ng on these trifling occurrences, but that
they are characteristic. In England, this passion for animals is chiefly
confined to old maids, but here it is general. Almost every woman,
however numerous her family, has a nursery of birds, an angola, and two
or three lap-dogs, who share her cares with her husband and children.
The dogs have all romantic names, and are enquired after with so much
solicitude when they do not make one in a visit, that it was some time
before I discovered that Nina and Rosine were not the young ladies of the
family. I do not remember to have seen any husband, however master of
his house in other respects, daring enough to displace a favourite
animal, even though it occupied the only vacant fauteuil.

The entrance into Artois from Picardy, though confounded by the new
division, is sufficiently marked by a higher cultivation, and a more
fertile soil. The whole country we have passed is agreeable, but
uniform; the roads are good, and planted on each side with trees, mostly
elms, except here and there some rows of poplar or apple. The land is
all open, and sown in divisions of corn, carrots, potatoes, tobacco, and
poppies of which last they make a coarse kind of oil for the use of
painters. The country is entirely flat, and the view every where bounded
by woods interspersed with villages, whose little spires peeping through
the trees have a very pleasing effect.

The people of Artois are said to be highly superstitious, and we have
already passed a number of small chapels and crosses, erected by the road
side, and surrounded by tufts of trees. These are the inventions of a
mistaken piety; yet they are not entirely without their use, and I cannot
help regarding them with more complacence than a rigid Protestant might
think allowable. The weary traveller here finds shelter from a mid-day
sun, and solaces his mind while he reposes his body. The glittering
equipage rolls by--he recalls the painful steps he has past, anticipates
those which yet remain, and perhaps is tempted to repine; but when he
turns his eye on the cross of Him who has promised a recompence to the
sufferers of this world, he checks the sigh of envy, forgets the luxury
which excited it, and pursues his way with resignation. The Protestant
religion proscribes, and the character of the English renders
unnecessary, these sensible objects of devotion; but I have always been
of opinion, that the levity of the French in general wo