in some sad and sickening moments, (c my soul shrinks back upon herself, and startles at destruction!"-mere pomp of words!-but that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond myself;-all comes from thee, great,-great Sensorium of the world! which vibrates, if a hair of our heads but falls upon the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation.-Touched with thee, Eugenius draws my curtain when I languish,-hears my tale of symptoms, and blames the weather for the disorder of his nerves. Thou givest a portion of it sometimes to the roughest peasant who traverses the bleakest mountains. He finds the lacerated lamb of another's flock;-this moment I behold him leaning with his head against his crook, with piteous inclination looking down upon it! Oh! had I gone one moment sooner!—it bleeds to death!his gentle heart bleeds with it! Peace to thee, generous swain !-I see thou walkest off with anguish,-but thy joys shall balance it;for happy is thy cottage, and happy is the sharer of it, and happy are the lambs which sport about you. THE SUPPER. A SHOE Coming loose from the fore-foot of the thill-horse, at the beginning of the ascent of Mount Taurira, the postillion dismounted, twisted the shoe off, and put it in his pocket. As the ascent was of five or six miles, and that horse our main dependence, I made a point of having the shoe fastened on again as well as we could; but the postillion had thrown away the nails; and the hammer in the chaise-box being of no great use without them, I submitted to go on. He had not mounted half a mile higher, when coming to a flinty piece of road, the poor devil lost a second shoe, and from off his other forefoot. I then got out of the chaise in good earnest; and seeing a house about a quarter of a mile to the left hand, with a great deal to do I prevailed upon the postillion to turn up to it. The look of the house, and of every thing about it, as we drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the disaster. It was a little farm-house, surrounded with about twenty acres of vineyard, about as much corn; and close to the house, on one side, was a potagerie of an acre and a half, full of every thing which could make plenty in a French peasant's house; and on the other side, was a little wood, which furnished wherewithal to dress it. It was about eight in the evening when I got to the house, so I left the postillion to manage his point as he could; and, for mine, I walked directly into the house. The family consisted of an old grey-headed man and his wife, with five or six sons and sons-in-law, and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy out of them. They were all sitting down together to their lentil-soup; a large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table; and a flagon of wine at each end of it promised joy through the stages of the repast:-'twas a feast of love. The old man rose up to meet me, and, with a respectful cordiality, would have me sit down at the table; my heart was set down the moment I entered the room: so I sat down at once, like a son of the family; and, to invest myself in the character as speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed the old man's knife, and, taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty luncheon; and, as I did it, I saw a testimony in every eye, not only of an honest welcome, but of a welcome mixed with thanks that I had not seemed to doubt it. Was it this? or tell me, Nature, what else it was that made this morsel so sweet,-and to what magic I owe it, that the draught I took of their flagon was so delicious with it, that they remain upon my palate to this hour? If the supper was to my taste, the grace which followed it was much more so. THE GRACE. WHEN supper was over, the old man gave a knock upon the table with the haft of his knife, to bid them prepare for the dance; the moment the signal was given, the women and girls ran altogether into a back apartment to tie up their hair,-and the young men to the door to wash their faces, and change their sabots; and, in three minutes, every soul was ready upon a little esplanade before the house to begin.The old man and his wife came out last, and, placing me betwixt them, sat down upon a sofa of turf by the door. The old man had some fifty years ago been no mean performer upon the vielle, and, at the age he was then of, touched it well enough for the purpose. His wife sung now and then a little to the tune,-then intermitted,-and joined her old man again as their children and grand-children danced before them. It was not till the middle of the second dance, when, for some pauses in the movement wherein they all seemed to look up, I fancied I could distinguish an elevation of spirit different from that which is the cause or the effect of simple jollity. In a word, I thought I beheld Religion mixing in the dance ;-but, as I had never seen her so engaged, I should have looked upon it now as one of the illusions of an imagination which is eternally misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, said that this was their constant way; and that all his life long he had made it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice; believing, he said, that a cheerful and contented mind was the best sort of thanks to Heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay -Or a learned prelate either, said I. THE CASE OF DELICACY. WHEN you have gained the top of Mount Taurira, you run presently down to Lyons ;adieu then to all rapid movements!-'tis a journey of caution; and it fares better with sentiments, not to be in a hurry with them; so I contracted with a voiturin to take his time with a couple of mules, and convey me in my own chaise safe to Turin, through Savoy. Poor, patient, quiet, honest people! fear not; your poverty, the treasury of your simple virtues, will not be envied you by the world, nor will your vallies be invaded by it.-Nature! in the midst of thy disorders, thou art still friendly to the scantiness thou hast created: with all thy great works about thee, little hast thou left to give, either to the scythe or to the sickle but to that little thou grantest safety and protection; and sweet are the dwellings which stand so sheltered! As this did not amount to an absolute surrender of my bed-chamber, I still felt myself so much the proprietor, as to have a right to do the honours of it ;— -so I desired the lady to sit down, pressed her into the warmest seat, called for more wood, desired the hostess to enlarge the plan of the supper, and to favour us with the very best wine. The lady had scarce warmed herself five minutes at the fire, before she began to turn her head back and to give a look at the beds: and the oftener she cast her eyes that way, the more they returned perplexed.