Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/277

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THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
265

been borrowed from the German stage, pieces the moral tendency of which is bad, the feeling that they exhibit forced, and in which the place of nature is usurped by a creature of the poet's imagination, which he denominates sensibility[1].

As at Rotterdam, which remark I had before occasion to make, the concerts are the best attended places of amusements in the capital of Holland. They are usually performed either at the Felix Meritis, or the French theatre. At the latter place, on a Sunday evening, which is the fashionable day in Amsterdam for this entertainment, we heard a good concert of vocal and instrumental music. The company was numerous, and composed of the most opulent and polite persons of both sexes in the city. The performances of the evening, the singers, and the musicians, were suitable to the audience. We were dazzled, as on a former occasion<references>

  1. This sensibility is a kind of defensive armour for the delicate fibres of the heart, which, true to nature, shrink from the slightest hostile contact.