This querulous humour, however, hath its limits, like to the conning of grievances, which all valetudinarians know is a most fascinating pastime, so long as there is nothing to complain of but chronic complaints. But I never heard a man whose credit was actually verging to decay talk of the diminution of his funds; and my kind and intelligent physician assures me, that it is a rare thing with those afflicted with a good rousing fever, or any such active disorder, which

With mortal crisis doth portend
His life to appropinque an end,

to make their agonies the subject of amusing conversation.

Having deeply considered all these things, I am no longer able to disguise from my readers, that I am neither so unpopular nor so low in fortune, as not to have my share in the distresses which at present afflict the moneyed and landed interests of these realms. Your authors who live upon a mutton-chop may rejoice that it has fallen to threepence per pound, and, if they have children, gratulate themselves that the peckloaf may be had for sixpence; but we who belong to the tribe which is ruined by peace and plenty-we who have lands and beeves, and sell what these poor gleaners must buy-we are driven to despair by the very events which would make all Grub Street illuminate its attics, if Grub Street could spare candle-ends for the purpose. I therefore put in my proud claim to share in the distresses which only affect the wealthy; and write myself down, with Dogberry, "a rich fellow enough," but still "one who hath had losses."

With the same generous spirit of emulation, I have had lately recourse to the universal remedy for the brief impecuniosity of which I complain-a brief residence in a southern climate, by which I have not only saved many cart-loads of coals, but have also had the pleasure to excite general sympathy for my decayed circumstances among those, who, if my revenue had continued to be spent among them, would have cared little if I had been hanged. Thus, while I drink my vin ordinaire, my brewer finds the sale of his small-beer diminished-while I discuss my flask of cinq francs, my modicum of port hangs on my wine-merchant's hands-while my côtelette à-la-Maintenon is smoking on my plate, the mighty sirloin hangs on its peg in the shop of my blue-aproned friend in the village. Whatever, in short, I spend here, is missed at home; and the few sous gained by the garçon perruquier, nay, the very crust I give to his little bare-bottomed, red-eyed poodle, are autant de perdu to my old friend the barber, and honest Trusty, the mastiff dog in the yard. So that I have the happiness of knowing at every turn, that my absence is both missed and moaned by those, who would care little were I in my coffin, were they sure of the custom of my executors. From this charge of selfseeking and indifference, however, I solemnly except Trusty, the yard-dog, whose courtesies towards me, I have reason to think, were of a more disinterested character than those of any other person who assisted me to consume the bounty of the Public. Alas! the advantage of exciting such general sympathies at home cannot be secured without incurring considerable personal inconvenience. "If thou wishest me to weep, thou must first shed tears thyself," says Horace; and, truly, I could sometimes cry myself at the exchange I have made of the domestic comforts which custom had rendered necessaries, for the foreign substitutes which caprice and love of change had rendered fashionable. I cannot but confess with shame, that my home-bred stomach longs for the genuine steak, after the fashion of Dolly's, hot from the gridiron, brown without, and scarlet when the knife is applied; and that all the delicacies of Very's carte, with his thousand various orthographies of Bifticks de Mouton, do not supply the vacancy. Then my mother's son cannot learn to delight in thin potations; and, in these days when malt is had for nothing, I am convinced that a double straick of John Barleycorn must have converted "the poor domestic creature, small-beer,” into a liquor

twenty times more generous than the acid unsubstantial tipple, which here bears the honoured name of wine, though, in substance and qualities, much similar to your Seine water. Their higher wines, indeed, are well enough-there is nothing to except against in their Chateau Margout, or Sillery; yet I cannot but remember the generous qualities of my sound old Oporto. Nay, down to the garçon and his poodle, though they are both amusing animals, and play ten thousand monkey-tricks which are diverting enough, yet there was more sound humour in the wink with which our village Packwood used to communicate the news of the morning, than all Antoine's gambols could have expressed in a week, and more of human and dog-like sympathy in the wag of old Trusty's tail, than if his rival, Touton, had stood on his hind-legs for a twelvemonth.

