while in the act of being shod, a case in which our Vulcans trust to an ordinary halter and their own address. But a Flemish horse is immured within a wooden erection of about his own size, having a solid roof, supported by four massive posts, such as a British carpenter would use to erect a harbour-crane. The animal's head is fastened between two of these huge columns with as many chains and cords as might have served to bind Baron Trenck; and the foot which is to be shod is secured in a pair of stocks, which extend between two of the upright beams. This is hardly worth writing, though ridiculous to look at; but there is something, as Anstey says, "so clumsy and clunch" in the massive strength of the apparatus, in the very unnecessary extent of the precaution, and in the waste of time, labour, and materials, that it may be selected as an indication of a national character, displaying itself in the most ordinary and trifling particulars.

Adieu, my dear friend; I am sorry I can send you no more curious information on your favourite subject. But it would be unnecessary to one who is skilled in all the modern arts of burning without fire, and feeding without pasture; and who requires no receipts from Holland to teach him how to lay on so much fat upon a bullock or a pig, as will make the flesh totally unfit for eating. Yours affectionately, PAUL.

LETTER XI.

TO THE SAME.

Road to Paris-Valenciennes-Garrison of Valenciennes-Dismay of the Inhabitants -Disbanded Garrison of Condé-Extortions of the Innkeepers-French Roads -Appearance of the Country-Rivers-Churches-Fortified Towns-Want of Ruins of Feudal Castles-of Farm-houses-of Enclosures-Mode of Feeding Cattle-Want of Country-Seats-French Forests-Richness of the Soil-Mad Ambition of the French Retaliation-Foraging Parties-Odd Rencontre→→ Bourbon Badges-Strict Discipline of the British-Military License of the Prussians--Military Method of Picking Locks-Interesting Adventure-Distress of a Flemish Peasant at the Loss of his Horses-Discomforts felt by the British-Regulations of Post respected-Towns-Cambray-Peronne-Attachment of the People in the Towns to the Bourbons-Fêtes on the Restoration-Pont de St Maxence-Senlis-Road to Chantilly-Forest of Chantilly-Chantilly occupied by the Prussians-Palace-Stable of the Prince of Condé-Ruins of the PalaceLe Petit Chateau-Ruins of the Palace.

I HAVE now, my dear friend, reached Paris, after traversing the road from Brussels to this conquered capital through sights and sounds of war, and yet more terrible marks of its recent ravages. The time was interesting, for although our route presented no real danger, yet it was not, upon some occasions, without such an appearance of it as na

turally to impress a civilian with a corresponding degree of alarm. All was indeed new to me, and the scenes which I beheld were such as press most deeply on the feelings.

We were following the route of the victorious English army, to which succours of every sort, and reinforcements of troops recently landed in Flanders, were pressing eagerly forward, so that the towns and roads were filled with British and foreign troops. For the war; although ended to all useful and essential purposes, could not in some places be said to be actually finished. Condé had surrendered but a few days before, and Valenciennes still held out, and, as report informed us, was to undergo a renewal of the bombardment. Another and contrary rumour assured us that an armistice had taken place, and that, as non-combatants, the garrison would permit a party even as alarming as our own to pass through the town without interruption. I felt certainly a degree of curiosity to see the most formidable operation of modern war, but, as I was far from wishing the city of Valeneiennes to have been burnt for my amusement, we were happy to find that the latter report was accurate. Accordingly we passed the works and batteries of the besiegers unquestioned by the Dutch and Prussian videttes, who were stalking to and fro upon their posts, and proceeded to the gate of the place, where we underwent a brief examination from the non-commissioned officer on duty, who looked at our passporis, requested to know if we were military men, and being answered in the negative, permitted us to enter a dark, ill-built, and dirty town. "And these are the men," I thought, as I eyed the ill-dressed and ragged soldiers upon duty at the gates of Valenciennes, "these are the men who have turned the world upside down, and whose name has been the nightmare of Europe, since most of this generation have written man!" They looked ugly and dirty and savage enough certainly, but seemed to have little superiority in strength or appearance to the Dutch or Belgians. There was, indeed, in the air and eye of the soldiers of Bonaparte (for such these military men still called themselves), something of pride and self-elation, that indicated undaunted confidence in their own skill and valour; but they appeared disunited and disorganized. Some wore the white cockade, others still displayed the tricolour, and one prudent fellow had, for his own amusement and that of his comrades, stuck both in his hat at once, so as to make a cocarde de convenance, which might suit either party that should get uppermost. We were not permitted to go upon the ramparts, and I did not think it necessary to walk about a town in possession of a hostile soldiery left to the freedom of their own will. The inhabitants looked dejected and unhappy, and our landlady, far from displaying the liveliness of a Frenchwoman, was weeping-ripe, and seemed ready to burst into

tears at every question which we put to her. Their apprehensions had been considerably relieved by General Rey having himself assumed the white cockade; but as he still refused to admit any of the allied troops within the city, there remained a great doubt whether the allies would content themselves with the blockade, to which they had hitherto restricted their operations against Valenciennes. The inhabitants were partial, the landlady said,, to the English, with whom they were well acquainted, as Valenciennes had been a principal depôt for the prisoners of war; but they deprecated their town being occupied by the Prussians or Belgians, in whose lenity they seemed to place but little reliance.

