have said, Je suis toujours prêt à vous servir (for so it stands in the book)." The poor man opened both his eyes, endeavoured, as well as he could, to comprehend me, for a Frenchman is ingenious where money is to be had; but a scene of qui pro quos began, which ended in my convincing him that I was little better than a raging madman; and when, descending very particularly into details, I took the dialogues as a model not only of my language but my dress, and desired him to "Doubler le juste au corps d'une étoffe des Indes, et la culotte des peaux bien passés," he snatched up his hat, and ran out of the room, exclaiming, "Le pauvre homme! Le pauvre homme! il est fou comme un Anglois." A thin pale gentleman in black, who was passing at the time, and overheard the tailor, and saw my laborious gesticulations to make myself understood, immediately took hold of my wrist, informed he was a physician, and with a bow added that he had a maison de santé at my service. Here the dialogue again served only to lead me astray. Beginning with the first sentence of the dialogue with a physician, I replied, “Un medecin doit être soigneux et ponctuel." "Ah!" said the doctor, “il est bien malade! Qu'avez vous, Monsieur? Comment vous trouvez vous?" "Monsieur le Medecin," I continued, "j'ai la fièvre, j'ai mal à la tête, mon estomac est foible, je suis pulmonique, mon mal est sans resource, il me faut mourir." "Voila

un Anglois passablement melancholique," said the Doctor, shaking his head; and stepping to the window, he beckoned into the street. Four men immediately came up, and bound me hand and foot, while the doctor, taking out his lancet, was on the point of performing a copious venesection, when the valet de place entered, and was bail for my sanity.

It would be an endless task to recapitulate the steps by which I passed from my boarding-school dialect, to a sufficient knowledge of conversational French to make my own purchases; to know that "foulard" is a silk handkerchief; "potage au lait" no soup, but simple boiled milk! and a dress "bien historie," many flounced petticoat.

As the business of a traveller is to become acquainted with men and manners, I did not fail to visit the royal court, where I saw an infinity of things worthy of observation. Nothing, however, struck me more than the revolutionary innovation which has banished the hoop, and substituted an endless elongation of train, as the distinctive character of full dress. This interesting and impressive fact suggested many profound reflections on the, chances and changes of sublunary things; and on those incongruities in French politics, which render the restored government neither fish nor flesh, neither acceptable to ultras nor liberals; and I acknowledged the full force of a loyal and patriotic countrywoman's exclamation, and, like her, thanked God that I was, "born in a country where ladies still go to

court in hoops." Little indeed did I then dream of the revolution which was so soon to take place at home, and which was to reduce the British fair to the unhooped level of Parisian courtiers.

Foreign travel is vastly superior, in every point of view, to those domestic tours which formerly were the object of my utmost ambition. At every moment something turns up to elevate and surprise; and novelty and variety keep the senses in a constant state of ecstatic excitement. One might go from Johnny Groat's house to the Land's End, without meeting a tithe of the extraordinary things that occur between the Palais Royal and the Passage du Panorama. But then, on the other hand, numerous are the disappointments and vexations which await the unpractised traveller when dismissed from the friendly guidance of Monsieur Le Conducteur, and left in the middle of the Messagerie, that wilderness of stage-coaches, to find a lodging when or how he can. Not however that, like a friend of mine, who has a quick eye to the main chance, I ever called for a bottle of Port to save the expense of French wine, and made myself sick at a greater price than would have purchased Champagne; but I must needs own, that I was on the brink of starvation before I could compass the ordering of a dinner. On one occasion, tempted by the remarkable cheapness of price, and by a tender recollection of mutton-chops stewed with carrots and turnips, I called for des haricots, and was taught that nothing can be less like our own honest English mutton haricot, than the blanched horsebeans which in France bear that seducing appellation. Repeatedly did I encounter the most disagreeable disappointments in mistaking fish for flesh, sweet things for vegetables, and so reversing the whole economy of the table; and I was thus almost daily reminded of a worthy Londoner, who, in total ignorance of the language, lived at the discretion of the garçon; till, accidentally learning that dindon was French for a turkey, he contrived to make the cook understand he would have a "dingdong every day," and so at least secured one substantial dish.

In the course however of a few months, I was enabled to fling off the Johnny-raw, to do the honours, and show my own superiority in local knowledge to my less experienced countrymen. I had already got into very good (English) society, was well known in the English newspaper-room, had made my rounds of the theatres and restaurateurs, could distinguish an omelette soufflé from a pancake, could tell that crême d'absynthe was not a custard, and knew Fanny Bias from Mademoiselle Burgoin: had lost some money at the Salon, and lent more to obliging Englishmen who had forced themselves on my acquaintance; and had seen all the sights between the Elephant and the Barrière de Clichi, and from the Catacombs to the windmills on Montmartre; when, towards the end of the spring, a sudden flight of Eng

lish returning from Rome and Naples, reduced me once more to play second-fiddle, and rendered me unworthy to be a member of the Traveller's club. For what, alas! is Rubens to Raphael! Le Brun to Domenichino! St. Sulpice to San Paolo fuori le mura! or a Parisian cabriolet to a Venetian gondola! Then there is no Pope in Paris; and however stormy the debates in the Chambers, they hold no comparison with a volcano; nor is there in all France so romantic and interesting an establishment as the Neapolitan banditti. Nothing, therefore, was left but, like Michael Cassio, to "put money in my purse" and cross the Alps.

