C 19 ] 
bear the shock of hard driving upon the pavement 5 
however, diis does not accord with my own expe¬ 
rience. Among those I drive, I have an English 
horse and three Normans, and I see no diiference 
in the looks of any of them, though they are kept 
and driven alike. The weights carried in the carts 
here would atonish yon, and I am quite convinced 
that either our horses are inferior, or that we do 
not put them to exert half their strength. I mea¬ 
sured one of the country waggons in Flanders ; 
I found it 11 feet from axle to axle, and the box 
18 feet long, and about twice the breadth of our 
waggons. These are drawn by four horses, gene¬ 
rally one in shafts ; but as if this enormous ma¬ 
chine would not carry enough, there is frequently 
a box hanging by chains below the waggon (for 
the wheels are very high) which also carries a part 
of the load. To shew how much every thing de¬ 
pends upon custom or prejudice, and how little up¬ 
on reasoning, in Holland, where horses are large, 
fat and fine, and the road a dead level, the only 
carriages used by farmers are Dutch waggons, ex¬ 
actly resembling those of our own country, except 
that they are not much more than half the width in 
the bottom, and of course do not carry more than 
half as much. But to make up in show what they 
%vant in use, they are covered, painted, and often 
gilded in the most superb manner; and that their 
finery may not escape your notice, in many places 
there are two large round plates of copper, sus¬ 
pended on a pin passing through the centre and 
