passion and another'. The wretch had the audacity to cry through the mouth of one of his characters, 'Mais vive la joie... Vive l'amour! et vive la bagatelle!' Clergyman though he was, he had the irreverence to reflect, when he watched the French peasants dancing, that he 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.' It was a daring thing for a clergyman to perceive a relationship between religion and pleasure. Yet it may, perhaps, excuse him that in his own case the religion of happiness had a great deal of difficulty to overcome. If you are no longer young, if you have spent more than you should have done, if your wife is disagreeable, and though you like your daughter, she is parted from you, if, as you racket about France in a post-chaise you are dying of consumption all the time, then the pursuit of happiness is not so easy after all. Still, pursue sue it one must. One must pirouette about the world, peeping and peering, enjoying a flirtation here, bestowing a few coppers there, and sitting in whatever little patch of sunshine one can find. One must crack a joke, even if the joke is not altogether a decent one. Even in daily life one must not forget to cry 'Hail ye, small, sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it!' One mustbut enough of must; it is not a word that Sterne was fond of using. It is only when one lays the book aside and recalls its symmetry, its fun, its whole-hearted joy in all the different aspects of life, and the brilliant ease and beauty with which they are conveyed to us, that one credits the writer with a backbone of conviction to support him. Was not Thackeray's coward-the man who trifled so immorally with so many women and wrote love-letters on gilt-edged paper when he should have been lying in bed or writing sermons-was he not something of a stoic in his own way? That he was a very great writer we cannot doubt. -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 pacquet sailing at nine the next morning-by three I had got sat down to my dinner upon a fricassee'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'aubaine*--my * All the effects of strangers (Swiss and Scotch excepted) dying in France, are seized by virtue of this law, though the heir be upon the spot-the profit of these contingencies being farm'd, there is no redress. shirts, and black pair of silk breeches-portmanteau and all must have gone to the King of France-even the little picture which I have so long worn, and so often 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 passenger, whom your subjects had beckon'd to their coast-by heaven! SIRE, it is not well done; and much does it grieve me, 'tis the monarch of a people so civilized and courteous, and so renown'd for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with But I have scarce set foot in your dominions |