write, if it be only to
assure you that I am not made prize of by the Austrians. Yours, &c.

Lisle, August, 1792.

You restless islanders, who are continually racking imagination to
perfect the art of moving from one place to another, and who can drop
asleep in a carriage and wake at an hundred mile distance, have no notion
of all the difficulties of a day's journey here. In the first place, all
the horses of private persons have been taken for the use of the army,
and those for hire are constantly employed in going to the camp--hence,
there is a difficulty in procuring horses. Then a French carriage is
never in order, and in France a job is not to be done just when you want
it--so that there is often a difficulty in finding vehicles. Then there
is the difficulty of passports, and the difficulty of gates, if you want
to depart early. Then the difficulties of patching harness on the road,
and, above all, the inflexible _sang froid_ of drivers. All these things
considered, you will not wonder that we came here a day after we
intended, and arrived at night, when we ought to have arrived at noon.
--The carriage wanted a trifling repair, and we could get neither
passports nor horses. The horses were gone to the army--the municipality
to the club--and the blacksmith was employed at the barracks in making a
patriotic harangue to the soldiers.--But we at length surmounted all
these obstacles, and reached this place last night.

The road between Arras and Lisle is equally rich with that we before
passed, but is much more diversified. The plain of Lens is not such a
scene of fertility, that one forgets it has once been that of war and
carnage. We endeavoured to learn in the town whereabouts the column was
erected that commemmorates that famous battle, [1648.] but no one seemed
to know any thing of the matter. One who, we flattered ourselves, looked
more intelligent than the rest, and whom we supposed might be an
attorney, upon being asked for this spot,--(where, added Mr. de ____, by
way of assisting his memory, _"le Prince de Conde s'est battu si bien,"_)
--replied, _"Pour la bataille je n'en sais rien, mais pour le Prince de
Conde il y a deja quelque tems qu'il est emigre--on le dit a Coblentz."_*
After this we thought it in vain to make any farther enquiry, and
continued our walk about the town.

*"Where the Prince of Conde fought so gallantly."--"As to the battle
I know nothing about the matter; bu