not have suspended the effects of the * Droits d'aubaine my shirts, and black pair of filk breechesportmanteau and all must have gone to the King of France - even the little picture 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 feize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, whom your fubjects had beckon'd' to their coaft by heaven! SIRE, it is not well done; and much does it grieve me, 'tis the monarch of a people fo civilized and courteous, and fo renowned for fentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with But I have scarce fet a foot in your dominions

CALAIS.

1

WHEN I had finish'd my dinner, and drank the King of France's health, to fatisfy my mind that I bore him no spleen, but, on the contrary, high honor for the humanity of his temper - I rofe up an inch taller for the accommodation.

-No-faid I the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race: they may be misled like other people; but there is a mildness in their blood. As I acknowledged this, I felt a fuffusion of a finer kind upon my cheek-more warm and friendly to man,

1

than what Burgundy (at least of two livres a bottle, which was such as I had been drinking) could have produced.

-Just God! said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, what is there in this world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so many kind-hearted brethren of us, fall out so cruelly as we do by the way?

When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand! he pulls out his purse, and holding it airily and uncompress'd, looks round him, as if he fought for an object to share it with. - In doing this, I felt every vessel in my frame dilate - the arteries beat all chearily together, and every power which sustained life, performed it with so little friction, that 'twould have confounded the most physical precieuse in France: with all her materialism, she could scarce have called me a machine

I'm confident, faid I to myself, I should have overfet her creed.

The acceffion of that idea, carried nature, at that time, as high as she could go I was at peace with the world before, and this finish'd the treaty with myself

- Now, was I a King of France, cried I-what a moment for an orphan to have begg'd his father's portmanteau of me!

A 2.

THE ΜΟΝΚ.

CALAIS.

I had scarce uttered the words, when a poor

monk of the order of St. Francis came into the room to beg something for his convent. No man cares to have his virtues the sport of contingencies - or one man may be generous, as another man is puiffant-fed non quo ad hanc - or be it as it may - for there is no regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our humors; they may depend upon the fame causes, for aught I know, which influence the tides themselves'twould be of no difcredit to us, to suppose it was so: I'm fure at least for myself, that in many a cafe I should be more highly fatisfied, to have it faid by the world, "I had had an affair with the moon in which there was neither fin nor shame," than have it pass altogether as my own act and deed, wherein there was fo much of both.

L

-But be this as it may. The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single fous; and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket-button'd it up-fet myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him: there was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deferved better.

λ

The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a few scatter'd white hairs upon his temples, being all that remained of it, might be about seventy-but from his eyes, and that fort of fire which was in them, which seemed more temper'd by courtesy than years, could be no more than fixty Truth might lie between - He was certainly fixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding fomething seem'd to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account.

It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted-mild, pale-penetrating, free from all common-place ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth - it look'd forwards; but look'd, as if it look'd at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows: but it would have fuited a Bramin, and had I met it upon the plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it.

The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes; one might put it into the hands of any one to design, for 'twas neither elegant or otherwife, but as character and expression made it so: it was a thin, spare form, something above the common fize, if it loft not the distinction by a bend forward in the figure - but it was the attitude of Intreaty; and as it now stands present to my imagination, it gain'd more than it lost by it.

1

When he had entered the room three paces, he stood still; and laying his left hand upon his breast, (a flender white staff with which he journey'd being in his right)-when I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order-and did it with so simple a grace - and fuch an air of deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure - I was bewitch'd not to have been struck with it

-A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him a single fous.

THE ΜΟΝΚ.

CALAIS.

TIS IS very true, faid I, replying to a cast upwards with his eyes, with which he had concluded his address-'tis very true-and heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way fufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.

As I pronounced the words great claims, he gave a flight glance with his eye downwards upon the fleeve of his tunick - I felt the full force of the appeal - I acknowledge it, faid I-a coarse habit, and that but once in three years, with meagre diet - are no great matters; and the true point of pity