had excited in her breast, which could have checked them as they rose up?

We are not adamant, said I, taking hold of her hand; and there is need of all restraints, till age in her own time steals in and lays them on us.-But, my dear lady, said I, kissing her hand,-'tis too-too soon.

I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Madame de V***.-She affirmed to Mons. D*** and the Abbé M***, that in one half hour I had said more for revealed religion than all their Encyclopedia had said against it. -I was lifted directly in Madame de V***'s coterie; and she put off the epocha of deism for two years.

Just Heaven!-it would fill up twenty volumes ;-and alas! I have but a few small pages left of this to crowd it into,-and half of these must be taken up with the poor Maria my friend Mr. Shandy met with near Moulines.

The story he had told of that disordered maid affected me not a little in the reading; but when I had got within the neighbourhood where she lived, it returned so strongly into my mind, that I could not resist an impulse which prompted me to go half a league out of the road, to the village where her parents dwelt, to inquire after her.

'Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures ;-I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me as when I am entangled in them.

The old mother came to the door; her looks told me the story before she opened her mouth.

I remember it was in this coteric, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was showing the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room, to tell me my solitaire was pinned too strait about my neck. . . . It should-She had lost her husband; he had died, she be plus badinant, said the Count, looking down upon his own;-but a word, Mons. Yorick, to the wise....

said, of anguish, for the loss of Maria's sense, about a month before.-She had feared at first, she added, that it would have plundered her

-And from the wise, Mons. le Count, replied poor girl of what little understanding was left; I, making him a bow,—is enough.

The Count de Faincant embraced me with more ardour than ever I was embraced by mortal

man.

For three weeks together I was of every man's opinion I met.-Pardi! ce Mons. Yorick a autant d'esprit que nous autres. . . . Il raisonne bien, said another. . . . C'est un bon enfant, said a third. And at this price I could have eaten and drunk and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest reckoning ;I grew ashamed of it: it was the gain of a slave: every sentiment of honour revolted against it. The higher I got, the more was I forced upon my beggarly system;-the better the coterie, the more children of Art,—I languished for those of Nature; and one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick, went to bed, ordered La Fleur to get me horses in the morning, to set out for Italy.

MARIA.

MOULINES.

I NEVER felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape till now,-to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France, in the heyday of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up,-a journey through each step of which music beats time to labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters;-to pass through this with my affections flying out, and kindling at every group before me, and every one of them was pregnant with adventures.

-but, on the contrary, it had brought her more to herself;-still she could not rest.-Her poor daughter, she said, crying, was wandering somewhere about the road.

-Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? and what made La Fleur, whose heart seemed only to be tuned to joy, to pass the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the woman stood and told it? I beckoned to the postillion to turn back into the road.

When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road, leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplar. She was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand :-a small brook ran at the foot of the tree.

I bid the postillion go on with the chaise to Moulines ;--and La Fleur to bespeak my supper; and that I would walk after him.

She was dressed in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted with a silken net. She had superadded likewise, to her jacket, a pale green riband, which fell across her shoulder to the waist; at the end of which hung her pipe.-Her goat had been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in lieu of him, which she kept tied by a string to her girdle. As I looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with the string.- -Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio,' said she. I looked in Maria's eyes, and saw she was thinking more of her father than of her lover, or her little goat; for, as she uttered them, the tears trickled down her cheeks.

I sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell, with my handker

. . And is your heart still so warm, Maria? joys and generous cares beyond myself ;-all

of thy creation.-Touched with thee, Eugenius draws my curtain when I languish,—hears my tale of symptoms, and blames the weather for the disorder of his nerves. Thou givest a portion of it sometimes to the roughest peasant who traverses the bleakest mountains ;-he finds the lacerated lamb of another's flock.-This moment I behold him leaning with his head against his crook, with piteous inclination looking down upon it!-Oh! had I come one moment sooner!-it bleeds to death!-his gentle heart bleeds with it!

Peace to thee, generous swain !-I see thou walkest off with anguish,-but thy joys shall balance it; for happy is thy cottage, and happy is the sharer of it, and happy are the lambs which sport about you.

THE SUPPER.

