Indeed it was wrong. A Mr. James Williams acted as our English interpreter while we staid, and procured us places in the Paris Diligence, though it was said to be quite full. We here also heard that the packet we came over in, blew up two days after, and that the passengers escaped in fishing-boats. This has completed my distaste to steam-boats.

The city of Rouen is one of the oldest and finest in France. It contains about a hundred thousand inhabitants, two noble churches; a handsome quay is embosomed in a range of lofty hills, and watered by the Seine, which, proud of its willowy banks and tufted islands, winds along by it. The ascent up the rising grounds behind it, is magnificent beyond description. The town is spread out at your feet (an immense, stately mass of dark grey stone), the double towers of the old Gothic Cathedral, and of the beautiful Church of St. Antoine, rise above it in their majestic proportions, overlooking the rich sunny valleys which stretch away in the distance; you gradually climb an amphitheatre of hills, sprinkled with gardens and villas to the very top, and the walk on Sunday afternoon is crowded with people enjoying the scene, adding to its animation by their intelligent, varying looks, and adorning it by their picturesque and richlycoloured dresses. There is no town in England at the same time so tine, and so finely situated. Oxford is as fine in its buildings and associations, but it has

not the same advantages of situation: Bristol is as fine a mass of buildings, but without the same striking accompaniments

"The pomp of groves and garniture of fields."

Edinburgh alone is as splendid in its situation and buildings, and would have even a more imposing and delightful effect if Arthur's Seat were crowned with thick woods, if the Pentland-hills could be converted into green pastures, if the Scotch people were French, and Leith-walk planted with vineyards! The only blot in this fair scene was the meeting with a number of cripples, whose hideous cries attracted and alarmed attention before their formidable mutilations became visible, and who extorted charity rather from terror than pity. Such objects abound in France and on the Continent. Is it from the want of hospitals, or from the bad care taken of the young and necessitous, to whom some dreadful accident has happened?-The hill that commands this beautiful prospect, and seems the resort of health, of life, and pleasure, is called (as I found on inquiry) Mont des Malades! Would any people but the French think of giving it so inauspicious a title? To the English such a name would spoil the view, and infect the imagination with the recollections of pain and sickness. But a Frenchman's imagination is proof against such weaknesses; he has no sympathy except with the pleasurable; and provided a hill presents an agreeable prospect, never troubles his head whether the inha

bitants are sick or well. The streets of Rouen, like those of other towns in France, are dirty for the same reason. A Frenchman's senses and understanding are alike inaccessible to pain-he recognises (happily for himself) the existence only of that which adds to his importance or his satisfaction. He is delighted with perfumes, but passes over the most offensive smells*, and will not lift up his little finger to remove

* One would think that a people so devoted to perfumes, who deal in essences and scents, and have fifty different sorts of snuffs, would be equally nice, and offended at the approach of every disagreeable odour. Not so. They seem to have no sense of the disagreeable in smells or tastes, as if their heads were stuffed with a cold, and hang over a dunghill, as if it were a bed of roses, or swallow the most detestable dishes with the greatest relish. The nerve of their sensibility is bound up at the point of pain. A Frenchman (as far as I can find) has no idea answering to the word nasty; or if he has, feels a predilection for, instead of an aversion to, it. So in morals they bid fair to be the Sybarites of the modern world. They make the best of every thing (which is a virtue)—and treat the worst with levity or complaisance (which is a vice). They harbour no antipathies. They would swallow Gil Blas's supper as a luxury, and boast of it afterwards as a feat. Their moral system is not sustained by the two opposite principles of attraction and repulsion, for they are shocked at nothing what excites horror or disgust in other minds, they consider as a bagatelle; it is resolved into an abstraction of agreeable sensations, a source of amusement. There is an oil of self-complacency in their constitutions, which takes the sting out of evil, and neutralizes the poison of corruption. They, therefore, can commit atrocities with impunity, and wallow in dis

a general nuisance, for it is none to him. He leaves the walls of his houses unfinished, dilapidated, almost uninhabitable, because his thoughts are bent on adorning his own person-on jewels, trinkets, pomade divine! He is elaborate in his cookery and his dress, because the one flatters his vanity, the other his appetite; and he is licentious in his pleasures, nay gross in his manners, because in the first he consults only his immediate gratification, and in the last annoys others continually, from having no conception that any thing he (a Frenchman) can do can possibly annoy them. He is sure to offend, because he takes it for granted he must please. A great deal of ordinary French conversation might be spared before foreigners, if they knew the pain it gives. Virtue is not only put out of countenance by it, but vice becomes an indifferent common-place in their mouths. The last stage of human depravity is, when vice ceases to shock-or to please. A Frenchman's candour and indifference to what must be thought of him (combined with his inordinate desire to shine) are curious. The hero of his own little tale carries a load of crimes and misfortunes at his back like a lead of band-boxes, and (lighthearted wretch) sings and dances as he goes! The

grace without a blush, as no other people can. There is Monsieur Chateaubriand, for instance. Who would not suppose that the very echo of his own name would hoot him out of the world? So far from it, his pamphlet On the Censorship has just come to a third edition, and is stuck all over Paris!

inconsequentiality in the French character, from extreme facility and buoyancy of impression, is a matter of astonishment to the English. A young man at Rouen was walking briskly along the street to church, all the way tossing his prayer-book into the air, when suddenly on reaching the entrance a priest appeared coming from church, and he fell on his knees on the steps. No wonder the Popish clergy stand up for their religion, when it makes others fall on their knees before them, and worship their appearance as the shadow of the Almighty! The clergy in France present an agreeable and almost necessary foil to the foibles of the national character, with their sombre dress, their gravity, their simplicity, their sanctity. It is not strange they exert such an influence there: their professional pretensions to learning and piety must have a double weight, from having nothing to oppose to them but frivolity and the impulse of the moment. The entering the Cathedral here after the bustle and confusion of the streets, is like entering a vault-a tomb of worldly thoughts and pleasures, pointing to the skies. The slow and solemn movements of the Priests, as grave as they are unmeaning, resemble the spells of necromancers; the pictures and statues of the dead contrast strangely with the faces of the living; the chaunt of the Priests sounds differently from the jargon of the common people; the little oratories and cells, with some lone mourner kneeling before a crucifix, every thing leads the