home truth. They cheat you to your face, and laugh at you. I must say, that it appears to me, whatever may be the faults or vices of other nations, the English population is the only one to which the epithet blackguard is applicable. They are, in a word, the only people who make a merit of giving others pain, and triumph in their impudence and ill-behaviour, as proofs of a manly and independent spirit. Afraid that you may complain of the absence of foreign luxuries, they are determined to let you understand beforehand, they do not care about what you may think, and wanting the art to please, resort to the easier and surer way of keeping up their importance by practising every kind of annoyance. Instead of their being at your mercy, you find yourself at theirs, subjected to the sullen airs of the masters, and to the impertinent fatuity of the waiters. They dissipate your theory of English comfort and hospitality at the threshold. What do they care that you have cherished a fond hope of getting a nice, snug little dinner on your arrival, better than any you have had in France? "The French may be d d- " is the answer that passes through their minds-" the dinner is good enough, if it is English!" Let us take care, that by assuming an insolent local superiority over all the world, we do not sink below them in every thing, liberty not excepted. While the name of any thing passes current, we may dispense with the reality, and keep the start of the rest of mankind, simply by asserting that we have it, and treating all foreigners as a set of poor wretches, who neither know how, nor are in truth fit to live! Against this post, alas! John Bull is continually running his head, but as yet without knocking his brains out. The beef-steak which you order at Dover with patriotic tender yearnings for its reputation, is accordingly filled with cinders the mutton is done to a rag-the soup not eatable the porter sour-the bread gritty—the butter rancid. Game, poultry, grapes, wine it is in vain to think of; and as you may be mortified at the privation, they punish you for your unreasonable dissatisfaction by giving you cause for it in the mismanagement of what remains*. In the midst of this ill fare you meet with equally bad treatment. While you are trying to digest a tough beef-steak, a fellow comes in and peremptorily demands your fare, on the assurance that you will get your baggage from the clutches of the Custom-house in time to go by the six o'clock coach; and when you find that this is impossible, and that you are to be trundled off at two in the morning, or by the next day's coach, if it is not full, and complain to that personification of blind justice, an English mob, you hear the arch slang reply, * Since my return I have put myself on a regimen of brown bread, beef, and tea, and have thus defeated the systematic conspiracy carried on against weak digestions. To those accustomed to, and who can indulge in foreign luxuries, this list will seem far from satisfactory. "Do you think the Gentleman such a fool as to part with his money without knowing why?" and should the natural rejoinder rise to your lips—“ Do you take me for a fool, because I did not take you for a rogue?” the defendant immediately stands at bay upon the national character for honesty and morality. "I hope there are no rogues here!" is echoed through the dense atmosphere of English intellect, though but the moment before they had been laughing in their sleeves (or out loud) at the idea of a stranger having been tricked by a townsman. Happy country! equally and stupidly satisfied with its vulgar vices and boasted virtues! "Oh! for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Yet to what purpose utter such a wish, since it is impossible to stay there, and the moment you are separated from your fellows, you think better of them, begin to form chimeras with which you would fain compare the realities, find them the same as ever to your cost and shame "And disappointed still, are still deceived!" I found little of this tracasserie at Gelamont. Days, weeks, months, and even years might have passed on much in the same manner, with "but the season's difference." We breakfasted at the same hour, and the tea-kettle was always boiling (an excellent thing in housewifery)—a lounge in the orchard for an hour or two, and twice a week we could see the steam-boat creeping like a spider over the surface of the lake; a volume of the Scotch novels (to be had in every library on the Continent, in English, French, German, or Italian, as the reader pleases), or M. Galignani's Paris and London Observer, amused us till dinner time; then tea and a walk till the moon unveiled itself, "apparent queen of night," or the brook, swoln with a transient shower, was heard more distinctly in the darkness, mingling with the soft, rustling breeze; and the next morning the song of peasants broke upon refreshing sleep, as the sun glanced among the clustering vine-leaves, or the shadowy hills, as the mists retired from their summits, looked in at our windows. The uniformity of this mode of life was only broken during fifteen weeks that we remained in Switzerland, by the civilities of Monsieur Le Vade, a Doctor of medicine and octagenarian, who had been personally acquainted with Rousseau in his younger days; by some attempts by our neighbours to lay us under obligations, by parting with rare curiosities to Monsieur l'Anglois for half their value; and by an excursion to Chamouni, of which I must defer the account to my next. CHAPTER XXVI. We crossed over in a boat to St. Gingolph, a little town opposite to Vevey, and proceeded on the other side of the lake to Martigny, from which we could pass over either on foot or by the help of mules to Mont-Blanc. It was a warm day towards the latter end of August, and the hills before us drew their clear outline, and the more distant Alps waved their snowy tops (tinged with golden sunshine) in the gently-undu. lating surface of the crystal lake. As we approached the Savoy side, the mountains in front, which from Vevey look like a huge battery or flat upright wall, opened into woody recesses, or reared their crests on high; rich streaks of the most exquisite verdure gleamed at their feet, and St. Gingolph came distinctly in view, with its dingy-looking houses and smoking chimneys. It is a small manufacturing town, full of forges and workshops, and the inn is dirty and disagreeable. The contrast to Vevey was striking. But this side of the lake is in the dominions of the King of Sardinia, and cleanliness seems to be in general the virtue of republics, or of free states. There is an air of desolation, sluttishness, and indifference, the instant you cross the water, compared |