These signs of repentance come perhaps a little late, and I own (for I must be entirely candid with my dear friend the Public) that they have been somewhat matured by the perversion of my niece Christy to the ancient Popish faith by a certain whacking priest in our neighbourhood, and the marriage of my aunt Dorothy to a demi-solde captain of horse, a ci-devant member of the Legion of Honour, and who would, he assures us, have been a Field-Marshal by this time, had our old friend Bonaparte continued to live and to triumph. For the matter of Christy, I must own her head had been so fairly turned at Edinburgh with five routs a-night, that, though I somewhat distrusted the means and medium of her conversion, I was at the same time glad to see that she took a serious thought of any kind;-besides, there was little loss in the matter, for the Convent took her off my hands for a very reasonable pension. But aunt Dorothy's marriage on earth was a very different matter from Christian's celestial espousals. In the first place, there were two thousand three-per-cents as much lost to my family as if the sponge had been drawn over the national slate-for who the deuce could have thought aunt Dorothy would have married? Above all, who would have thought a woman of fifty years' experience would have married a French anatomy, his lower branch of limbs corresponding with the upper branch, as if one pair of half-extended compasses had been placed perpendicularly upon the top of another, while the space on which the hinges revolved, quite sufficed to represent the body? All the rest was mustache, pelisse, and calico trowser. She might have commanded a Polk of real Cossacks in 1815, for half the wealth which she surrendered to this military scarecrow. However, there is no more to be said upon the matter, especially as she had come the length of quoting Rousseau for sentiment-and so let that pass.

Having thus expectorated my bile against a land, which is, notwithstanding, a very merry land, and which I cannot blame, because I sought it, and it did not seek me, I come to the more immediate purpose of this Introduction, and which, my dearest Public, if I do not reckon too much on the continuance of your favours, (though, to say truth, consistency and uniformity of taste are scarce to be reckoned upon by those who court your good graces,) may perhaps go far to make me amends for the loss and damage I have sustained by bringing aunt Dorothy to the country of thick calves, slender ankles, black mustaches, bodiless limbs, (I assure you the fellow is, as my friend Lord L said, a complete giblet-pie, all legs and wings,) and fine sentiments. If she had taken from the half-pay list, a ranting Highlandman, ay, or a dashing son of Erin, I would never have mentioned the subject; but, as the affair has happened, it is scarce possible not to resent such a gratuitous plundering of her own lawful heirs and executors. But "be hushed my dark spirit!" and let us invite our dear Public to a more pleasing theme to us, a more interesting one to others.

By dint of drinking acid tiff, as above mentioned, and smoking cigars, in which I am no novice, my Public are to be informed, that I gradually sipp'd and smoked myself into a certain degree of acquaintance with un homme comme il faut, one of the few fine old specimens of nobility who are still to be found in France; who, like mutilated statues of an antiquated and obsolete worship, still command a certain portion of awe

VOL. VIII.

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and estimation in the eyes even of those by whom neither one nor other are voluntarily rendered.

On visiting the coffee-house of the village, I was, at first, struck with the singular dignity and gravity of this gentleman's manners, his sedulous attachment to shoes and stockings, in contempt of half-boots and pantaloons, the croix de Saint Louis at his button-hole, and a small white cockade in the loup of his old-fashioned schakos. There was something interesting in his whole appearance; and besides, his gravity among the lively group around him, seemed, like the shade of a tree in the glare of a sunny landscape, more interesting from its rarity. I made such advances towards acquaintance as the circumstances of the place, and the manners of the country, authorized -that is to say, I drew near him, smoked my cigar by calm and intermitted puffs, which were scarcely visible, and asked him those few questions which good-breeding everywhere, but more especially in France, permits strangers to put, without hazarding the imputation of impertinence. The Marquis de Hautlieu, for such was his rank, was as short and sententious as French politeness permitted he answered every question, but proposed nothing, and encouraged no farther inquiry.

