bly enough by himself in a corner of the room, on his own provisions, as is usual with the Jews, when on a journey; but he rose to present his great leather cup to the Frenchwoman, who filled it to the brim; and he drank the contents at a draught.

"What think you of that, Doctor?" said the lady. "The land which produces wine like this, is it not well worth the Land of Promise ?""Certainly, Madam," he replied with a smile; "and especially where such wine is poured out by such handsome arms and hands."

"Wish, then, that your Messiah may be born in France, that he may gather your tribes there from all parts of the world."

"Would to Heaven he might!" said the Jew; "but first he must make the entire conquest of Europe, where we are now almost universally so sadly persecuted. It would require nothing less than another Cyrus, to make the different nations live at peace with each other, and with all mankind."

"May God hear your prayer!" replied the greater part of the guests. I could not but admire the variety of opinions maintained by such a number of disputants before going to dinner, who were now, on leaving the table, so very nearly of one mind; and I drew from the circumstance this inference, that man is rendered ill-natured by misfortune (for such, to most persons, is the state of fasting), and that he becomes well disposed when happy. For when he has dined plentifully, like the savage of Rousseau, he is at peace with all the world.

Another reflection not less important is, that all these opinions, which in their turn had almost shaken my own, proceeded solely from the difference of education of my travelling companions: I doubt not, therefore, that each man, on recovering his usual temper, returned to his own. Desirous of still farther fixing my judgment on the subjects of this conversation, I addressed myself to a neighbour, who had hitherto maintained a profound silence, appearing to have preserved throughout a perfect equality of temper."What do you think, Sir," said I, "of Silesia, and of the lord of the castle ?"

"Silesia," he replied, "is a very fine country, because it produces abundant crops; and the lord of the castle is an excellent man, because he relieves the unfortunate. As to our manner of judging them, it differs in each individual according to his religion, his nature, his trade, his temperament, his sex, his age, the season of the year, even the time of day, and above all, the education which gives the first colouring to our opinions. If, however, we turn all these to human happiness, we are sure of judging as God acts. It is according to the great reason which governs the universe, that we should regulate our own particular judgments, as we set our watches by the sun." After this conversation, I tried to model my judgments by the rule which this philosopher had laid down. I found that the world and its inhabitants, like Silesia, are judged by all according to each man's own light. The Astronomer sees in it nothing but a ball, like a Dutch cheese, turning round the sun, with the Newtonians. Soldiers see in it only fields of battle and promotions. Nobles behold only feudalities and serfs. Priests look for communicants and the excommunicated. Merchants regard only its branches of commerce and its gold. Painters see pictures, epicures feasts; but the philosopher considers it in its relations with human wants, and views its inhabitants in their mutual relations with each other.

M.

LETTERS ON ENGLAND.

BY M. DE ST. FOIX.

LETTER VI.

London, Thursday, Oct. 2, 1817.

WE left Brighton on the 30th; slept that night at a town called Dorking, and arrived in London yesterday afternoon. This is not the shortest road; but we chose it because we were told the country through which it lies is the more beautiful of the two. We were indeed delighted with it the whole way. It is in one respect different from what we had been led to expect by the flatness of the view from the Devil's Dyke, being a succession of hill and dale throughout; but for the rest, it in every thing resembles that.

In travelling here, you need never be reminded of towns and cities, till you come to them. The roads are mostly inclosed by thick hedgerows on either side, with lofty trees growing out of them at intervals; and they wind about so, that you can scarcely ever see along them for two hundred yards; but from the elevations and openings in the trees, you catch, every now and then, beautiful views, which are perpetually varying in extent and character, but which never become strikingly grand. Every thing, indeed, is on a smaller scale than what I have been accustomed to see. I feel as if I had got upon the surface of a smaller globe than that on which France is situated. Even the houses are in keeping with this feeling. The country seats of the nobility and gentry are, in point of size, like baby-houses, compared with those of France. Indeed I can in no way bring to my own mind so striking a feeling of the contrast in this respect, as by fancying a French chateau placed on any one spot in the road between Brighton and London.

