THE GRAND TOUR (1768-69) 101 



protests that she is resisting the craze for gambling. ' I have to 

 choose between the world and a regular life ; my wisdom prefers the 

 last, the hours of play are too late, it lasts till five in the morning. 

 It is not your sister-in-law who keeps it up.' She concludes, 'All 

 I love most is at Genthod ; it is there that my eyes, my heart, and 

 my tastes turn : you have a very large part, my best of friends.' 



Minette, we recognise, despite the sadness of her married life, 

 must have been the gayest, the most spirited of the three sisters, 

 and a fast companion and ally to the brother-in-law, whose social 

 and political interests she shared and entered into. 



On the llth July the de Saussures left Amsterdam for the 

 Hague, where they remained a fortnight, returning to Amsterdam 

 to visit Haarlem and North Holland before again travelling south 

 to Rotterdam on the way to embark for England. 



It is obvious from the diary that they saw Holland very 

 thoroughly. Natural history cabinets and horticulture were the 

 chief objects of de Saussure's study. But he also visited the 

 museums and numerous private collections of pictures. 



According to the sententious Senebier, he succeeded in gaining 

 the esteem of the local savants, ' despite his vivacity, which con- 

 trasted so strongly with Dutch phlegm.' His own impressions 

 of the country and its people are contained in a letter he wrote 

 to Haller before embarking at Ostend. He finds 'the flat and 

 learned Holland a country of fine gardens and heavy professors ' ; 

 it is ' full of singular people who pursue in private and without 

 any pretence either the fine arts, or rational philosophy, or natural 

 history, and enjoy in silence and solitude the fruits of their studies 

 and their labours.' 



He proceeds to illustrate this general criticism by particular 

 instances. First we have a sketch of the Biermanns, father and 

 son, who kept a shop on the Keysersgracht at Amsterdam, where 

 they sold seaweeds and fossils and published magnificently 

 illustrated botanical works. They were 'living specimens of 

 the old Dutch type, the father in a big wig, black as jet, talking 

 nothing but Latin and surrounded by his huge folios, rough but 

 with a friendly air, and really learned in the Batavian fashion ; 

 the son bald arid of mean appearance, clumsily modernised.' Then 

 we hear of the Van der Meulens, ' the husband not even speaking 

 Latin and no savant, but possessing a superb cabinet of natural 



