leaning on one side within her hand:-a 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 riband, 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 had 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.-I then steeped it in my own and then in her's-and then in mine-and then I wiped her's 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 to 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 beat him for the theft;-she had washed it, she said, in the brook, and kept it ever since in

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her pocket to restore it to him in case she should ever see him again, which, she added, he had half promised her. As she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to let me see it; she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine-leaves, tied round with a tendril;-on opening it, I saw an S marked in one of the corners.

She had since that, she told me, strayed as far as Rome, and walked round St. Peter's once-and returned back-that she found her way alone across the Apennines had travelled over all Lombardy without money-and through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes:-how she had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could not tell;-but God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.

Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I; and wast thou in my own land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it and shelter thee: thou shouldst eat of my own bread and drink of my own cup;-I would be kind to thy Sylvio in all thy weaknesses and wanderings I would seek after thee and bring thee back; -when the sun went down I would say my prayers: and when I had done thou shouldst play thy evening song upon thy pipe, nor would the incense of my sacrifice be worse accepted for entering heaven along with that of a broken heart

Nature melted within me, as I uttered this; and Maria observing, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the stream. And where will you dry it, Maria? said I.-I'll dry it in my bo. som, said she-'twill do me good.

And is your heart still so warm, Maria? said I.

I touched upon the string on which hung all her sorrows;-she looked with wistful disorder for some time in my face; and then, without saying any thing, took her pipe and played her service to the Virgin.The string I had touched ceased to vibrate;-in a moment or two Maria returned to herself-let her pipe fall-and rose up.

THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 107

And where are you going, Maria? said I.-She said, to Moulines. Let us go, said I, together.Maria put her arm within mine, and lengthening the string, to let the dog follow-in that order we enter ed Moulines.

MARIA.

MOULINES.

THOUGH I hate salutations and greetings in the market place, yet when we got into the middle of this, I stopped to take my last look and last farewell of Maria.

Maria, though not tall, was nevertheless of the first order of fine forms:-affliction had touched her looks with something that was scarce earthly;-still she was feminine; and so much was there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for in woman, that could the traces be ever worn out of her brain, and those of Eliza out of mine, she should not only eat of my bread and drink of my cup, but Maria should lie in my bosom, and be unto me as a daughter.

Adieu, poor luckless maiden I-Imbibe the oil and wine which the compassion of a stranger, as he journeyeth on his way, now pours into thy wounds ;the Being, who has twice bruised thee, can only bind them up for ever.

THE BOURBONNOIS.

THERE was nothing from which I had painted out for myself so joyous a riot of the affections, as in this journey in the vintage, through this part of France; but pressing through this gate of sorrow to it, my sufferings have totally unfitted me: in every scene of festivity I saw Maria in the back ground of the piece, sitting pensive under her poplar; and I had got almost to Lyons before I was able to cast a shade across her.

-Dear Sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou 108

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chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw-and 'tis thou who lifts him up to Heaven-Eternal fountain of our feelings!-'tis here I trace thee-and this is thy "divinity which stirs within me;"--not that, in some sad and sickening moments, " my soul shrinks back upon herself and startles at destruction!" mere pomp of words!-but that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond myself; -all comes from thee, great-great Sensorium of the world! which vibrates, if a hair of our heads but falls upon the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation.-Touched with thee, Eugenius draws my curtain when I languish-hears my tale of symptoms, and blames the weather for the disorder of his nerves. Thou givest a portion of it sometimes to the roughest peasant who traverses the bleakest mountains; he finds the lacerated lamb of another's flock. This moment I behold him leaning with his head against his crook, with piteous inclination looking down upon it!-Oh! had I come one moment sooner! it bleeds to death!his gentle heart bleeds with it!

Peace to thee, generons swain ! I see thou walkest off with anguish-but thy joys shall balance it;for, happy is thy cottage--and happy is the sharer of it and happy are the lambs which sport about you.

THE SUPPER.

A SHOE coming loose from the fore-foot of the thill. horse, at the beginning of the ascent of mount Tauri. ra, the postillion dismounted, twisted the shoe off, and put it in his pocket; as the ascent was of five or six miles, and that horse our main dependance, I made a point of having the shoe fastened on again, as well as we could; but the postillion had thrown away the nails, and the hammer in the chaise-box being of no great use without them, I submitted to go on.

He had not mounted half a mile higher, when coming to a fiinty piece of road the poor devil lost a second shoe, and from off his other fore-foot; I then.

got out of the chaise in good earnest; and seeing a house about a quarter of a mile to the left hand, with a great deal to do I prevailed upon the postillion to turn up to it. The look of the house, and of every thing about it, as we drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the disaster. It was a litle farm-house, surrounded with about twenty acres of vineyard, about as much corn-and close to the house, on one side, was a potagerie of an acre and an half, full of every thing which could make plenty in a French peasant's house; and, on the other side, was a little wood, which furnished wherewithal to dress it. It was about eight in the evening when I got to the houseso I left the postillion to manage his point as he could; and, for mine, I walked directly into the house.

The family consisted of an old grey-headed man and his wife, with five or six sons and sons-in-law and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy out of them.

They were all sitting down together to their lentil. soup; a large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table; and a fiaggon of wine at each end of it promised joy through the stages of the repast;-'twas a feast of love.

The old man rose up to meet me, and with a respectful cordiality would have me sit down at the table; my heart was set down the moment I entered the room; so I sat down at once like a son of the family; and to invest myself in the character as speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed the old man's knife, and taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty luncheon: and, as I did it, I saw a testimony in every eye, not only of an honest welcome, but of a welcome mixed with thanks that I had not seemed to doubt it.

Was it this or tell me, Nature, what else it was that made this morsel so sweet and to what magic I owe it, that the draught I took of their flaggon was so delicious with it, that they remain upon my palate to this hour ?