As far as I have seen, the characteristic of English scenery is exactly this-that the unity of feeling connected with what is called the country is never broken. The hand of man may be detected every where, but it no where obtrudes itself, for the work is done in the very spirit of Nature. There are no endless avenues of trees, no boundless fields of corn, no straight, wide, paved roads, no woods planted in lines and sections, with the branches of the trees stripped off to the top. These have certainly a grand and imposing effect, but, like most other grand and imposing things, they talk of what one does not desire to hear. Such an avenue of trees must be the approach to some grand house; such an immense tract of corn must belong to some wealthy proprietor; such a broad road must lead to some great city; such a wood must have been planted for some use. Now grand houses, and wealthy proprietors, and large cities, and utility, are the most unrural things in the world-they are precisely what one goes into the country to forget.

I have constantly had feelings allied to these when I have been travelling in France; but they were never very definite ones. I knew there was something I disliked in the scenery, but I could not tell exactly what. I now at once perceive the cause of this; and if I had learned nothing else, that alone would have been worth coming for.

You know I am not one of those querulous persons who want every thing just as it cannot be had; though I used to lament that, where,

cultivation was necessary, the hand of the cultivator must necessarily be so visible; but I now find here that it need be visible only in strict keeping with the scene of it.

Unity of effect is the great source of beauty in all nature and in all art. To speak of French and English scenery as matters of taste, and leaving particular associations out of the question, the difference between them seems to be, that, in the French, this unity of effect is perpetually broken by the evident desire to blend, in the mind of the spectator, admiration of art with that of nature; in the English it is perpetually preserved, by keeping art out of sight. An Englishman seems content to love Nature for herself. A Frenchman can love Nature too; but his admiration of her increases in proportion as she calls up feelings connected with himself: just as he loves his wife or his mistress best when she happens to have on a dress that he chose for her.

Would it be too fanciful, to trace the character of national scenery to that of the people to whom it belongs? The crying fault of the French character is egotism, arising from open self-satisfaction; that of the English is gloom, arising from secret self-discontent. A Frenchman cannot have too much of himself; an Englishman cannot have too little. A Frenchman constantly feels himself to be a part of his country, and his country to be a part of himself; so that he never cares to quit it. An Englishman feels that he has a country only from the particular ties that bind him to it; so that when they are broken, the world becomes his country, and he wanders from one part of it to another, without end or aim. It cannot be denied that both these are very faulty extremes in character; but I think, of the two, the English one is likely to produce, upon the whole, the least pernicious effects: indeed it may lead to good ones; but the other cannot. That which makes us content with the thing we are, and with all that is about us, binds us to earthly and tangible reality with a chain that is the more strong from its being invisible, and from our having no desire to break it. It keeps the mind in perpetual subjection; checks the growth of all its faculties except the very worst, and in the end inevitably destroys the very best. But that which induces us to fly from ourselves, though it often leads to more fatal consequences than the other, may have a contrary effect. The human mind cannot exist without love and admiration: they are its daily food, food that is scattered about for it every where. It is true, that when the mental appetite becomes vitiated and it cannot relish what it finds strewed about its feet, it may starve: but on the other hand it may be driven to seek its food at a distance. Hatred of itself and of humanity may force it to seek refuge in other worlds: in the world of books-the world of thought-the world of nature. And let it but once gain a true insight of these, and all its finer faculties must expand. Its fancy and imagination, which are always progressive and yet always young, will then travel through all the regions of possible or impossible existence; and if they return without finding a dwelling-place, they will yet bring back with them stores from which they may, for ever after, create worlds of their own. The affections, too, will then recognise their kindred with humanity; they will learn the true objects on which they were made to rest; and will find, that, if they can for a while ex

patiate in external nature as in their country, they can, after all, have no home but in the human heart. The mind's vitiated appetite will then be corrected; its taste for the simple and the true will revive; and all will be right again.

I

I have been led a long way from where I intended to have gone. merely meant to ask whether the different characters of which I have spoken, in the scenery of the two countries, may not be traced to these different traits in those of the people? Whether the Frenchman, being always contented with himself, and wherever he may wander, desiring every where to find hints that may bring him back to himself, may not therefore have endeavoured to put upon every thing external an impress of himself? And whether the Englishman, being never really contented with himself, and always desiring to take refuge in something else, finding external nature the best strong hold to which he can retreat from himself, may not, therefore, have endeavoured to leave or to keep it as he found it?