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It would be a long story to relate my numerous adventures in this journey. Here it was that I experienced what before I had learned from the mouth of a travelling cockney, that, passing through a country without speaking the language, is "dgood fun." Suffice it at present to say, that the ambitious ubiquity of my countrymen still kept the start of my utmost endeavours. At Naples I encountered travellers returning from Sicily; from Sicily I was in like manner driven to the isles of Greece: and had it not been for the fate of Mungo Park, I believe I should have explored the centre of Africa, in order to outstrip the dandy tourists and travelling belles, who have divided among them the public ear, and rule over converzationes and dinner-tables, discoursing of all they have seen between "St. Mary the Major and St. John's latter-end."—(Il Santa Maria Maggiore e San Giovanni Laterano); mistaking Pius the Seventh's PM (the initials of Pontifex Maximus) for a Member of Parliament; and the Venus de' Medici for a sister of Mr. Roscoe's Lorenzo. M.

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LINES WRITTEN IN THE COUNTRY.
DEAR Ashurst! again thy loved scenes I revisit,
Thy thyme-scented uplands, thy valleys and skies;
And yet, in the midst of these beauties-why is it
I feel that a sigh, though unbidden, will rise?
Alas! such is Man-though he thirst for the fountain
When breathing its freshness, he pants at the brink,
In alarm lest the torrents that gush from the mountain,
May mix with its waters and poison his drink.

And such too is Life!-in its pleasures we sorrow,
For we know that the future must snatch us away;
And in fear of the clouds that may gather to-morrow,
We lose half the sunshine that brightens to-day.

ADDRESS TO THE ALABASTER SARCOPHAGUS, LATELY DEPOSITED IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

THOU alabaster relic! while I hold

My hand upon thy sculptured margin thrown,
Let me recal the scenes thou couldst unfold,

Mightst thou relate the changes thou hast known,
For thou wert primitive in thy formation,
Launch'd from th' Almighty's hand at the Creation.

Yes-thou wert present when the stars and skies
And worlds unnumber'd roll'd into their places;
When God from Chaos bade the spheres arise,
And fix'd the blazing sun upon its basis,
And with his finger on the bounds of space
Mark'd out each planet's everlasting race.

How many thousand ages from thy birth

Thou slepst in darkness, it were vain to ask,
Till Egypt's sons upheaved thee from the earth,
And year by year pursued their patient task;
Till thou wert carved and decorated thus,
Worthy to be a King's Sarcophagus.

What time Elijah to the skies ascended,
Or David reign'd in holy Palestine,

Some ancient Theban Monarch was extended
Beneath the lid of this emblazon'd shrine,
And to that subterranean palace borne
Which toiling ages in the rock had worn.

Thebes from her hundred portals fill'd the plain
To see the car on which thou wert upheld:-
What funeral pomps extended in thy train,

What banners waved, what mighty music swell'd,
As armies, priests, and crowds bewail'd in chorus
Their King-their God—their Serapis-their Orus!

Thus to thy second quarry did they trust

Thee, and the Lord of all the nations round.
Grim King of Silence! Monarch of the dust!
Embalm'd-anointed-jewell'd-sceptred-crown'd,

Here did he lie in state, cold, stiff, and stark,
A leathern Pharaoh grinning in the dark.

Thus ages roll'd-but their dissolving breath
Could only blacken that imprison'd thing,
Which wore a ghastly royalty in death,
As if it struggled still to be a King;
And each revolving century, like the last,
Just dropp'd its dust upon thy lid-and pass'd.

The Persian conqueror o'er Egypt pour'd
His devastating host-a motley crew;
The steel-clad horsemen-the barbarian horde-
Music and men of every sound and hue-
Priests, archers, eunuchs-concubines and brutes,
Gongs, trumpets, cymbals, dulcimers and lutes.

Then did the fierce Cambyses tear away

The ponderous rock that seal'd the sacred tomb; Then did the slowly-penetrating ray

Redeem thee from long centuries of gloom, And lower'd torches flash'd against thy side As Asia's king thy blazon'd trophies eyed.

Pluck'd from his grave, with sacrilegious taunt,
The features of the royal corpse they scann'd:-
Dashing the diadem from his temple gaunt,

They tore the sceptre from his graspless hand,
And on those fields, where once his will was law,
Left him for winds to waste, and beasts to gnaw.

Some pious Thebans, when the storm was past,
Upclosed the sepulchre with cunning skill,
And Nature, aiding their devotion, cast

Over its entrance a concealing rill.

Then thy third darkness came, and thou didst sleep
Twenty-three centuries in silence deep.

But he from whom nor pyramid nor sphinx

Can hide its secresies, Belzoni, came;

From the tomb's mouth unloosed the granite links,
Gave thee again to light, and life, and fame,
And brought thee from the sands and deserts forth
To charm the pallid children of the North.

Thou art in London, which, when thou wert new,
Was, what Thebes is, a wilderness and waste,
Where savage beasts more savage men pursue,
A scene by Nature cursed-by man disgraced.
Now 'tis the world's metropolis-the high
Queen of arms, learning, arts, and luxury.

Here, where I hold my hand, 'tis strange to think
What other hands perchance preceded mine;
Others have also stood beside thy brink,

And vainly conn'd the moralizing line.

Kings, sages, chiefs, that touch'd this stone, like me,
Where are ye now?—where all must shortly be!

All is mutation;-he within this stone

Was once the greatest monarch of the hour:
His bones are dust-his very name unknown,
Go-learn from him the vanity of power.
Seek not the frame's corruption to control,
But build a lasting mansion for thy soul.

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