The truth was, that, not very accessible to foreigners of any nation, or even to strangers among his own countrymen, the Marquis was peculiarly shy towards the English. A remnant of ancient national prejudice might dictate this feeling; or it might arise from his idea that they are a haughty, purse-proud people, to whom rank, united with straitened circumstances, affords as much subject for scorn as for pity; or, finally, when he reflected on certain recent events, he might perhaps feel mortified, as a Frenchman, even for those successes, which had restored his master to the throne, and himself to a diminished property and dilapidated chateau. His dislike, however, never assumed a more active form than that of alienation from English society. When the affairs of strangers required the interposition of his influence in their behalf, it was uniformly granted with the courtesy of a French gentleman, who knew what is due to himself and to national hospitality.

At length, by some chance, the Marquis made the discovery, that the new frequenter of his ordinary was a native of Scotland, a circumstance which told mightily in my favour. Some of his own ancestors, he informed me, had been of Scottish origin, and he believed his house had still some relations in what he was pleased to call the province of Hanguisse, in that country. The connection had been acknowledged early in the last century on both sides, and he had once almost determined, during his exile, (for it may be supposed that the Marquis had joined the ranks of Condé, and shared all the misfortunes and distresses of emigration,) to claim the acquaintance and protection of his Scottish friends. But, after all, he said, he cared not to present himself before them in circumstances which could do them but small credit, and which they might think entailed some little burden, perhaps even some little disgrace; so that he thought it best to trust in Providence, and do the best he could for his own support. What that was I never could learn; but I am sure it inferred nothing which could be discreditable to the excellent old man, who held fast his opinions and his loyalty, through good and bad repute, till time restored him, aged, indigent, and broken-spirited, to the country which he had left in the prime of youth and health, and sobered by age into patience, instead of that tone of high resentment, which promised speedy vengeance upon those who expelled him. I might have laughed at some points of the Marquis's character, at his prejudices, particularly, both of birth and politics, if I had known him under more prosperous circumstances; but, situated as he was, even if they had not been fair and

honest prejudices, turning on no base or interested motive, one must have respected him as we respect the confessor or the martyr of a religion which is not entirely our own. By degrees we became good friends, drank our coffee, smoked our cigar, and took our bavaroise together, for more than six weeks, with little interruption from avocations on either side. Having, with some difficulty, got the key-note of his inquiries concerning Scotland, by a fortunate conjecture that the province d'Hanguisse could only be our shire of Angus, I was enabled to answer the most of his queries concerning his allies there in a manner more or less satisfactory, and was much surprised to find the Marquis much better acquainted with the genealogy of some of the distinguished families in that country, than I could possibly have expected.

On his part, his satisfaction at our intercourse was so great, that he at length wound himself to such a pitch of resolution, as to invite me to dine at the Chateau de Hautlieu, well deserving the name, as occupying a commanding eminence on the banks of the Loire. This building lay about three miles from the town at which I had settled my temporary establishment; and when I first beheld it, I could easily forgive the mortified feelings which the owner testified, at receiving a guest in the asylum which he had formed out of the ruins of the palace of his fathers. He gradually, with much gaiety, which yet. evidently covered a deeper feeling, prepared me for the sort of place I was about to visit; and for this he had full opportunity whilst he drove me in his little cabriolet, drawn by a large heavy Norman horse, towards the ancient building.

Its remains run along a beautiful terrace overhanging the river Loire, which had been formerly laid out with a succession of flights of steps, highly ornamented with statues, rock-work, and other artificial embellishments, descending from one terrace to another, until the very verge of the river was attained. All this architectural decoration, with its accompanying parterres of rich flowers and exotic shrubs, had, many years since, given place to the more profitable scene of the vine-dresser's labours; yet the remains, too massive to be destroyed, are still visible, and, with the various artificial slopes and levels of the high bank, bear perfect evidence how actively Art had been here employed to decorate Nature.