A SHOE Coming loose from the forefoot of the thill-horse, at the beginning of the ascent of Mount Taurira, the postillion dismounted, twisted the shoe off, and put it in his pocket. As the ascent was of five or six miles, and that horse our main dependence, I made a point of having the shoe fastened on again as well as we could; but the postillion had thrown away the nails; and the hammer in the chaise-box being of no great use without them, I submitted to go on.

moment I entered the room: so I sat down at once, like a son of the family; and, to invest myself in the character as speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed the old man's knife, and, taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty luncheon; and, as I did it, I saw a testimony in every eye, not only of an honest welcome, but of a welcome mixed with thanks that I had not seemed to doubt it.

Was it this? or, tell me, Nature, what else it was that made this morsel so sweet,-and to what magic I owe it that the draught I took of their flagon was so delicious with it that they remain upon my palate to this hour?

If the supper was to my taste, the grace which followed it was much more so.

THE GRACE.

WHEN supper was over, the old man gave a knock upon the table with the haft of his knife, to bid them prepare for the dance. The moment the signal was given, the women and girls ran all together into a back apartment to tie up their hair,-and the young men to the door to wash their faces and change their sabots; and in three minutes every soul was ready, upon a little esplanade before the house, to begin.The old man and his wife came out last, and, placing me betwixt them, sat down upon a sofa of turf by the door.

The old man had some fifty years ago been no mean performer upon the rielle,-and, at the age he was then of, touched it well enough for the purpose. His wife sung now and then a little to the tunc,-then intermitted,-and

He had not mounted half a mile higher, when, coming to a flinty piece of road, the poor devil lost a second shoe, and from off his other forefoot. I then got out of the chaise in good earnest; and seeing a house about a quarter of a mile to the left hand, with a great deal to do, I pre-joined her old man again as their children and vailed upon the postillion to turn up to it. The grandchildren danced before them. look of the house, and of everything about it, as we drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the disaster. It was a little farm-house, surrounded with about twenty acres of vineyard, about as much corn; and close to the house, on one side, was a potagerie of an acre and a half, full of everything which could make plenty in a French peasant's house ;-and on the other side was a little wood, which furnished wherewithal to dress it. It was about eight in the evening when I got to the house,-so I left the postillion to manage his point as he could; and, for mine, I walked directly into the house.

The family consisted of an old grey-headed man and his wife, with five or six sons and sonsin-law, and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy out of them.

They were all sitting down together to their lentil-soup; a large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table; and a flagon of wine at each end of it promised joy through the stages of the repast;-'twas a feast of love.

The old man rose up to meet me, and, with a respectful cordiality, would have me sit down at the table. My heart was set down the

It was not till the middle of the second dance when, from some pauses in the movement wherein they all seemed to look up, I fancied I could distinguish an elevation of spirit different from that which is the cause or the effect of simple jollity. In a word, I thought I beheld Religion mixing in the dance; but, as I had never seen her so engaged, I should have looked upon it now as one of the illusions of an imagination which is eternally misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, said that this was their constant way; and that all his life long he had made it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice; believing, he said, that a cheerful and contented mind was the best sort of thanks to Heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay— Or a learned prelate either, said I.

...

THE CASE OF DELICACY.
WHEN you have gained the top of Mount
Taurira, you run presently down to Lyons.--
Adieu, then, to all rapid movements!-'tis a
journey of caution; and it fares better with

sentiments not to be in a hurry with them; so I contracted with a voiturin to take his time with a couple of mules, and convey me in my own chaise safe to Turin, through Savoy.

Poor, patient, quiet, honest people; fear not; your poverty, the treasury of your simple virtues, will not be envied you by the world, nor will your valleys be invaded by it.-Nature! in the midst of thy disorders, thou art still friendly to the scantiness thou hast created; with all thy great works about thee, little hast thou left to give, either to the scythe or to the sickle-but to that little thou grantest safety and protection; and sweet are the dwellings which stand so sheltered!

