us to reach that capital in a little better plight, being certain that, on writing home from thence, we shall be supplied with remittances. The Count, and all the persons at table, looked at us with amazement, and when we had finished our recital, he said to us: "My friends, you cannot conceive how much I feel for your misfortunes, yet at the same time I am happy in the opportunity which they have afforded me of being useful to my fellow-creatures. I am ashamed of residing in a country infested with such numbers of disorderly people, who, under the pretence of doing good, commit all sorts of crimes. But what is to be done? All my estates lie in this neighbourhood, and it is necessary that I should frequently be here to superintend them. You will now go to my wardrobe, and dress yourselves as you please, for I think you will find a variety of clothes which will fit you extremely well. We shall then expect you to coffee, as I understand you have already dined." He called his chamberlain, and desired him to look out such suits of apparel as might be most to our taste, and observed, that had we been in or near some town, we might have sent for a tailor, but in a remote part of the country we must adapt ourselves to circumstances. We were at a loss for terms to express our gratitude to the Count, and were quite charmed with the hospitable reception he had given us. The chamberlain conducted us to his wardrobe, and opening some large presses, told us to select what pleased us, and at the same time supplied us with changes of linen. We threw off our cloaks, and washed ourselves, but were a long time in getting rid of their musty odour.

Fortunately we found apparel which exactly fitted us, and having finished our toilette, we presented ourselves to the Count and his family, who were waiting coffee for us in the drawing-room. We went to kiss the hand of the Countess, who said to me: " They tell us that the habit does not make the monk, but were I not certain that both of you have changed your dress in my house, I should say that you were not the same persons, for your very physiognomy is altered."-" Madam," replied I, " in cases like these, the physiognomy does change; we were suddenly reduced to utter destitution, and as suddenly blest with an asylum where compassion was shown to our misfortunes, and where, having forgotten our past sufferings, we resume our wonted cheerfulness." After taking coffee, my companion sat down to play chess with the Count, while I joined the ladies at écarté. I had sat down without money, and the Countess quickly perceiving that I was at a loss for counters, rose from table, went into another apartment, and returned with a purse, which she gave me, and which, as I afterwards found, contained sixty francs. When we had ceased to play, the Count said to us: " You will make this house your home for four or five days, ere you set out for Paris, as I wish you to wait for the diligence by which you will travel to Laval, where you will find a friend of mine, who thinks as I do, and will certainly treat you better than I can." "Sir," said I," you will have the goodness to dispense with all compliment from me, as I really cannot find words adequate to express our gratitude." The Countess replied, "we detest compliments, so let us be merry. I am sorry that we cannot go to the chace to-morrow on account of those marauders."

I then enquired of the Count whether the goverument did not intend to remedy this evil. "What can be done?" said he. "Orders for that purpose have been sent down, but these brigands give no heed to them; they even laugh at them, and are going on every day worse and worse. One morning, about three weeks ago, as soon as I had risen, I saw, planted before my house, two four-pounders, and a band of about four hundred brigands. Finding myself thus besieged, I asked them what they wanted. They answered that they were waiting for their commandant, having only had orders to blockade the house, and let no one out. Two hours afterwards arrived the commandant, on horseback, accompanied by three of his comrades, also mounted. A messenger was instantly sent to inform me that if I did not, in the course of six hours, supply a thousand rations of bread, eight oxen, forage for a thousand horses, and ten thousand francs in money, the house should be levelled to the ground, and all within it buried under the ruins. Seeing that I must either comply with their demands or perish, I ordered my house-steward to give them all they asked; and I found it expedient also to invite the commandant and his principal officers to dine with me. You may imagine what sort of pleasure I could have in such company; they seemed the worst of villains. Highwaymen and assassins at least expose their lives, and are always prosecuted by the government, but these infamous brigands are quite at their ease, and levy contributions on all houses which they think capable of supplying their wants. When the party had received all that they had demanded, they raised the blockade of my house, and went away. The commandant said "You will excuse me, Count, for having come with an armed force, for I cannot otherwise ensure obedience."-" I should not think those quite wrong," said I," who refused to obey you; what right have you to levy contributions? Who has given you orders for that purpose? Why do you not all return to your homes? Why do you take away the property of others, and enrich yourselves at the expence of simpletons like me, who give you all you ask?" "And do you think," replied the commandant," that, after toiling to replace Louis XVIII. on the throne, we shall return to our homes, contented with mere thanks? If you do, you are mistaken. When we have made our fortunes we will be quiet, but not till then." The commandant then departed with his people, taking away all that he had levied upon us. Thus you see that in these days we cannot venture a league from home. The brigands went the other day to my brother, who lives nine miles from hence, and demanded twelve thousand francs, and three thousand rations, while some of them, not content with this plunder, entered my brother's house, went into the room occupied by the servant-maids, and behaved very rudely to them. It was with great trouble that these half-intoxicated ruffians could be got out of the house, nor would they go without two casks of cider." The Countess, interrupting our conversation, told us that supper was on table. "Let us think no more of our present unhappy situation," said she," but hope that it will soon change." At table the Countess afterwards said to me: "This evening I cannot expect it, but to-morrow I shall request that you will give me a minute recital of your travels, as part of your story escaped me when you were presented

