IV. Harp of Zion, No. II.: The Song of Deborah

481

488

489

495

V. Bishop Blaise, the Ash-Waddler

VI. Anglo-Gallic Song: The Exposition at the Louvre

VII. The Physician, No. XI.: Of the Nature and Dietetic Use of Water

VIII. Stanzas

513

510

ib.

526

527

532

533

XVI. Second Letter to the New Royal Literary Society

XVIII. The Emigrant

542

546

552

553

XX. The Hunter of the Pyrenees

XXI. Civic Sports, No. II.: The Wedding Day

XXII. Song

XXIII. Stanzas

563

568

ib.

NOTICE.

THE Number for January last begins the fifth volume of the NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, and the third year of Mr. CAMPBELL's Editorship. Subscribers who may wish to begin with the Series commenced by Mr. CAMPBELL, will be supplied with the Work, in neat half binding, without an additional charge on the subscription price-of six dollars a year. The volumes contain about six hundred pages each.

The Numbers of this Work will be forwarded by mail to any part of the United States, on the receipt of a year's subscription by the Publisher,

OLIVER EVERETT,

No. 13, Cornhill, Boston.

FELLOW TRAVELLERS.

"AND do you travel alone ?" is a question that has often been proposed to me in a tone of surprise mixed with remonstrance, when I have opened the project, or described the past incidents, of a journey in which I had no companion. Accident, or the humour of the moment, have in general been the best reasons I could adduce, and perhaps they are as solid ones as most people can assign for their practice in matters of the like importance. But the kind objector is seldom satisfied with this reply, for he thinks (though perhaps he is too polite to say) that a man who rambles forth without any comrade, must be very fastidious, or very unfortunate in his acquaintance. I certainly do not fall within the latter predicament; and if the first imputation be well founded, I may claim some excuse as an old traveller, (not to say an elderly man,) who has, either by choice or chance, associated with wayfarers of almost every character, who knows well how the pleasures of travel and the enjoyments of society may, under propitious circumstances, enhance and recommend each other, but who has also tasted pretty largely of the mortifications that arise in this, as in greater undertakings, from an ill-judged alliance.

If society be requisite on a journey of pleasure, it will be generally agreed that company on a very large scale is not always advantageous to such an expedition. Whether six or six-and-twenty persons go to Blackwall together for the purpose of eating white-bait, is, perhaps, not very material as a question of sentiment; but I would not willingly join a pic-nic party under Stonehenge, or appoint a rendezvous of carriages on the quiet margin of Grasmere. Our Northern neighbours, indeed, have established a steam-boat on Loch Lomond, and the passengers are regularly disembogued where they may take a view of Rob Roy's cave: a very business-like arrangement, by which twenty families at once may be booked for a day's felicity, and enraptured, pursuant to contract, at so much per head; children, I suppose, at half-price. Most persons will say that the promoters of this undertaking have rather signalized their commercial activity than the delicacy of their taste; and yet, if the steam-boat enthusiasts are mistaken in their mode of paying homage to Nature, they do but err a little more palpably than the multitude of prouder tourists, who pour their "select parties" upon every sequestered and romantic country in more aristocratical conveyances. I suppose there is no sober solitary traveller who cannot, like myself, remember some provoking occasion, when his reveries have been put to flight by these gregarious pilgrims of Nature. I had once established myself very luxuriously at a small, convenient inn, standing by itself in the wilds of Cardiganshire, and was listening to the melody of some neighbouring waterfalls, among which I proposed to spend a long summer's evening, when suddenly a different sound broke in upon my meditations; a rumbling of wheels was heard, and, with infinite bustle and commotion, there arrived at the inn-door, two carriages, a gig, and three horsemen. The party alighted: four ladies, an old gentleman and two young ones, two little boys, a valet-de-chambre, two grooms, a lady's maid, a poodle, and a couple of terriers. The gentlemen claimed an old watering-place acquaintance with me, and were polite enough to think it a piece of good

fortune that we should see "the Falls" in each other's company. A vast deal of arrangement, however, and enquiring, and expostulation with the people of the house, was to be gone through before the Falls obtained any share of attention; nor were our thoughts and conversation of a very romantic character when we at last set out for the cascades. One of the horses had suffered a strain; a bottle of fish-sauce had been forgotten; the boys would not keep in their mother's sight; and an old maid, who had been studying Malkin's Tour, strove vigorously to convince our Welsh guide that he had taken the wrong path. When we came to the waterfalls, the old gentleman was disappointed, the mamma was frightened, the maiden lady, armed with note-book and ink-horn, occupied the foreground of the view; the young men spouted parodies of Gray's Bard, and the terriers hunted a rat. As for me, my companions, as I have since heard, discovered me to be a peevish old bachelor, and to have no taste for romantic scenery.

