bring vice to maturity. Prostitutes are not permitted to walk in the streets of Amsterdam, for the purposes of their wretched trade, but there are in various parts of the city music rooms, as they are called, under the sanction of the magistrates, who draw an annual revenue from them, which are nightly open for the reception of the dissolute of both sexes. At these places of licentious resort, singular as it may be deemed, the sedate and the innocent mingle with the wanton and the depraved. A reputable tradesman takes his family to one of these places of amusement, as readily as a person of the same class in London would do to the theatres or any other public entertainment. The early part of the evening spent in smoking, drinking, or dancing to the sound of three or four miserable fiddles, and towards midnight the carousals begin, when the most flagrant indecencies are permitted and encouraged. I cannot comment on such institutions. It should, however, he stated, that the number