Let the way-worn traveller vent his complaints upon the sudden turns and dangers of your roads, your rocks, your precipices; the difficulties of getting up, the horrors of getting down, mountains impracticable,-and cataracts, which roll down great stones from their summits, and block up his road. The peasants had been all day at work in removing a fragment of this kind between St. Michael and Madane; and, by the time my voiturin got to the place, it wanted full two hours of completing, before a passage could anyhow be gained. There was nothing but to wait with patience :-'twas a wet and tempestuous night; so that, by the delay and that together, the voiturin found himself obliged to put up five miles short of his stage, at a little decent kind of an inn by the road-side.

I forthwith took possession of my bedchamber, got a good fire, ordered supper, and was thanking Heaven it was no worse, when a voiturin arrived with a lady in it, and her servant-maid.

As there was no other bedchamber in the house, the hostess, without much nicety, led them into mine, telling them, as she usher'd them in, that there was nobody in it but an English gentleman;-that there were two good beds in it, and a closet within the room which held another. The accent in which she spoke of this third bed did not say much for it; however, she said there were three beds, and but three people, and she durst say the gentleman would do anything to accommodate matters.I left the lady not a moment to make a conjecture about it, so instantly made a declaration that I would do anything in my power.

As this did not amount to an absolute surrender of my bed-chamber, I still felt myself so much the proprietor as to have a right to do the honours of it ;-so I desired the lady to sit down, pressed her into the warmest seat, called for more wood, desired the hostess to enlarge the plan of the supper, and to favour us with the very best wine.

The lady had scarce warm'd herself five minutes at the fire before she began to turn her head back, and to give a look at the beds: and the oftener she cast her eyes that way, the

more they returned perplexed.-I felt for her-
and for myself; for in a few minutes, what by
her looks, and the case itself, I found myself as
much embarrassed as it was possible the lady
could be herself.

That the beds we were to lie in were in one
and the same room was enough, simply by itself,
to have excited all this;-but the position of
them (for they stood parallel, and so very close
to each other as only to allow a space for a small
wicker-chair betwixt them) rendered the affair
still more oppressive to us ;-they were fixed up,
moreover, near the fire; and the projection of
the chimney on one side, and a large beam which
crossed the room on the other, formed a kind of
recess for them that was no way favourable to
the nicety of our sensations:-if anything could
have added to it, it was that the two heds were
both of them so very small as to cut us off from
every idea of the lady and the maid lying
together, which, in either of them, could it have
been feasible, my lying beside them, though a
thing not to be wished, yet there was nothing in
it so terrible which the imagination might not
have passed over without torment.

As for the little room within, it offered little or no consolation to us: 'twas a damp, cold closet, with a half-dismantled window-shutter, and with a window which had neither glass nor oil-paper in it to keep out the tempest of the night. I did not attempt to stifle my cough when the lady gave a peep into it; so it reduced the case in course to this alternative,-that the lady should sacrifice her health to her feelings, -or that the and take up with the closet herself, and abandon the bed next mine to her maid,girl should take the closet, etc.

The lady was a Piedmontese of about thirty, with a glow of health in her cheeks. The maid was a Lyonoise of twenty, and as brisk and lively a French girl as ever moved. There were difficulties every way,-and the obstacle of the stone in the road, which brought us into the distress, great as it appeared whilst the peasants were removing it, was but a pebble to what lay in our way now.-I have only to add that it did not lessen the weight which hung upon our spirits, that we were both too delicate to communicate what we felt to each other upon the occasion.

We sat down to supper; and, had we not had more generous wine to it than a little inn in Savoy could have furnished, our tongues had been tied up till Necessity herself had set them at liberty;-but the lady having a few bottles of Burgundy in her voiture, sent down her fille de chambre for a couple of them; so that, by the time supper was over, and we were left alone, we felt ourselves inspired with a strength of mind sufficient to talk, at least, without reserve, upon our situation. We turned it every way, and debated and considered it in all kinds of lights in the course of a two hours' negotiation

Granted on the part of madame; with a proviso, That, as the curtains of that bed are of a flimsy transparent cotton, and appear likewise too scanty to draw close, that the fille de chambre shall fasten up the opening, either by corking pins or needle and thread, in such a manner as shall be deemed a sufficient barrier on the side. . . She maintained 'twas an entire infraction of monsieur.

END OF THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.