On the road next day we met with very undesirable company, being the disbanded garrison of Condé, whom the allies had dismissed after occupying that town. There is, you may have remarked, something sinister in the appearance of a common soldier of any country when he is divested of his uniform. The martial gait, look, and manner, and the remaining articles of military dress which he has retained, being no longer combined with that neatness which argues that the individual makes part of a civilized army, seem menacing and ominous from the want of that assurance. If this is the case even with the familiar faces of our own soldiery, the wild and swarthy features, mustaches, and singular dress of foreigners, added much, as may well be supposed, of the look of banditti to the garrison of Condé. They were, indeed, a true sample of the desperate school to which they belonged, for it was not many days since they had arrested and put to death a French loyalist officer, named Gordon, solely for summoning them to surrender the town to the king. For this crime the brother of the murdered individual is now invoking vengeance, but as yet fruitlessly, at the court of the Tuileries. These desperadoes, strolling in bands of eight or ten or twenty, as happened, occupied the road for two or three miles, and sullen resentment and discontent might easily be traced in their looks. They offered us no rudeness, however, but contented themselves with staring hard at us, as a truculent-looking fellow would now and then call out Vive le Roi! and subjoin an epithet or two to show that it was uttered in no mood of loyal respect. At every cross-road two or three dropped off from the main body, after going, with becoming grace, through the ceremony of embracing and kissing their greasy companions. The thought involuntarily pressed itself upon our mind, what will become of these men, and what of the thousands who, in similar circumstances, are now restored to civil life, with all the wild habits and ungoverned passions which war and license have so long fostered? Will the lion lie down with the kid, or the trained freebooter return to the peaceable and laborious pursuits of

civil industry? Or are they not more likely to beg, borrow, starve, and steal, until some unhappy opportunity shall again give them a standard and a chieftain?

We were glad when we got free of our military fellow-travellers, with whom I should not have chosen to meet by night, or in solitude, being exactly of their appearance who would willingly say "Stand" to a true man. But we had no depredations to complain of, excepting the licensed extortions of the innkeepers, -a matter of which you are the less entitled to complain, because every prudent traveller makes his bargain for his refreshments and lodging before he suffers the baggage to be taken from his carriage. Each reckoning is, therefore, a formal treaty between you and mine host or hostess, in which you have your own negligence or indifference to blame, if you are very much overreached. It is scarce necessary to add, that the worst and poorest inns are the most expensive in proportion. But I ought not to omit informing you, that notwithstanding a mode of conducting their ordinary business, so much savouring of imposition, there is no just room to charge the French with more direct habits of dishonesty. Your baggage and money are always safe from theft or depredation; and when I happened to forget a small writing-box, in which there was actually some money, and which had the appearance of being intended for securing valuable articles, an ostler upon horseback overtook our carriage with it before I had discovered my mistake. Yet it would have cost these people only a lie to say they knew nothing of it, especially as their house was full of soldiers of different nations, whose presence certainly afforded a sufficient apology for the disappearance of such an article. This incident gave me a favourable opinion of this class of society in France, as possessed at least of that sort of limited honesty which admits of no peculation excepting in the regular way of business.

The road from Brussels to Paris is, in its ordinary state, destitute of objects to interest the traveller. The highways, planned by Sully, and completed by his followers in office, have a magnificence elsewhere unknown. Their great breadth argues the little value of ground at the time they were laid out; but the perfect state in which the central causeway is maintained, renders the passage excellent even in the worst weather, while the large track of ground on each side gives an ample facility to use a softer road during the more favourable season. They are usually shadowed by triple rows of elms, and frequently of fruittrees, which have a rich and pleasant effect. But much of the picturesque delights of travelling are lost in France, owing to the very circumstances which have rendered the roads so excellent. For as they were all made by the authority of a government, which possessed and exercised the power of going as directly from one point to another as

the face of the country admitted, they preserve commonly that long and inflexible straight line, of all others least promising to the traveller, who longs for the gradual openings of landscape afforded by a road, which, in sweet and varied modulation, "winds round the corn-field. and the hill of vines," being turned as it were from its forward and straight direction by respect for ancient property and possession, some feeling for the domestic privacy and convenience, some sympathy even for the prejudices and partialities, of a proprietor. I love not the stoical virtue of a Brutus, even in laying out a turnpike-road, and should augur more happily of a country (were there nothing else to judge by) where the public appears to have given occasionally a little way to spare private property and domestic seclusion, than of one where the high road goes right to its mark without respect to either. In the latter case it only proves the authority of those who administer the government; in the former, it indicates respect for private rights, for the protection of which government itself is instituted.

But the traveller in France, upon my late route, has less occasion than elsewhere to regret the rectilinear direction of the road on which he journeys, for the country offers no picturesque beauty. The rivers are sluggish, and have flat uninteresting banks. In the towns there. sometimes occurs a church worth visiting, but no other remarkable building of any kind; and the sameness of the architecture of the 15th century, to which period most of them may be referred, is apt to weary the attention when you have visited four or five churches in the course of two days. The fortifications of the towns are of the modern kind, and consequently more formidable than picturesque. Of those feudal castles which add such a venerable grace to the landscape in many places of England and Scotland, I have not seen one either ruinous or entire. It would seem that the policy of Louis XI., to call up his nobility from their estates to the court, and to render them as far as possible dependent upon the crown,-a policy indirectly seconded by the destruction of the noble families which took place in the civil wars of the League, and more systematically by the arts observed during the reign of Louis XIV.,-had succeeded so entirely, as to root out almost all traces of the country having ever been possessed by a noblesse campagnarde, who found their importance, their power and their respectability, dependent on the attachment of the peasants among whom they lived, and over whom their interest extended. There are no ruins of their ancient and defensible habitations; and the few, the very few country houses which the traveller sees, resemble those built in our own country about the reign of Queen Anne; while the grounds about them seem in general neglected, the fences broken, and the whole displaying that appearance of waste, which deforms a property after the absence of a proprietor for some years.