begun to form designs; and what is it, but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had excited in her breast, which could have checked them as they rose up?

"We are not adamant," said I, taking hold of her hand; "and there is need of all restraints, till age, in her own time, steals in and lays them on us. But, my dear lady," said I, kissing her hand; "'tis too-too soon."

I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting
She affirmed to Monsieur D and

Madame de V
the Abbé M- that in one half hour I had said more for
revealed religion, than all their Encyclopædia had said against
it. I was listed directly into Madame de V's coterie;
and she put off the epocha of Deism for two years.

I remember it was in this coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was shewing the necessity of a First Cause, when the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room, to tell me my solitaire was pinned too straight about my neck. "It should be plus badinant," said the Count, looking down upon his own; "but a word, Monsieur Yorick, to the wise-"

"And from the wise, Monsieur le Count," replied I, making him a bow, " is enough."

The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardour than ever I was embraced by mortal man.

met.

For three weeks together, 1 was of every man's opinion I "Pardi! ce Monsieur Yorick a autant d'esprit que "C'est un

nous autres." "Il raisonne bien," said another.

bon enfant, said a third. And at this price I could have eaten and drank and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but 't was 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 upon 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, grew sick; went to bed; ordered La Fleur to get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy.

I

I NEVER felt what the 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 was pregnant with adventures

Just Heaven! it would fill up twenty volumes; and, alas! I have but a few small pages left of this 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 me 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 enquire after her.