A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. THROUGH FRANCE and ITALY. THEY order, said I, this matter better in France -You have been in France? said my gentleman, turning quick upon me with the most civil triumph in the world. Strange! quoth I, debating the matter with myself, that one-and-twenty miles sailing, for 'tis absolutely no further from Dover to Calais, should give a man these rights-I'll look into them; so giving up the argument, I went straight to my lodgings, put up half a dozen shirts and a black pair of silk breeches-" The coat I "have on," said I, looking at the sleeve, "will do❞—took a place in the Dover stage: and the packet sailing at nine the next morning-by three I had got sat down to my dinner upon a fricasee'd. chicken, so incontestibly in France, that had I died that night of an indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the effects of the Droits d'aubane -my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches -portmanteau and all must have gone to the King of France-even the little pic-ture which I have so long worn, and so often have told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me into my grave, would have been torn from my neck. Ungenerous !—to seize upon the wreck of an unwary pas senger, whom your subjects had beckoned * All the effects of strangers (Swiss and Scotch excepted) dying in France, were seized by virtue of this law, though the heir was upon the spot---the profit of these contingencies being farmed there was no redress. to their coast-by heaven! SIRE, it is not well done; and much it does grieve me 'tis the monarch of a people so civilized and courteous, and so renowned for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with But I have scarce set foot in your dominions. CALAIS. WHEN I had finished my dinner, and drank the King of France's health, to satisfy my mind that I bore him no spleen, but on the contrary, high honour for the humanity of his temper-I rose up an inch taller for the accommodation. -No-said I-the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race: they may be misled, like other people; but there is a mildnes in their blood. As I acknowledged this I felt a suffusion of a finer kind upon my cheek-more warm and friendly to ́man, |