It is the common misfortune of travelling parties, to be clogged with some unblest spirit, who by the peculiarity of his humour, or by some undefinable fatality, never fails to blight the enjoyment and damp the cordiality of his associates. The perfection of this character consists, not in a mere passive sullenness (like my own upon the occasion I just mentioned), but in a wakeful, assiduous, and self-complacent ill-nature. Men of this disposition are particularly fond of travelling in company, and they are just such companions as the "Little Master," who followed Sintram through the haunted valley, or the Dæmon in the Ars Moriendi, who besets a gentleman with the kind suggestion-" Interficias teipsum." He is the most diligent of travellers; he scrupulously sees every thing, and sees only to disapprove like a dog that ranges far and wide for objects of curiosity, and bestows the same mark of contempt on all.

In a journey I once made with some friends through Switzerland, I was, by evil hap, induced to wait upon a gentleman of this humour with a letter of introduction. We were proceeding to the celebrated Lake of the four Cantons, and he, with great politeness, offered to bear us company, and afford us the benefit of his local knowledge. He entertained us, at starting, with a careful enumeration of the things we should not see to advantage at this particular time. The morning was undeniably fine, and one of our boatmen expatiated on its splendour with a profusion of bad French and bad German, till our friend put him to silence by telling him, with a sneer, that if he had the day to sell, he had better leave off puffing and name his price. The skies, as if resenting this affront, became overcast, and a drizzling rain attacked us, re-inforced by icy blasts from between the mountains. We had proposed to visit several places adjoining the lake, which are connected in tradition with the romantic history of William Tell and the Austrian governor; and our kind cicerone insisted that we could see all these spots as well in the worst weather (which he owned we were but too likely to encounter) as in clear sunshine. On, therefore, we went, and our companion, though drenched and chilled like ourselves, and exposed, with us, to some slight danger, became, after his manner, perfectly joyous, and expatiated eloquently upon the sublime piles of rock, the magnificent Alpine vistas, and the variety of lake prospects that might have been visible at each point of our course, if the clouds had not

circumscribed our view. With inexorable complaisance he insisted on escorting us to every spot marked out in our morning's plan, though he confessed they did not deserve so much pains; and as to William Tell, he laboured both long and learnedly to convince us that the adventures of that worthy were at least half fabulous; that it was probable he never slew Gesler at all; that if he did slay Gesler, there was not so much merit in the affair as people imagined; and that, for any thing we knew, neither Tell nor Gesler had ever come within a league of the places we were examining. He dismissed us, at the end of the day, in a state of chagrin and dissatisfaction, which became absolute dismay when he told us that he proposed making such arrangements as would enable him to accompany us in our journey to the Alps of Berne. We exclaimed with one voice that we could not possibly remain another day, and we precipitately quitted his neighbourhood the next morning. He came to bid us farewell, and, when he saw us actually on the road, very cordially expressed his regret that we could not devote a little more time to the lake, since it never appeared to so much advantage as the day after a fall of rain.

I lately made a short journey in the West of England with one of these amiable humourists; a man remarkable for a very sweet voice, an ungracious smile, and a malevolent near-sighted eye. His practice was, if any object drew the admiration of his companions, to disparage it by introducing some superior wonder of the same kind which he had visited in his travels, I believe for the sole purpose of mortifying those who had not. "My good Sir," he would ask, in a scornfully compassionate tone, "have you seen Palermo? Have you been in the Crimea? Have you ever happened to look into the port of Scio?"-"My good Sir," said he to an honest Somersetshire gentleman, who had led us to a prospect of uncommon beauty and extent, " did you ever see Cintra ?" At the same moment he stepped backward and fell into a deep dry ditch; the western man assisted him in getting out, and seeing that he fretted and bustled, and endeavoured to magnify the accident, addressed him in his own phrase and manner, "My good Sir! did you ever tumble down Chedder cliffs ?"

