A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, T HEY order, faid I, this matter better in France -You have been in France? faid 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 failing, 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 A 2 dozen dozen of shirts and a black pair of filk breeches-" the coat I have on, faid I, "looking at the fleeve, will do" - took a place in the Dover stage; and the pacquet failing at nine the next morningby three I had got fat down to my dinner upon a fricaffee'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'abaine*my shirts, and black pair of filk 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 have told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me to my grave, would have been torn from my * All the effects of strangers (Swiss and Scots excepted) dying in France, are seized by virtue of this law, though the heir be upon the spot the profit of these contingencies being farmed there is no redress. my neck.-Ungenerous! -to seize: upon the wreck of an unwary pafsenger, whom your subjects had beckoned to their coaft by heaven! SIRE, it is not well done; and much does it grieve me, 'tis the monarch of a people io civilized and courteous, and fo renown'd for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with BUT I have scarce set foot in your dominions CALAIS. WHE HEN I had finished my din ner, and drank the king of France's health, to fatisfy 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 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 fuffufion of a finer kind, upon my cheek more warm and friendly to man than what Burgundy (at least of two livres a bottle which was such as I had been drinking) could have produced. -JUST |