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A HANDBOOK

FOR

TRAVELLERS ON THE CONTINENT.

a

NOTICE.

THIS Edition of the Handbook has been subjected to a careful and thorough revision. The Editor trusts that the imperfections and errors will be found to have been considerably diminished. His own personal rectification of mistakes and omissions has been most materially aided by the communications of numerous and obliging correspondents, many of them personally unknown to him, to whom he takes this opportunity of returning his acknowledgments. He begs, at the same time, to repeat his request that travellers who may in the use of the Handbook detect any faults or omissions which they can correct from personal knowledge, will have the kindness to mark them down on the spot, with the date when they are made, and communicate to him a notice of the same, favouring him at the same time with their names-addressed to the care of Mr. Murray, Albemarle Street. The Editor ventures to remind his correspondents that by such communications they are not merely furnishing the means of improving the Handbook, but are contributing to the benefit, information, and comfort of future travellers.

No attention can be paid to letters from innkeepers in praise of their own houses; and the postage of them is so onerous that they cannot be

received.

CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS.-The introduction into England of foreign pirated Editions of the works of British authors, in which the copyright subsists, is totally prohibited by Act of Parliament. Travellers should therefore bear in mind that even a single copy is contraband, and is liable to seizure at the English Custom-house.

The

CAUTION TO INNKEEPERS AND OTHERS.-The Editor of the Handbooks has learned from various quarters that a person or persons have been extorting money from innkeepers, tradespeople, artists, and others, on the Continent, under pretext of procuring recommendations and favourable notices of them and their establishments in the Handbooks for Travellers. Editor, therefore, thinks proper to warn all whom it may concern, that recommendations in the Handbooks are not to be obtained by purchase, and that the persons alluded to are not only unauthorised by him, but are totally unknown to him. All those, therefore, who put confidence in such promises, may rest assured that they will be defrauded of their money without attaining their object.

A

HANDBOOK FOR TRAVELLERS

ON

THE CONTINENT:

BEING A GUIDE TO

HOLLAND, BELGIUM, PRUSSIA, NORTHERN GERMANY, AND
THE RHINE FROM HOLLAND TO SWITZERLAND.

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JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

PARIS: A, & W. GALIGNANI AND CO.; STASSIN AND XAVIER.

1858.

246. d. to.

THE ENGLISH EDITIONS OF MURRAY'S HANDBOOKS MAY BE OBTAINED OF THE

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PREFACE.

THE writer of this volume, having experienced, as every Englishman visiting the Continent must have done, the want of any tolerable English Guide Book for Europe north of the Alps, was induced, partly for his own amusement, partly to assist his friends going abroad, to make copious notes of all that he thought worth observation, and of the best modes of travelling and seeing things to advantage. In the course of repeated journeys and of occasional residence in various parts of the Continent, he not only traversed beaten routes, but visited many spots to which his countrymen rarely penetrate. Thus his materials have largely accumulated; and in the hope that they may render as much service to the public generally as he is assured they already have done to private friends, he is now induced to put them forth in a printed form.

The Guide Books hitherto published are for the most part either general descriptions compiled by persons not acquainted with the spots, and therefore imperfect and erroneous, or are local histories, written by residents who do not sufficiently discriminate between what is peculiar to the place, and what is not worth seeing, or may be seen equally well or to greater advantage somewhere else. The latter overwhelm their readers with minute details of its history "from the most ancient times," and with genealogies of its princes, &c.: the former confine themselves to a mere catalogue of buildings, institutions, and the like; after reading which, the stranger is as much as ever in the dark as to what really are the curiosities of the place. They are often mere reprints of works published many years ago, by no means corrected or brought down to the present time; and whether accurate or not originally, are become, from the mere changes which each year produces, faulty and antiquated.

The writer of the Handbook has endeavoured to confine himself to matter-of-fact descriptions of what ought to be seen at each place, and is calculated to interest an intelligent English traveller, without bewildering his readers with an account of all that may be seen. He has avoided chronological details; and, instead of abridging the records of a town from beginning to end, he has selected such local anecdotes as are connected with remarkable events which have happened there, or with distinguished men who have lived there. He has adopted as simple and condensed a style as possible, avoiding florid descriptions and exaggerated superlatives; preferring to avail himself of the descriptions of others, where they appeared good and correct, to obtruding extracts from his own journals. Whenever an author of celebrity, such as Scott, Byron, Rogers, or Southey, has described a place, he has made a point of extracting the passage, knowing how much the perusal of it on the spot, where the works themselves are not to be procured, will enhance the interest of seeing the objects described.

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