AF Ste Zuf. Nicol A SENTIMENTÁL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY: 1768 TO WHICH ARE ADDED THE LETTERS TO ELIZA. BY YORICK. (Sterite-1713-1768) STEREOTYPE EDITION, AT THE PRINTING OFFICE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDERY 1817. = JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. THEY order, said I, this matter better in France 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 mat= ter 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 packet sailing at nine the next morning — by three I had got sat down to my dinner upon a fricassee'd chicken, so incontestably in France, that, had I died that night of an indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the ef fects of the droits d'aubaine (1) my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches portmanteau, and all, must have gone to the king of France even the (1) 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 farmed, there is no redress. 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. Ungenes rous! to seize upon the wreck of an unwary passen= ger, whom your subjects had beckoned 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 renowned for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with= But I have scarce set foot in your dominions.: CALAIS. W HEN I had finished my dinner, and drank the king of France's health, to satisfy my mind that I bore him no spleen, but, on the contrary, high ho nour for the humanity of his temper I rose up an inch taller for the accommodation. No said I the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race they may be misled like other people; bat there is a mildness in. their blood. As I acknow ledged this, I felt a suffusion 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 duced. pro 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 uncompressed, looks round him as if he sought for an object to share it with. In doing this, I felt every the arteries beat all vessel in my frame dilate cheerily together, and every power which sustained life performed it with so little friction, that it would have confounded the most physical précieuse in France: with all her materialism, she could scarce have called me a machine I am confident, said I to myself, I should have overset her creed. The accession of that idea carried nature, at that time, as high as she could go I was at peace with the world before, and this finished the treaty with myself Now, was I a king of France, cried I-what a moment for an orphan to have begged his father's portmanteau of me! THE MONK. CALAIS. or one man 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: may be generous, as another man is puissant sed non, quoad hanc or beitasit may for there is no regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our humours; they may depend upon the same causes, for aught I know, which influence the tides themselves it would oft be no discredit to us to suppose it was so I am sure, at least for myself, that in many a case I should be more highly satisfied to have it said by the world, « I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame,» than have it pass altogether as my own act and deed, wherein there was so much of both. |