invites his damsel, and joyously they enter play-gardens of a little less brilliancy than the former. There, at the crying sound of an instrument that rents the ear, accompanied by the delightful handle-organs and the rustic triangle, their tributes are paid to Terpsichore; every where a similitude of talents: the dancing outdoes not the musician."

Description of the Assize Court:

"The forefront has a noble and sublime aspect, and is particularly characteristical to what it ought to represent. It is built in a division of three fronts in the corinthic order: each of them consists in four raizing columns, resting upon a general basement, from the one end of the forefront to the other, and supporting a cornish, equally running all over the face; upon this cornish rests a balustrad, like the other pieces altogether of Bremen-hardstone. The middle front, serving for the chief entrance, is adorned with the provincial arms, sculpted by Mr. Gabriel, &c.... Every where a sublime plan, and exact execution is exhibited here, and the whole tends as much to the architects, who are the undertakers of it, as they have earned great praizes by building anew the burnt Lutheran church."

I will not trespass on your space by any further extracts; but these will suffice to show that my book is sui generis, and worth commemoration.

C. W. B.

SEVEN CHILDREN AT A BIRTH THREE TIMES FOLLOWING

Your correspondent N. D.'s papers (Vol. ii., p. 459., and Vol. iii., p. 64) have reminded me of another remarkable instance of fecundity related by the well-known civil engineer Jan Adriaensz. Leeg-Water, in his Kleyne Chronycke, printed at Amsterdam in 1654:

"Some years since," says he, p. 31., "I was at Wormer, at an inn near the town-hall: the landlady, whose name was Frankjen, told me of the Burgomaster of Hoorn, who in the spring went over the (Zuyder?) sea to buy oxen, and going into a certain house he found seven little children sitting by the fire, each with a porringer in its hand, and eating rice-milk, or pap, with a spoon; on which the Burgomaster said 'Mother, you are very kind to your neighbours, since they leave their children to your care.' 'No,' said the woman, they are all my own children, which I had at one birth; and if you will wait a moment, I will show you more that will surprise you.' She then fetched seven other children a birth older: so she had fourteen children at two births. Then the woman said to the Burgomaster, 'I am now enceinte, and I think in the same way as before: if you come here next year, call upon me again.' And so, the next year, when the Burgomaster went over the sea, he called upon the woman and the woman had again brought forth seven children at a birth. Thus the woman had at three births twenty-one children."

I subjoin the original of which the above is a literal translation.

J. S.

Woudenberg, April, 1851.

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