the Continent, in order to give them a notion of, and I should think, a distaste for the blessings of the Middle Passage. Not only were the six places in the interior all taken, and all full, but they had suspended a wicker basket (like a hen-coop) from the top of the coach, stuffed with fur-caps, hats, overalls, and different parcels, so as to make it impossible to move one way or other, and to stop every remaining breath of air. A negociant at my right-hand corner, who was inclined to piece out a lengthened recital with a parce que and a de sorte que at every word, having got upon ticklish ground, without seeing his audience, was cut short in the flower of his oratory, by asserting that Barcelona and St. Sebastian's in Spain were contiguous to each other. "They were at opposite sides of the country," exclaimed in the same breath a French soldier and a Spaniard, who sat on the other side of the coach, and whom he was regaling with the gallant adventures of a friend of his in the Peninsula, and not finding the usual excuse-" C'est égal❞— applicable to a blunder in geography, was contented to fall into the rear of the discourse for the rest of the journey. At midnight we found that we had gone only nine miles in five hours, as we had been climbing a gradual ascent from the time we set out, which was our first essay in mountain-scenery, and gave us some idea of the scale of the country we were beginning to traverse. The heat became less insupportable as the noise and darkness subsided; and as

the morning dawned, we were anxious to remove that veil of uncertainty and prejudice which the obscurity of night throws over a number of passengers whom accident has huddled together in a stage-coach. I think one seldom finds one's-self set down in a party of this kind without a strong feeling of repugnance and distaste, and one seldom quits it at last without some degree of regret. It was the case in the present instance. At day-break, the pleasant farms, the thatched cottages, and sloping valleys of Savoy attracted our notice, and I was struck with the resemblance to England (to some parts of Devonshire and Somersethire in particular) a discovery which I imparted to my fellow-travellers with a more lively enthusiasm than it was received. An Englishman thinks he has only to communicate his feelings to others to meet with sympathy, and is not a little disconcerted if (after this amazing act of condescension) he is at all repulsed. How should we laugh at a Frenchman who expected us to be delighted with his finding out a likeness of some part of England to France? We English are a nation of egotists, say what we will; and so much so, that we expect others to swallow the bait of our self-love.

At Pont Beau-Voisin, the frontier town of the King of Sardinia's dominions, we stopped to breakfast, and to have our passports and luggage examined at the Barrier and Custom-house. I breakfasted with the Spaniard, who invited himself to our tea-party,

and complimented Madame (in broken English) on the excellence of her performance. We agreed between ourselves that the Spaniards and English were very much superior to the French. I found he had a taste for the Fine Arts, and I spoke of Murillo and Velasquez as two excellent Spanish painters. "Here was sympathy." I also spoke of Don Quixote"Here was more sympathy." What a thing it is to have produced a work that makes friends of all the world that have read it, and that all the world have read! Mention but Don Quixote, and who is there that does not own him for a friend, countryman, and brother? There is no French work, at the name of which (as at a talisman) the scales of national prejudice so completely fall of; nay more, I must confess there is no English one. We were summoned from our tea and patriotic effusions to attend the Douane. It was striking to have to pass and repass the piquets of soldiers stationed as a guard on bridges across narrow mountain-streams that a child might leap over. After some slight dalliance with our great-coat pockets, and significant gestures as if we might or might not have things of value about us that we should not, we proceeded to the Custom-house. I had two trunks. One contained books. When it was unlocked, it was as if the lid of Pandora's box flew open. There could not have been a more sudden start or expression of surprise, had it been filled with cartridge-paper or gunpowder. Books were the corrosive sublimate that

eat out despotism and priestcraft-the artillery that battered down castle and dungeon-walls-the ferrets that ferreted out abuses-the lynx-eyed guardians that tore off disguises-the scales that weighed right and wrong-the thumping make-weight thrown into the balance that made force and fraud, the sword and the cowl, kick the beam-the dread of knaves, the scoff of fools-the balm and the consolation of the human mind-the salt of the earth-the future rulers of the world! A box full of them was a contempt of the constituted Authorities; and the names of mine were taken down with great care and secrecy-Lord Bacon's "Advancement of Learning," Milton's "Paradise Lost," De Stutt-Tracey's "Ideologie," (which Bonaparte said ruined his Russian expedition,) Mignet's "French Revolution," (which wants a chapter on the English Government,) "Sayings and Doings," with pencil notes in the margin, "Irving's Orations," the same, an "Edinburgh Review," some "Morning Chronicles," "The Literary Examiner," a collection of Poetry, a Volume bound in crimson velvet, and the Paris edition of "Table-talk." Here was some questionable matter enough-but no notice was taken. My box was afterwards corded and leaded with equal gravity and politeness, and it was not till I arrived at Turin that I found it was a prisoner of state, and would be forwarded to me anywhere I chose to mention, out of his Sardinian Majesty's dominions. I was startled to find myself within the smooth polished

grasp of legitimate power, without suspecting it; and was glad to recover my trunk at Florence, with no other inconvenience than the expense of its carriage across the country*.

*At Milan, a short time ago, a gentleman had a Homer, in Greek and Latin, among his books. He was surlily asked to explain what it meant. Upon doing so, the Inspector shook his head doubtingly, and said, "It might pass this time," but advised him to beware of a second. "Here, now, is a work," he continued, pointing to's Lives of the Popes, containing all the abominations (public and private) of their history, “You should bring such books as this with you!" This is one specimen of that learned conspiracy for the suppression of light and letters, of which we are sleeping partners and honorary associates. The Allies complain at present of Mr. Canning's "faithlessness." Oh! that he would indeed play them false and earn his title of "slippery George!" Faithful to anything he cannot be faithless to them would be something. The Austrians, it is said, have lately attempted to strike the name of Italy out of the maps, that that country may neither have a name, a body, or a soul left to it, and even to suppress the publication of its finest historians, that it may forget it ever had one. Go on, obliging creatures! Blot the light out of heaven, tarnish the blue sky with the blight and fog of despotism, deface and trample on the green earth; for while one trace of what is fair or lovely is left in the earth under our feet, or the sky over our heads, or in the mind of man that is within us, it will remain to mock your impotence and deformity, and to reflect back lasting hatred and contempt upon you. Why does not our Eton scholar, our classic Statesman, suggest to the Allies an intelligible hint of the propriety of inscribing the name of Italy once more on the map,

"Like that ensanguined flower inscribed with woe”—