plus badinant, faid the Count, looking down upon his own-but a word, Monfieur Yorick, to the wife---And from the wife, Monfieur le Count, replied I, making him a bow-is enough.

THE Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardour than ever I was embraced by mortal man.

FOR three weeks together, I was of e

very man's opinion I met.

autres

Pardi! ce

Monfieur Yorick a autant d'efprit que nous -Il raisonne bien, said another. C'est un bon enfant, said a third.And at this price I could have eaten and drank, and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest reckoning-I grew afhamed of itit was the gain of a flave-every fentiment of honour revolted against it—the higher I got, the more was I forced up

on

on my beggarly fyftem-the better the Coterie-the more children of Art I languished for thofe of Nature;

and one night after a moft vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew fick went to bed ordered La Fleur to get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy.

MARIA.

I

plenty was in any one fhape 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 Mufick 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 'em was pregnant with adventures.

JUST heaven!-it would fill up twenty volumes--and alas! I have but a few fmall pages left of this to croud it intohalf of these must be taken up with the

poor

poor Maria, my friend Mr. Shandy met with near Moulines.

THE ftory he had told of that difordered maid affected me not a little in the reading; but when I got within the neighbourhood where the lived, it returned fo ftrong into my mind, that I could not refift an impulfe 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 Woful Countenance, in queft of medancholy adventures—but I know not how it is,but I am never fo perfectly confcious of the existence of a foul 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-She had loft her husband;

VOL. II.

I

he

he had died, the faid, of anguish, for the lofs of Maria's fenfes about a month before. She had feared at firft, fhe added, that it would have plundered her poor girl of what little understanding was left

but, on the contrary, it had brought her more to herself---ftill could not reft ---her poor daughter, fhe faid, crying, was wandering fomewhere about the road--

---WHY does my pulfe beat languid as I write this? and what made La Fleur, whose heart feemed only to be tuned to joy, to pass, the back of his hand twice acrofs his eyes, as the woman fstood and told it? I beckoned to the poftilion 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 difcovered poor Maria fitting under a poplar-fhe was fitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head