to us. I promised her that I should make it a point of duty to comply with her request. After a very agreeable evening, we all retired.

The chamberlain conducted us to a handsome suite of apartments, consisting of two sleeping-rooms and an elegant anti-chamber. When he was gone, my companion said: "Who could have expected to have been so well received without being known!" "My friend," I replied, "in travelling we encounter vicissitudes of good and evil; were we always to meet with bad people, what would become of us? Even the few we do meet with, it is difficult to detect, so as to be on our guard against them." Wearied with the troubles and fatigues of the day, we were soon asleep.

Next morning the chamberlain awoke us and said that our coffee was ready; we rose and took it in the anti-chamber, after which, as soon as we were dressed, we were summoned to breakfast with the Count and Countess, whom we found seated at table.

On the morning of the fourth day of our delightful visit, the Count rose from his seat and bade me follow him, together with my companion, who was discoursing with the three ladies. Having conducted us to his cabinet, he said:" My friends, at five this afternoon the diligence, on its way to Laval, will pass along the high road near our house; and you will avail yourselves of that conveyance to resume your journey. I have ordered a portmanteau to be prepared for you, containing linen, apparel, and all else that you may want. Here are three hundred francs, and a letter for a friend of mine at Laval, who will welcome you most kindly. I cannot do more: and I hope you will receive this for my sake, on condition that you do not name me to any one as the person who rendered you service; this I ask as a favour."

JOURNAL OF A TRAVELLER ON THE CONTINENT.

[It will be seen that this Journal forms a continuation of the "Letters from the Continent," No. I. which appeared in our ninth Number, N. S. and which circumstances prevented the author from carrying on in that form.-ED.]

Tuesday, August 9th.-After I had eaten a dinner that would have satisfied Ajax himself, my companion politely accompanied me. to the coach. At two o'clock in the afternoon I mounted the coupèe or cabriolet, (it contained six; the inside of the carriage six more,) and quitted Ghent. Go to a gallery of the pictures of P. P. Rubens and choose three of his horses of the brightest colours-a warm chesnut; a cream-coloured, with a black line down his back, as distinct as in a squirrel; and a kind of mottled horse, which I cannot describe let them have the same flowing manes, the same, not absolutely long tails, but long switch tails, the same fall in the back, the same free, independent air, and the same gait and action, yoke them loosely, three abreast, without bracing reins, and you will have our gallant team. Go next to the title-page of an old book of reports, and take the frontispiece-the portrait of Sir Edward Coke, of Sir Creswell Loving, or of Master Edmund Plowden-take him with his black skull-cap or coif, with his flowing locks issuing therefrom, APRIL, 1826.

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with his bands and cassock, and with his hard liney face, and you will have the man on whose right hand I sat. Was it not an awful thing to sit side-by-side with Sir Creswell Loving, some time one of the Justices of the Common Bank, but now newly risen from the grave and the dead, under a strange canopy, a sort of moving hermit's cave, and to be drawn, rumbling along the paved road, by three horses that descended from a picture like certain persons in the Castle of Otranto? After my awe had somewhat abated, I naturally wished to address Sir Creswell; I therefore said something very common-place, and very remote from what I desired to come to at last. After a long silence, he answered, O-u-i! so loud, with so strange an accent, and so drawled forth, that had the horses been English, and not of the country of Rubens, they would certainly have stopped. After some time I again addressed the coifed being, calmly and meekly; again the like pause, and the like Oui! Being discouraged by some more fruitless attempts, I produced a Latin thesis, with which I had been presented at Ghent, and began to read it to myself; when I had almost finished it, and after a silence of two hours, these words, uttered in a loud voice, in the broadest manner, and with the strongest guttural, struck my astonished ear: "An fuit hic liber impressus Hhande?" (Ganda.) While I was turning to the title-page to answer this question, it was followed by " Apud quem?" in precisely the same tone. Afterwards, the awful pleasing being pointed out some convents that had been destroyed, and said it was a great pity. His ideas were nearly the same as would have been those of the before-mentioned learned persons, had they been extracted alive from their tombs; the world had lived in vain for him. Perhaps the very Chancellor of Richard Coeur de Lion, who had played at marbles before the time of legal memory, was not less improved, or a less improveable creature. We reached Brussels at half-past seven. I was handed out of the carriage by an officer of police, and I repaid his politeness by showing him my passport.