-I felt for her-and for myself; for in a few minutes, what by her looks, and the case itself, I found myself as much embarrassed as it was possible the lady could be herself. That the beds we were to lie in were in one and the same room, was enough simply by itself to have excited all this;—but the position of them (for they stood parallel, and so very close to each other, as only to allow a space for a small wicker-chair betwixt them) rendered the affair still more oppressive to us ;-they were fixed up, moreover, near the fire, and the projection of the chimney on one side; and a large. Let the way-worn traveller vent his com- beam which crossed the room on the other, plaints upon the sudden turns and dangers of formed a kind of recess for them that was no your roads, your rocks, your precipices; the way favourable to the nicety of our sensations: difficulties of getting up, the horrors of getting if any thing could have added to it, it was down, mountains impracticable, and cataracts, which roll down great stones from their summits, and block up his road. The peasants had been all day at work in removing a fragment of this kind between St Michael and Madane; and, by the time my vioturin got to the place, it wanted full two hours of completing, before a passage could any how be gained. There was nothing but to wait with patience ;-'twas a wet and tempestuous night; so that by the delay and that together, the voiturin found himself obliged to put up five miles short of his stage, at a little decent kind of an inn by the road side. I forthwith took possession of my bedchamber, got a good fire, ordered supper, and was thanking Heaven it was no worse,—when a voiturin arrived with a lady in it, and her servantmaid. As there was no other bedchamber in the house, the hostess, without much nicety, led them into mine, telling them, as she ushered them in, that there was nobody in it but an English gentleman;-that there were two good beds in it, and a closet within the room which held another. The accent in which she spoke of this third bed, did not say much for it; however, she said there were three beds, and but three people, and she durst say the gentleman would do any thing to accommodate matters.I left not the lady a moment to make a conjecture about it, so instantly made a declaration that I would do any thing in my power. that the two beds were both of them so very small, as to cut us off from every idea of the lady and the maid lying together; which, in either of them, could it have been feasible, my lying beside them, though a thing not to be wished, yet there was nothing in it so terrible which the imagination might not have passed over without torment. As for the little room within, it offered little or no consolation to us: 'twas a damp, cold closet, with a half dismantled window-shutter, and with a window which had neither glass nor oil-paper in it to keep out the tempest of the night. I did not endeavour to stifle my cough when the lady gave a peep into it; so it redu-. ced the case in course to this alternative,-That the lady should sacrifice her health to her feelings, and take up with the closet herself, and abandon the bed next mine to her maid,—or, that the girl should take the closet, &c. The lady was a Piedmontese of about thirty, with a glow of health in her cheeks. The maid was a Lyonoise of twenty, and as brisk and lively a French girl as ever moved. There were difficulties every way, and the obstacle of the stone in the road, which brought us into the distress, great as it appeared whilst the peasants were removing it, was but a pebble to what lay in our way now-I have only to add, that it did not lessen the weight which hung upon our spirits, that we were both too delicate to communicate what we felt to each other upon the occasion. We sat down to supper; and, had we not had more generous wine to it than a little inn in Savoy could have furnished, our tongues had been tied up till Necessity herself had set them at liberty;-but the lady having a few bottles of Burgundy in her voiture, sent down her fille de chambre for a couple of them; so that by the time supper was over, and we were left alone, we felt ourselves inspired with a strength of mind sufficient to talk, at least, without reserve upon our situation. We turned it every way, and debated and considered it in all kinds of lights in the course of a two hours' negociation; at the end of which the articles were settled finally betwixt us, and stipulated for in form and manner of a treaty of peace,—and, I believe, with as much religion and good faith on both sides, as in any treaty which has yet had the honour of being handed down to posterity. They were as follows: First, As the right of the bed-chamber is in Monsieur, and he thinking the bed next to the fire to be the warmest, he insists upon the concession on the lady's side of taking up with it. Granted on the part of Madame; with a proviso, That, as the curtains of that bed are of a flimsy transparent cotton, and appear likewise too scanty to draw close, that the fille de chambre shall fasten up the opening, either by corkingpins or needle and thread, in such a manner as shall be deemed a sufficient barrier on the side of Monsieur. 2dly, It is required on the part of Madame, that Monsieur shall lie the whole night through in his robe de chambre. Rejected in as much as Monsieur is not worth a robe de chambre; he having nothing in his portmanteau but six shirts and a black silk pair of breeches. The mentioning the silk pair of breeches made an entire change of the article, for the breeches were accepted as an equivalent for the robe de chambre; and so it was stipulated and agreed upon, that I should lie in my black silk breeches all night. 3dly, It was insisted upon, and stipulated for by the lady, that after Monsieur was got to bed, and the candle and fire extinguished, that Monsieur should not speak one single word the whole night. prayers might not be deemed an infraction of Granted, provided Monsieur's saying his the treaty. ty, and that was the manner in which the lady There was but one point forgot in this treaand myself should be obliged to undress and get to bed ;-there was one way of doing it, and that I leave to the reader to devise, protesting as I do it, that if it is not the most delicate in nature, 'tis the fault of his own imagination,against which this is not my first complaint. Now, when we were got to bed, whether it was, I know not, but so it was, I could not was the novelty of the situation, or what it shut my eyes; I tried this side and that, and turned and turned again, till a full hour after midnight, when Nature and Patience both wearing out,-O my God! said I. said the lady, who had no more slept than my- point, though she weakened her barrier by it; said I, stretching my arm out of bed by way of have trespassed against the remotest idea of de(I was going to have added, that I would not corum for the world)— -But the fille de chambre hearing there were would ensue in course, had crept silently out of words between us, and fearing that hostilities her closet; and it being totally dark, had stolen so close to our beds, that she had got herself into the narrow passage which separated them, and had advanced so far up as to be in a line betwixt her mistress and me ; caught hold of the fille de chambre's- END OF THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. ADVERTISEMENT. THERE are a hundred faults in this thing, and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties. But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity. The hero of this piece unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth ;—he is a priest, a husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey-as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity. In this age of opulence and refinement, how can such a character please? Such as are fond of high life, will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fire-side; such as mistake ribaldry for humour, will find no wit in his harmless conversation; and such as have been taught to deride religion, will laugh at one whose chief stores of comfort are drawn from futurity. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. |