opinion I met-Pardi! ce Mons. Yorick a autant d'esprit que nos autres.----Il raisonne bien, said another. C'est un bon enfant, said a third. And at this price I could have eat and drank, and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest reckoning, I grew ashamed of it, it was the gain of a slave, every sentiment of honour revolted against it---the higher I got, the more. was I forced on my beggarly system----the better the coterie---the more children of Art---I languished for those of Nature: and one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick--went to bed---ordered La Fleur to get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy. MARIA. MOULINES. I NEVER felt what distress of plenty was, in any one shape. till now--- to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France----in the heyday of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up----a journey, through each step of which, Music beats time to Labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters----to pass through this with my affections flying out, and kindling at every group before me, and every one of them pregnant with adventures. Just heaven!--it would fill up twenty volumes, and, alas !--- I have but a few small pages left to crowd it into, and half of these must be taken up. with the poor Maria my friend Mr. Shandy met with near Moulines. The story he had told of that disordered maid, affected me not a little in the reading; but when I got within the neighbourhood where she lived, it returned so strong into my mind, that I could not resist an impulse which prompted me to go half a league out of the road, to the village where her parents dwelt, to inquire after her. 'Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventuresbut I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them. The old mother came to the door; her looks told me the story before she opened her mouth---She had lost her husband: he had died, she said, of anguish, for the loss of Maria's senses, about a month before----she had feared, at first, she added, that it would have plundered her poor girl of what little understanding was left--but, on the contrary, it had brought her more to herself still she could not rest, her poor daughter, she said, crying, was wandering somewhere about the road- Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? and what made La Fleur, whose heart seemed only to be turned to joy, to pass the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the woman stood and told it? I beckoned to the postillion to turn back into the road When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria seated under a poplar--she was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her handa small brook ran at the foot of the tree. I bid the postillion go on with the chaise to Moulines-and La Fleur to bespeak my supper----and that I would walk after him. She was dressed in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted within a silk net---She had superadded, likewise, to her jacket, a pale green ribband, which fell across her shoulder to the waist; at the end of which hung her pipe. Her goat had been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in lieu of him, which she haď kept tied by a string to her girdle. As I looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with the string "Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio," said she.— I looked in Maria's eyes, and saw she was thinking more of her father than of her lover or her little goat; for as she uttered them the tears trickled down her cheeks. I sat down close by her, and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell, with my handkerchief-Į then steeped it in my own--and then in hers---and then in mine----and then I wiped hers again----and as I did it, I felt such undescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion. I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me of the contrary. MARIA. WHEN Maria had come a little to herself, I asked her if she remembered a pale thin person of a man, who had sat down betwixt her and her goat about two years before? She said she was unsettled much at that time, but remembered it upon two accounts ----that, ill as she was, she saw the person pitied her; and, next, that her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and she had beaten him for the theft---she had washed it, she said, in the brook, and kept M |