Wednesday, Aug. 10th.-The market before the Hôtel de Ville, was quite Amazonian-a hundred women to one man. The Museum or Picture Gallery, has nothing but saints and saintesses: these shown in Flemish pictures, and cruelly uninteresting they are. Humour is a much finer thing than wit, and of two stories, both respecting the same person, who is not less famous for his dirt and voracity, than for his theological attainments, the former displays wit, the latter, which is the best, humour. The first is a saying of his son, a petulant controversialist, but concerning whom let no ill be said, because he is dead, and because we owe a story to him. He was asked how his father came to have such dirty hands? "Because," he replied, “he is always rubbing them on his face." The second, or humorons story, is this:-The father usually illustrates a small distance, as, for instance, three-fourths of an inch, by saying: "It is as broad as the black of my nail." The Flemish carry their humour farther; for in the picture of the gods seated on Olympus, which may be seen in the public gallery, Venus is painted with nails that might serve to illustrate, in the same manner, the same space as those of the Doctor. I entered several large and handsome churches; (the cathedral is shut nearly as closely as if it were in the keeping of one of our Deans ;) they

had pictures, statues, and altars in plenty. In France, women only are to be found in the churches; here, although there is a great majority of the fair sex, yet there are some men, and even a few well-dressed men, or at least men who may be so considered here. It is remarkable, that whilst even the indifferent Protestant, in walking about their churches to look at the paintings, treads as lightly as he can; the men and women, who are employed in bringing and taking away the chairs, make as much noise as they can; they being, nevertheless, good Catholics. In one church, in a side chapel, dedicated to St. Anthony, a priest was saying mass. That I might see the thing perfectly, and thus be able to judge for myself, I stood as near to him as I could; the good man seemed to be annoyed at this; but as I had as much right, under the present state of things, to stand as he had to kneel, I did not care that for one kind look he gave his holy tackle, he gave me five cross looks, but I kept my place. A fine little girl, seven or eight years of age, who was kneeling at the rails, kept looking at me with great curiosity; her eyes seemed to say "How his bones will crack in the fire for this." As far as one can judge from looks, which are very deceitful, they at least seemed to say also-"It is a pity, I wish some one would teach him to kneel, and to do as we do." There is a considerable hill in the city of Brussels, which is a pleasing change after the flat country in which Bruges and Ghent are situated. It is a difficult place for a stranger to find his way in; the traveller perceives a great difference in this respect in different cities. The poor Flemings are very unlucky; they try to resemble the French, who laugh at them, and with reason. They are joined to the Dutch; they pay a part of their debt, and they are subjected to the inconvenience of the Dutch currency and government, and the Dutch hate them for their pains. I conversed at dinner with a Dutchman, who was sunk deep in the sulks; he said that Amsterdam is a much finer city than this; that the houses there are built, not of gloomy stone, but of nice cheerful brick, the streets paved with smooth clinkers, and so on. I could not agree with him; but he seemed so much annoyed at my dissent, that I was obliged to back out, and to say that I only differed from him for the sake of conversation. To please him, I assented also to his notion, that we make no good cheese in England; but import Dutch cheese, because our Cheshire and Stilton are uneatable. He complained over and over again of the streets and of the floors, and said that the sand on the floor made him feel quite sick, and took away bis appetite. This at first seems unaccountable; but great is the force of habit, and by analogy it may be understood. The English make a great point of personal cleanliness. To us, Venus herself would not be Venus, if she had dirty hands; the Dutchman would not care if the goddess of Beauty should illustrate short distances by the black of her nails; but if there was a single speck of dirt on the step before the door, or a little sand on the floor of the room in which she sat, his love would be turned into disgust. They show many reliques in the churches here, but none that are of great curiosity or interest. At Cologne I was told that they have the first animal that drew blood, and thus broke the general peace, viz. the flea that bit Eve the night after her fall, and to her great dismay; for it is said to be nearly as large as a well-grown prawn. I cannot say that I believe this entirely;