The slices of bread and butter, which they give you with your tea, are as thin as poppy leaves.  But there is another kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire, and is incomparably good.  You take one slice after the other and hold it to the fire on a fork till the butter is melted, so that it penetrates a number of slices at once:  this is called toast.

The custom of sleeping without a feather-bed for a covering particularly pleased me.  You here lie between two sheets:  underneath the bottom sheet is a fine blanket, which, without oppressing you, keeps you sufficiently warm.  My shoes are not cleaned in the house, but by a person in the neighbourhood, whose trade it is; who fetches them every morning, and brings them back cleaned; for which she receives weekly so much.  When the maid is displeased with me, I hear her sometimes at the door call me “the German”; otherwise in the family I go by the name of “the Gentleman.”

I have almost entirely laid aside riding in a coach, although it does not cost near so much as it does at Berlin; as I can go and return any distance not exceeding an English mile for a shilling, for which I should there at least pay a florin.  But, moderate as English fares are, still you save a great deal, if you walk or go on foot, and know only how to ask your way.  From my lodging to the Royal Exchange is about as far as from one end of Berlin to the other, and from the Tower and St. Catharine’s, where the ships arrive in the Thames, as far again; and I have already walked this distance twice, when I went to look after my trunk before I got it out of the ship.  As it was quite dark when I came back the first evening, I was astonished at the admirable manner in which the streets are lighted up; compared to which our streets in Berlin make a most miserable show.  The lamps are lighted whilst it is still daylight, and are so near each other, that even on the most ordinary and common nights, the city has the appearance of a festive illumination, for which some German prince, who came to London for the first time, once, they say, actually took it, and seriously believed it to have been particularly ordered on account of his arrival.

CHAPTER IV.

The 9th June, 1782.

I preached this day at the German church on Ludgate Hill, for the Rev. Mr. Wendeborn.  He is the author of “Die statischen Beytrage zur nahern Kentniss Grossbrittaniens.”  This valuable book has already been of uncommon service to me, and I cannot but recommend it to everyone who goes to England.  It is the more useful, as you can with ease carry it in your pocket, and you find in it information on every subject.  It is natural to suppose that Mr. Wendeborn, who has now been a length of time in England, must have been able more frequently, and with greater exactness to make his observations, than those who only pass through, or make a very short stay.  It is almost impossible for anyone, who has this book always at hand, to omit anything worthy of notice in or about London; or not to learn all that is most material to know of the state and situation of the kingdom in general.