Few of these scenes are now left in perfection; for the fickleness of fashion has accomplished in England the total change which devastation and popular fury have produced in the French pleasure-grounds. For my part, I am contented to subscribe to the opinion of the best qualified judge of our time,* who thinks we have carried to an extreme our taste for simplicity, and that the neighbourhood of a stately mansion requires some more ornate embellishments than can be derived from the meagre accompaniments of grass and gravel. A highly romantic situation may be degraded, perhaps, by an attempt at such artificial ornaments; but then, in by far the greater number of sites, the intervention of more architectural decoration than is now in use, seems necessary to redeem the naked tameness of a large house, placed by itself in the midst of a lawn, where it looks as much unconnected with all around, as if it had walked out of town upon an airing.

How the taste came to change so suddenly and absolutely, is rather a singular circumstance, unless we explain it on the same principle on which the three friends of the Father in Molière's comedy recommend a cure for the melancholy of his daughter-that he should furnish her apartment, namely, with paintings- with tapestry-or with china, according to the different commodities in which each of them was a dealer. Tried by this scale, we may perhaps discover, that, of old, the architect laid out the garden and the pleasure-grounds in the neighbourhood of the mansion, and, naturally enough, displayed his own art there in statues and vases, and paved terraces and flights of steps,

See Price's Essay on the Picturesque, in many passages; but I would particularize the beautiful and highly poetical account which he gives of his own feelings on destroying, at the dictate of an improver, an ancient sequestrated garden, with ih yew hedges, ornamented iron gates, and secluded wilderness.

with ornamented balustrades; while the gardener, subordinate in rank, endeavoured to make the vegetable kingdom correspond to the prevailing taste, and cut his evergreens into verdant walls, with towers and battlements, and his detached trees into a resemblance of statuary. But the wheel has since revolved, so as to place the landscapegardener, as he is called, almost upon a level with the architect; and hence a liberal and somewhat violent use is made of spade and pick-axe, and a conversion of the ostentatious labours of the architect into a ferme ornée, as little different from the simplicity of Nature, as displayed in the surrounding country, as the comforts of convenient and cleanly walks, imperiously demanded in the vicinage of a gentleman's residence, can possibly admit.

To return from this digression, which has given the Marquis's cabriolet (its activity greatly retarded by the downward propensities of Jean Roast-beef, which I suppose the Norman horse cursed as heartily as his countrymen of old time execrated the stolid obesity of a Saxon slave) time to ascend the hill by a winding causeway, now much broken, we came in sight of a long range of roofless buildings, connected with the western extremity of the Castle, which was totally ruinous. "I should apologize," he said, "to you, as an Englishman, for the taste of my ancestors, in connecting that row of stables with the

architecture of the chateau. I know in your country it is usual to remove them to some distance; but my family had an hereditary pride in horses, and were fond of visiting them more frequently than would have been convenient if they had been kept at a greater distance. Before the Revolution, I had thirty fine horses in that ruinous line of buildings." This recollection of past magnificence escaped from him accidentally, for he was generally sparing in alluding to his former opulence. It was quietly said, without any affectation either of the importance attached to early wealth, or as demanding sympathy for its having passed away. It awakened unpleasing reflections, however, and we were both silent, till, from a partially repaired corner of what had been a porter's lodge, a lively French paysanne, with eyes as black as jet, and as brilliant as diamonds, came out with a smile, which showed a set of teeth that duchesses might have envied, and took the reins of the little carriage."

"Madelon must be groom to-day," said the Marquis, after graciously nodding in return for her deep reverence to Monsieur, "for her husband is gone to market; and for La Jeunesse, he is almost distracted with his various occupations.-Madelon," he continued, as we walked forward under the entrance-arch, crowned with the mutilated armorial bearings of former lords, now half-obscured by moss and rye-grass, not to mention the vagrant branches of some unpruned shrubs,-" Madelon was my wife's god-daughter, and was educated to be fille-de-chambre to my daughter."

This passing intimation that he was a widowed husband and childless father, increased my respect for the unfortunate nobleman, to whom every particular attached to his present situation brought doubtless its own share of food for melancholy reflection. He proceeded, after the pause of an instant, with something of a gayer tone,-" You will be entertained with my poor La Jeunesse," he said, "who, by the way, is ten years older than I am"-(the Marquis is above sixty)-" he reminds me of the player in the Roman Comique who acted a whole play in his own proper person-he insists on being