After all, however, the approach to the metropolis, and the view of it just before entering, if not the most pleasing, is by far the most remarkable part of the journey. For more than two leagues before entering London, the road is lined on each side, almost without intermision, with houses; all of which, for cleanness and finish, may be described by what I told you of those at Brighton. But the view of the metropolis itself, at about half a league distance, or rather the spot which it occupies, is the most singular sight I ever beheld. I really at the first view of it, felt quite a shock at the idea of living in such a place. All that can be seen of the city itself is the immense dome of its cathedral: the rest, apparently for leagues on every side, is one dead, immoveable mass of thick dun-yellow smoke, not hanging over, but rising out of it, and more and more dense as it approaches the earth; so that the thickest part must be that which the inhabitants breathe.

However, on coming a little closer, it did not seem quite so badso we ventured into it; and here we are, very well accommodated at the hotel C's friend recommended to us. C wrote to tell him of our arrival, and he came to us directly. I thought there was, at first, a little hardness and reserve of manner about him, but this soon wore off, and I think I shall be pleased with him. We intend stopping here a few days, and shall then, perhaps, accept the invitation he has given us to pass some time at his house.

In two or three days I will tell you something of this very strange place; more than commonly strange to me, perhaps, from my having had so little to do with great cities of late.

LETTER VII.

London, Saturday, Oct. 4th, 1817. We do not intend going to any of the sights of London till we have M-with us; so I have been wandering about for the last two days without any distinct object. In one word, I hate London already! The filth of the streets, and the eternal din of the carts and coaches in them, is execrable; the general aspect of the people you meet therehard, heavy, coarse, vulgar, awkward, the antithesis of every thing spirituel is execrable; their ungraceful and tasteless costume is exe

erable; the endless succession of plain brown dirty-looking bricks piled up for houses, with plain square holes for windows and doors, are execrable; to me, who loathe commerce in its beginning and its end, its objects and its effects, the shops, superb as some of them are, are execrable; and above all, the atmosphere (for London has one of its own) is execrable.

Let me again warn you that these are only first impressions, not deliberate opinions; not what I think, but what I feel. I can at once perceive, however, that London contains all the horrors of Paris, without any of its general character of external grandeur. It remains for me to learn whether any thing like the particular splendours of Paris are to be found here:-its magnificent public monuments,-its admirable museums of art and nature,-its truly royal library,-its palaces and temples,-its lyceums and academies,-its theatres and gardens and fountains, and the rest of those virtues of that first of cities, which half contrive, even among the wise and good, to keep its vices in

countenance.

Monday, October 6.
You may be sure I

I continue this from the house of Msatisfied myself of the sincerity of his wish that we should make his house our home while we remain in London, before I consented to accept the invitation.

There is something peculiar about this young Englishman. Over his countenance there is a hue of deep, settled thoughtfulness, which is very remarkable in so young a man; and something about his manner, which at the same time represses confidence and encourages it: a reserve which forbids a quick intimacy, or sudden interchange of thoughts and feelings, and yet a sincerity of expression which cannot be mistaken, which at once satisfies you that he must mean what he says: a sincerity that will not even permit itself those allowable exaggerations upon which all conventional politeness is founded. I am certain, for example, that nothing would induce him to offer his hand, or subscribe himself" sincerely yours," to a man he despised. He has a tinge of the melancholy which is said to be so prevalent among the English; but instead of settling, as it usually does, into a coarse and careless indifference, it seems in him to have assumed a directly opposite feature. It seems to have elevated his character instead of depressing it, to have strengthened his mind instead of weakening it, to have softened his heart instead of indurating it. This melancholy may be detected in every thing-in his countenance, his voice, his manner of speaking, and thinking, and feeling-but it never becomes obtrusive in any thing. Perhaps, indeed, it may require something of a kindred feeling to detect it at all; for C scarcely observed it, though he had opportunities, when M was in France last year, of seeing a good deal of him. But C saw enough then to make him sure that Mand I should like each other very much; and I think we shall.

I can perceive that M— dislikes talking, except on a few particular subjects; but on them he speaks with that fine and somewhat exaggerating earnestness, which always springs from real and intense feeling, and can spring from nothing else. The favourite of these subjects seem to be poetry, the fine arts, and elegant literature in general. In the two last of these we seem to agree in almost every thing; but