sous, and where hungry carters (who are καρτεροι ανδρες of course) assemble to toast sausages on their forks, and swill unoctroyed but sour wine with abounding approbation;—beyond all, behold that seemingly interminable avenue which is to end with our short journey, and place us before the Abbey Church of St Denys.
THE ROAD.
There's a bit of true French road-making for you! Straight and flat as need be, and with nothing to draw off your attention from the chaussée itself. A double row of young trees on either side, make two geometrical boundaries, which the eye may follow for miles, with practical illustration of the axiom that two parallel straight lines never can become one. The long line of lamps hung in the mid road; the clean-cut formal parallelograms by the way-side (for what use intended we could never guess) now half filled with water; the rectangular off-walks into the fields; the flat unhedged country, where the frequent poplar needs no training, and towers high above the apparently naked soil; the miserable wickets of the few cottages by the road-side, covered with rags drying in the sun and dust, are all un-English; while the utter absence of all vegetable barriers, the land's best covering, explain the striking absence of birds, which elsewhere adorn the sorriest rural scenery;—in short, you are soon tired of the whole thing, and look forward to the objects that are approaching or passing you, the sub-urban carriages, which rejoice in the name of coucou (a nest of strange birds may usually be found there in incubation); the à volontés, the going of which depends on the separate and sometimes opposite wills of wheel, driver, passenger, and team, and many others with or without distinctive names. Curious it is to see those gaunt, Holbein-looking horses, scampering away under the thundering blows of the gnarled whip-handle, or suddenly halting, or rolling groggily to one side, or shuffling knee deep, in dust of their own raising, dragging their little friend, the associated donkey, through it,—such as these, and many others, meet or pass you in long succession, two, three, four, at a time, with right jovial crews inside, who sing, smoke, and make the most of their short drive; while, at the distance of several miles off, o'ercanopied, or emerging each from its cloud, the towering roof, the herculean build, and the approaching thunder of rival diligences freighted from England and Boulogne, approach, arrive, and pass with all the honours, privileges, and concessions of the road, leaving the cloud of dust which has dredged us like millers to be slowly dissipated. Again we are able to look about us, and find we are at the bridge of the Canal de l'Ourq; the Rubicon is passed, and we descend with both noise and speed into the very centre of St Denys!
THE ABBE.
And here we are at the door of our friend the Abbé * * * *: an excellent man he was, and this we said even before the excellent dinner he gave us. His age might have been seventy; he had seen much of the world, without having become on that account less benevolent or less indulgent to its frailties—all this you saw, or might see in his face—all this you heard, or might hear in his every remark, and all this you learned in his eventful history. He had been a chaplain in the army in early life—an official, for whose existence in the French armies we suppose the English reader is unprepared—and had there duly impressed upon his own mind the importance of discretion and self-command. Old enough to insure respect, he was sufficiently urbane to dispel reserve; his good temper won an easy confidence, and his unaffected humanity was such as to lead him to sympathize with all human suffering. He was dressed in full canonicals, the black-ribbed cap fitting closely to his skull, the black bands with the narrow white edge perfectly adjusted, and not one button of that long front row of a priest's walking attire, out of its button-hole. While he went to give