A fellow-traveller of this disposition is a wasting disease, and should be shunned accordingly. But there is a contrary habit of mind which a splenetic man finds almost as difficult to tolerate, though it is connected, no doubt, with honest and amiable qualities-I mean that proneness to wonder and be delighted without any known reason; which is usually a sign of great animal spirits and very little experience. I had once passed through Berwick with a gentleman of this lively character, very early in a dark and cheerless morning; the road is celebrated as one of the dullest in Great Britain, and I had carefully composed myself to sleep. Suddenly my friend recollected that we had crossed the Tweed; he sprang up, thrust his head out of both the carriage-windows, and then shouted aloud, "Well, Sir, we are in Scotland! Scotland-land of the mountain and the flood, land of my sires!' (he was an Essex man)-And it really is a romantic countryyou do not see Nature on such a scale as this in England! Tell me candidly whether it equals your expectations." I saw a flat, open country, adorned with one cottage, two or three stone dykes, and a few patches of oats. "It is night and I am alone," (sang my companion,

"forlorn on the hill of storms."—"I wish you were, from my soul," was my peevish answer. A pedlar came up and asked our driver if we had met the mail; which incident threw my friend into a new rapture at the originality of the Scottish character. I was a fellow-passenger of the same gentleman in an Ostend packet; he appeared on deck for the first time when he heard that we could see our place of destina"Ostend! ay, there it is. A wonderfully strong place! Ostend, that cost the Spaniards seventy thousand men in one siege. And I do not doubt it at all. Any body may see that it is one of the finest fortified towns in Europe!" I borrowed his telescope, and found we were just near enough to distinguish half a dozen house-tops, three windmills, and a bank of sand.

This unreflecting eagerness to admire is a very innocent error when it extends only to an idle wondering at inanimate objects, the appearances of nature, or the exhibitions of art: but it is more than ridiculous, it is a source of incalculable dangers, when it leads the travelling novice to adopt false estimates of human character; to fashion his conduct after depraved models, and to draw his information from disreputable sources. I could illustrate this reflection by the history of a simple, sanguine young Englishman, my relation, whom I last saw at Heidelberg, cultivating a thin crop of mustachios, and a wiry handful of flaxen tresses, with a view of entering the University; his imagination being captivated by the habits and manners of the Teutonic youth. Some time before, he was at Aix-la-Chapelle, compiling a history of Bonaparte's return to France in 1815, from the information of a Colonel Count L'Escroc, (or some such name,) who professed to know all the secrets of that amazing enterprise, and to have enjoyed peculiar opportunities of observing it in all its stages. The Colonel was so pleased with my kinsman that he concealed nothing from him, not even his own pecuniary difficulties. In a little time it began to be rumoured at the Redoubt, that M. L'Escroc was neither Count nor Colonel, and that his alleged opportunity of watching the transactions between France and Elba in 1815, consisted in his having resided at that time on board the gallies at Toulon. My novice of course took measures to rid himself of his noble acquaintance, and desired the return of a sum of money for which the Colonel had consented to "become his banker;" the Colonel sent for answer a note of hand enclosed in a challenge, and we never heard of him more. Again I found my foolish relation at Naples, affecting to talk mysteriously of his liaison with a literary Marchioness, a robust elderly woman, or, as he expressed it, a matronly specimen of Italian beauty, who taught him to recite sonnets in a vile Neapolitan dialect, and persuaded him that he was wearing the chains of another Corinne. The poor youth imagined himself an accomplished wit and debauchee, and assumed a sheepish swagger, while he barbarously mouthed the old saying, Inglese italianato è diavolo incarnato.

But I forbear to dwell upon adventures of this kind, as they belong to a more extensive subject, and are connected with a more serious train of reflection than I have undertaken to deal with in the present trifling disquisition. Such anecdotes would be appropriate to a different kind of work, which I should gladly see commenced, a modern Gull's Hornbook for the use of British travellers on the Continent.

There is not a more common source of disagreement between asso