Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/123

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THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
111

of the officers with whom he had served cordially joined, and there were few republicans of integrity and reflection who were not of the same opinion.

I was amused at the house of a citizen of the world (such was the appellation which he bestowed on himself), where we dined — whose country you cannot mistake when I inform you, that he assured me Sir John Pringle was the most skilful physician that had appeared since the days of Hippocrates or Celsus — with the contrast of a man coldly appreciating the merits and defects of different nations, and pretending an equal attachment to all, and two or three Frenchmen so partial to their own, as to affirm all excellence was confined to the territories of their republic. The warm enthusiasm of the Frenchmen was an agreeable vanity which it was impossible not to admire, and especially as it was opposed to the frigid, cold-hearted system of the North Briton. One of the Frenchmen had been a planter in Saint Domingo, where he had valuable estates, which, as tranquillity is now in a great