has set up a shop in the Exchange,[242] where she sells her little troop under the term of jointed babies.[243] I could not but be solicitous to know of her, how she had disposed of that rake-hell Punch, whose lewd life and conversation had given so much scandal, and did not a little contribute to the ruin of the fair.  She told me, with a sigh, that despairing of ever reclaiming him, she would not offer to place him in a civil family, but got him in a post upon a stall in Wapping, where he may be seen from sun-rising to sun-setting, with a glass in one hand, and a pipe in the other, as sentry to a brandy-shop.  The great revolutions of this nature bring to my mind the distresses of the unfortunate Camilla[244], who has had the ill-luck to break before her voice, and to disappear at a time when her beauty was in the height of its bloom.  This lady entered so thoroughly into the great characters she acted, that when she had finished her part, she could not think of retrenching her equipage, but would appear in her own lodgings with the same magnificence that she did upon the stage.  This greatness of soul has reduced that unhappy princess to an involuntary retirement, where she now passes her time among the woods and forests, thinking on the crowns and sceptres she has lost, and often humming over in her solitude,

    "I was born of royal race,
    Yet must wander in disgrace,” &c.

But for fear of being overheard, and her quality known, she usually sings it in Italian: 

    "Naqui al regno, naqui al trono
    E pur sono
    Inventurata Pastorella—­“

Since I have touched upon this subject, I shall communicate to my reader part of a letter I have received from an ingenious friend at Amsterdam, where there is a very noble theatre; though the manner of furnishing it with actors is something peculiar to that place, and gives us occasion to admire both the politeness and frugality of the people.

My friends have kept me here a week longer than ordinary to see one of their plays, which was performed last night with great applause.  The actors are all of them tradesmen, who, after their day’s work is over, earn about a guilder a night by personating kings and generals.  The hero of the tragedy I saw, was a journeyman tailor, and his first minister of state a coffee-man.  The empress made me think of Parthenope[245] in “The Rehearsal”; for her mother keeps an ale-house in the suburbs of Amsterdam.  When the tragedy was over, they entertained us with a short farce, in which the cobbler did his part to a miracle; but upon inquiry, I found he had really been working at his own trade, and representing on the stage what he acted every day in his shop.  The profits of the theatre maintain a hospital:  for as here they do not think the profession of an actor the only trade that a man ought to exercise, so they will not allow anybody to grow rich on a profession that in their opinion so little conduces to the good