nd the
world seven times, during which the world went round the sun seven
times, he completed his task in seven volumes folio, which he never
published, but carried his manuscript away with him to prove that he had
performed his penance. For this miraculous voyage--and certainly with
such a ship's company, it was a miracle--he was canonised, and is now
the patron saint of all prose authors, particularly those whose works
are measured by the foot-rule.
And now that I have made known to my fraternity that we also have a
saint, all they have to do is to call upon him six or seven times, when
their brains are at sixes and sevens. I opine that holy Saint Brandon
made a very _hazard-ous_ voyage, for it is quite clear that, in the
whole arrangement, it was--_seven's the main_.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
En route, May 26.
Passed Waterloo--was informed that two days before the Marquis of
Anglesey had arrived there, and stayed a short time to visit the
cemetery of his leg; a regular family visit of course, as all the
_members_ were present.
May 27.
Slept at Namur. The French are certainly superior to us in the art of
rendering things agreeable. Now, even in the furnishing of a common
apartment, there is always something to relieve the eye, if not to
interest you. I recollect when I was last in London, in furnished
apartments, that as I lay awake in the morning, my eye caught the
pattern of the paper. It was a shepherdess with her dog in repose,
badly executed, and repeated without variation over the whole apartment.
Of course I had nothing to do but to calculate how many shepherdesses
and dogs there were in the room, which, by counting the numbers in
length and breadth, squaring the results, and deducting for door and
windows, was soon accomplished. But how different was the effect
produced by the paper of the room in which I slept last night! It was
the history of Dunois, the celebrated bastard of France, who prays in
his youth that he may prove the bravest of the brave, and be rewarded
with the fairest of the fair. This was not the true history, perhaps,
of Dunois; but I am drawing the comparison between the associations and
reminiscences conjured up by this decoration in opposition to the dull
and tasteless recapitulation of the English manufacture. From the
latter I could not extract a bare ide
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